{"id":12391,"date":"2026-07-18T00:08:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T21:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ph.yhb.org.il\/en\/?p=12391"},"modified":"2026-08-09T10:42:53","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T07:42:53","slug":"17-18-08","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ph.yhb.org.il\/en\/17-18-08\/","title":{"rendered":"08. An Animal and Its Offspring"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"direction: ltr\">The Torah forbids slaughtering a mother animal and her offspring, whether male or female, on the same day, as it is stated: \u201cWhether an ox or a sheep, you shall not slaughter it and its young on the same day\u201d (Vayikra 22:28). The order does not matter: if the offspring was slaughtered first, the mother may not be slaughtered that same day. Nor does the prohibition depend on one person performing both acts of <em>she\u1e25ita<\/em>: once one animal has been slaughtered, no Jew may slaughter the animal\u2019s mother or offspring that day.<\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr\">When a young animal is attached to a female and follows her about, she is presumed to be its mother, even if no one remembers with certainty that it was born from her. Accordingly, the two may not be slaughtered on the same day. Where there is no such indication, however, we do not suspect that two animals from the same herd are mother and offspring (<em>Tur<\/em> and SA YD 16:5).<\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr\">In practice, this prohibition generally concerns the mother and her young, since the father\u2019s identity is usually unknown. The sire also has no recognizable ongoing bond with the offspring; it is the mother who nurses and tends her young while they are small. The Tannaim disagree whether the prohibition also applies to the father when his identity is known. In practice, since the halakha remains uncertain, the ruling is stringent: if the father&#8217;s identity is certain, neither he nor his offspring may be slaughtered that day. Nevertheless, because this application of the prohibition remains doubtful, one who transgresses is not punished with lashes (MT, Laws of She\u1e25ita 12:11; SA YD 16:1).<\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr\">The \u201cday\u201d of this prohibition is the halakhic day, which begins at nightfall. Thus, if the mother was slaughtered at the beginning of the night, the offspring may not be slaughtered until the next day has ended. If the mother was slaughtered shortly before sunset, the offspring may be slaughtered that night, once three stars have emerged and a new halakhic day has begun (SA YD 16:4).<\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr\">An animal bought in the marketplace may be slaughtered that same day; the buyer need not worry that its mother or offspring was also sold for slaughter that day. If the seller knows that he sold the animal\u2019s mother or offspring for slaughter that same day, he must warn the buyer not to slaughter the animal he has purchased. On four occasions each year, however, the Sages required the seller to issue this warning even when the first buyer did not say explicitly that he intended to slaughter the animal that day. Since people normally bought animals on those days for immediate slaughter, the seller had to warn the second buyer if he sold him the mother or offspring of an animal already sold that day. These occasions are: the eve of Shemini Atzeret, the eve of Pesa\u1e25, the eve of Shavuot, and the eve of Rosh Hashana (<em>\u1e24ullin<\/em> 83a; SA YD 16:6). In large communities where many animals were customarily slaughtered for Shabbat, the rabbis instructed people to follow this stringency every Friday as well (<em>Ziv\u1e25ei Tzedek<\/em> 16:17; <em>Kaf Ha-\u1e25ayim<\/em> 31).<\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr\">Today, slaughterhouses prevent this problem by scheduling different categories of animals for different days: calves are slaughtered on one set of days, nursing cows on another, and breeding males on another, so that a parent and its offspring will not be slaughtered on the same day.<\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr\">If a mother and offspring were nevertheless slaughtered on the same day, some authorities maintain that although a Torah prohibition was violated, the meat may be eaten (Rambam, Ramban, and Rashba). Others maintain that the meat of the second animal should not be eaten until the halakhic day has ended (Behag, Rosh, and Ran; see SA YD 16:3). The prohibition of slaughtering an animal and its offspring applies only when both animals were slaughtered. If the first animal died on its own, or if its <em>she\u1e25ita<\/em> was invalid, the second may be slaughtered that same day (SA YD 16:9).<\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr\">This prohibition applies only to domesticated animals, not to wild animals; it also does not apply to birds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr\">Some Rishonim explain that this prohibition is meant to cultivate mercy within us. Although we eat animal meat, it is not fitting to slaughter a mother and her offspring on the same day (Rambam, <em>Moreh Nevukhim<\/em> 3:48; Ramban to Devarim 22:6).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Torah forbids slaughtering a mother animal and her offspring, whether male or female, on the same day, as it is stated: \u201cWhether an ox or a sheep, you shall not slaughter it and its young on the same day\u201d (Vayikra 22:28). The order does not matter: if the offspring was slaughtered first, the mother [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-17-18"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>08. An Animal and Its Offspring - Peninei Halakha<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ph.yhb.org.il\/en\/17-18-08\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"08. 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