Bechorot 34: בְּמַאי אִיכַּוֵּין לְמִישְׁרְיֵיהּ בְּהַאי מוּמָא

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As we have learned, a firstborn kosher animal must be given to a kohen and brought as a sacrifice in the Temple. If the animal develops a mum – a blemish that precludes it from being sacrificed – the animal becomes the property of the kohen who can slaughter it and eat it. The Mishna on our daf teaches that someone who deliberately causes a mum is not permitted to take advantage of the new status of the animal to make use of it. According to the Mishna, “if one makes a slit in the ear of a firstborn animal, he must never slaughter it. These are the words of Rabbi Eliezer. Whereas the Sages say: he may slaughter it on account of another blemish, when it appears on it.”

The Talmudic discussion on our daf concerning the deliberate creation of a physical blemish (mum) in a sick firstborn animal (bekhor) presents a remarkable intersection of sacrificial law, therapeutic intervention, and ethical obligation. The central problem is whether one may intentionally perform a medical procedure that risks destroying the animal's ritual fitness, particularly when withholding treatment might lead to its death.

We argue that the sugya offers a sophisticated model of morally differentiated intervention: an act cannot be judged solely by its physical consequences but must also be evaluated according to its therapeutic purpose, the prior condition of the subject, the likelihood of harm, and the availability of alternatives. Although the law of the firstborn animal cannot be transferred directly to human clinical medicine, its internal reasoning illuminates important questions concerning surgical injury, medical necessity, the distinction between saving life and relieving suffering, and the relationship between religious obligation and professional beneficence. The essay situates the sugya alongside medieval halakhic interpretations and contemporary biomedical ethics, arguing that the concept of a therapeutic blemish represents a productive framework for understanding why medically necessary tissue destruction may constitute healing rather than prohibited injury.

Bechorot 33: מיקלִּיזִין לוֹ אֶת הַדָּם בִּמקום שֶׁאֵין עוֹשִׂים בּוֹ מום

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It is forbidden to injure an animal that has been sanctified for use in the Temple, causing it to become a ba’al mum, that is, a blemished animal that cannot be sacrificed. This includes the case of a bekhor – a first-born animal – that is automatically sanctified at the time of its birth.

The Gemara on our daf discusses a situation where a bekhor was suffering from a condition described as aḥazo dam – it was suffering from an overabundance of blood – and the recommended treatment was hakazat dam – bloodletting. Four opinions are offered –

Rabbi Meir permits the treatment only in a place where the animal will not receive an injury that would render it a ba’al mum.

The Sages permit bloodletting, even if the animal will become blemished, although not in the place on the animal where it would be slaughtered.

Rabbi Shimon permits the bloodletting even in the place where it is slaughtered.

Rabbi Yehuda prohibits bloodletting under any circumstances, even if the animal will die without treatment.

Rabbi Eliezer insists that an animal whose ear has been deliberately notched may never be slaughtered on that basis, even if another blemish develops later. The Sages permit slaughter once an independent blemish arises.

At first glance, their disagreement concerns the appropriate severity of punishment for someone attempting to circumvent sacrificial law. Yet beneath the legal dispute lies a profound question about the nature of holiness itself.

We explore whether sanctity a condition residing within the object, or is it a relationship between the object, its consecrated purpose, and the moral agency of the human being who acts upon it?

Bechorot 32: בְּכוֹר אֵין נִמְנִין עָלָיו אֶלָּא חֲבוּרָה שֶׁכּוּלָּהּ כֹּהֲנִים

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The discussion in our Daf concerning the prohibited manner of skinning a blemished firstborn animal presents a remarkable problem in the ontology of holiness.

If the animal has become unfit for sacrifice, what remains of its original sanctity, and how should that remainder govern its treatment?

Drawing upon the Sefat Emet, we argue that the sugya distinguishes between the persistence of sacred status and the continued applicability of specific sacrificial restrictions.

This distinction opens a broader epistemological question: whether holiness is a property we can identify and exhaustively describe, or a reality whose presence we encounter primarily through the obligations it imposes.

Bechorot 31: נִשְׁחָטִין? הָא בָּעֵי הַעֲמָדָה וְהַעֲרָכָה

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The Gemara relates that Rav Sheshes was upset with his attendant for not relating his teachings in his name. The Gemara explains that Rav Sheshes wanted to have the merit of Torah teachings being related in his name because, as Rebbi Yochanan said in the name of Raban Shimon bar Yochai, when one relates teachings in the name of the one who originally taught them, the original source of the teachings merits that his "lips quiver in the grave" and he is considered still alive (and it is considered as though he himself is still teaching Torah).

This principle of "Sifsosav Dovevos ba'Kever" should require that one not publish his original Torah insights anonymously, so that he not loses the merit of "Sifsosav Dovevos ba'Kever.”

We explore why, then, have several works of Torah insights been published by Talmidei Chachamim anonymously?

We venture into the use of the Attribution, Immortality, and the Transmission of Torah.

Bechorot 30: שֶׁנּוֹהֵג בְּצִינְעָא בְּתוֹךְ בֵּיתוֹ

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Beginning with the Mishna on our daf we turn our attention to questions of whether someone who is suspect about one area of law is suspect about other areas of law.

One who is suspect to flaunt the laws of firstborn is not trusted to buy even deer meat from him. It is likewise forbidden to buy raw hides from him, but tanned hides are permitted: since, if he were discovered, he would lose the hide, he won't put that much labor into the hide of a firstborn.

An example of the Gemara’s concern is whether someone who commits certain transgressions can be considered a ḥaver – someone who is trustworthy about tithes and issues of ritual purity.

Another example of the problem of personal integrity applies to whether acceptance of mitzvos is a critical factor of one converting to be a Jew.

What makes this sugya especially significant is the distinction it establishes between repentance as an inward transformation and repentance as the public reconstruction of trust.

Bechorot 29: מָה אֲנִי בְּחִנָּם, אַף אַתֶּם בְּחִנָּם

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Our Mishnah in Bekhorot 4:6 voids the rulings of a judge who takes a fee, and the Gemara on 29a grounds the rule in Moses: mah ani be-hinam, af atem be-hinam, as I received for nothing, so you.

We explore the sugya as a theory of what a teacher may and may not take from a student. It distinguishes two distances between rebbe and talmid: the distance of awe, which the halakhah commands, and the distance of ownership, which the verse "buy truth and do not sell it" forbids. It then argues that modern kiruv, which suspends the first distance to draw the student near, is exposed to the second: the student is charged an existential fee, the repudiation of his secular past.

Against that model I propose a story of R. Yohanan and Reish Lakish (Bava Metzia 84a), the rabbinic theology of teshuvah as elevation and not erasure, and the apophatic tradition. Its constructive claim is that the returnee's experience of a complete worldview failing is a preparation for negative theology that those raised wholly within observance may not acquire in the same way, and that a kiruv which demands its erasure sells what cannot be sold.

Bechorot 28: וְאָמַר תּוֹדוֹס הָרוֹפֵא: אֵין פָּרָה וַחֲזִירָה יוֹצְאָה מֵאֲלֶכְּסַנְדְּרִיָּא שֶׁל מִצְרַיִם

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Todos the physician testifies that Alexandria protected its monopoly on superior cattle and swine by removing the uterus of every cow and sow before export, so the breed could not be reproduced elsewhere. Because these animals went on to live long lives, the removal of the womb is shown not to be a fatal defect, and such an animal is therefore not a tereifah and is permitted.

Context: The testimony comes up in the case of Rabbi Tarfon, who ruled that a cow whose womb had been removed was a tereifah and had it fed to the dogs [1,2]. When the case came before the Sages at Yavneh, they permitted such an animal on the strength of Todos’s report. Rabbi Tarfon feared he would have to sell his donkey to compensate the owner, but Rabbi Akiva told him he was exempt, as a publicly recognized expert. The Gemara in Sanhedrin cites the episode as an error in a matter of Mishnah, since the Mishnah already lists an animal whose womb was removed among the kosher cases.

Todos the physician appears in rabbinic literature in two tannaitic scenes, transmitted in six places. In the first he reports that no cow or sow leaves Alexandria with its womb intact. In the second he leads a body of physicians who examine baskets of human bones in the synagogue at Lod. This essay assembles the dossier, sorts its textual layers, and separates what the sources say from what later readers supplied. The best witnesses call him Theodoros. He belongs to the generation of R. Tarfon and R. Akiva, between Yavneh and Lod. He never treats a patient and never issues a ruling.

We explore his role as historical and literary agent.

Bechorot 27: לִימֵּד עַל בְּכוֹר בַּעַל מוּם שֶׁנּוֹתְנוֹ לְכֹהֵן, שֶׁלֹּא מָצִינוּ לוֹ בְּכׇל הַתּוֹרָה כּוּלָּהּ

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The rabbis continue to discuss the obligation to separate term and ma'aser only within the land of Israel, like all agricultural laws apply only in Israel. It may have been an ancient custom to separate these gifts and tithes from afar to ensure that the mitzvot are remembered. The tradition spread from one centre to another. Thus, the rabbis were more lenient about theses mitzvot.

We explore this halachot for chutz la’areztz as well as the appropriation of the blemished Bechor in modern literary fiction such as Shakespeare and Milton.

Bechorot 26: מִפְּנֵי שֶׁנִּרְאֶה כְּכֹהֵן הַמְסַיֵּיעַ בְּבֵית הַגֳּרָנוֹת

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The Torah is clear with regard to the requirements of the parent of a male firstborn that must be redeemed. A month after birth, a payment of five shekel must be made to the kohen in order to redeem the child (see Num 18:16). The same detail does not exist regarding a firstborn kosher animal. How long does the owner of the animal have to care for the firstborn before transferring it to the kohen?

This question is dealt with in the first Mishna of the fourth perek of Massekhet Bekhorot, which begins on our daf, whose focus is on how the firstborn animal is transferred to the kohen and what his responsibilities are once he receives it.

There is something almost unbearably modern about the bekhor ba'al mum. A theme we explore in its modern Jewish writer’s iteration.

He is chosen and cannot fulfill his chosenness.

He belongs to the altar and cannot be brought to the altar. The mark of election remains upon him after the purpose of election has become impossible.

The Torah does not heal him. It does not explain the blemish. It does not suggest that what appears to be a defect is secretly a higher perfection.

It simply says that because of the mum he cannot be sacrificed.

Bechorot 25: בַּבְלָאֵי טַפְשָׁאֵי, מִשּׁוּם דְּיָתְבִי בְּאַרְעָא דַּחֲשׁוֹכָא אָמְרִי שְׁמַעְתָּא דִּמְחַשְּׁכָן

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The Gemara relates: When Ravin ascended from Babylonia to Eretz Yisrael, he stated this halakha, including Rav Naḥman’s interpretation of the baraita, in the presence of Rabbi Yirmeya. Rabbi Yirmeya said: Foolish Babylonians! Because they dwell in a dark land, they state halakhot that are dim. Did they not hear that which Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba says that Rabbi Yoḥanan says: That mishna is dealing with the animals themselves, not their wool, and the dispute between the first tanna and Rabbi Yosei is with regard to a case where one examined the flock and did not find the blemished animal?

Five times a report of Babylonian learning reaches R. Yirmeya in the Land of Israel and is met with the same sentence: "Foolish Babylonians! Because they dwell in a dark land, they say dim halakhot."

We read our daf setting it beside four parallel occurrences and the wider talmudic archive of Palestinian contempt and Babylonian reply and asks what kind of act such an insult is. Drawing on the scholarship of Lieberman, Neusner, Weiss Halivni and Boyarin, and on the sociology of intellectual fields, We propose six propositions toward a theory of inter-scholarly rivalry: that rivalry presupposes a shared currency; that insults fix exchange rates between competing kinds of scholarly capital; that geography is conscripted to do the work of proof; that the sharpest border guards are those who have crossed the border; that the temper of a rivalry is set by its brokers; and that the archive belongs to the survivor, who, if confident enough, preserves the insult. The governing fact is that every one of these taunts survives only because Babylonians recorded it.

Bechorot 24: שָׁאנֵי פָּרָה, דְּלָאו בַּת גִּיזָּה הִיא

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If one buys a nursing animal from an idolater and does not know whether it already had its first offspring, he can safely assume that the animal is nursing its own child and is therefore not subject to the law of firstborn anymore.

While there are some animals that lactate before giving birth, in general animals do not nurse a child that is not their own. Also, in a flock one can assume that each animal nurses its own child. A different point of view is that an animal will nurse a child not of its own even before it has given birth.

If one saw a young pig clinging to an ewe and nursing from it, the ewe is exempt from the law of a firstborn, because we can assume that this is not a pig but a mutant lamb. One can't eat it, because perhaps it is a pig after all. This rule seems to combine the two contradictory points of view above: does an animal feed a child that is not its own or it doesn't?

We explore how Slifkin gives us a zoological route into the much deeper question of whether סימני טהרה identify a pre-existing מין or actually constitute halakhic identity.

Bechorot 23: דְּאֵינָהּ מְרַחֶמֶת אֶלָּא אִם כֵּן יוֹלֶדֶת

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Rechem and Rachamim: Does Mercy Require Birth?

three theories of mercy

Our daf asks what looks like a question of animal husbandry and turns out to be a question about the nature of compassion. A nursing animal has been bought from a gentile. Is the creature at her udder her own?

The verb the Gemara uses for nursing another's young is merachemet, "she shows mercy." The word is built on rechem, womb. The sugya is asking whether that etymology is a fact of nature.Three positions emerge.

1. Mercy without birth. The tanna kamma of the baraita holds that an animal "might be merciful and nurse another animal even though it has not given birth at all." The next offspring is therefore a doubtful firstborn.

2. Birth as the gate. דְּאֵינָהּ מְרַחֶמֶת אֶלָּא אִם כֵּן יוֹלֶדֶת: she does not show mercy unless she has given birth. On this reading of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, birth opens the capacity and once open it may flow to a stranger's young.

3. Birth as the bond. On the second reading, she is merciful only toward her own. Mercy is not a capacity that birth releases but a tie that birth creates, and it reaches no further than the one who was born.

Bechorot 22: פִּיקָּה מִתּוֹךְ פִּיקָּה

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The Gemara quotes a Mishna from Massekhet Oholot (7:4) that teaches that when the fetus dies in its mother’s womb, it imparts ritual impurity from when the womb opens, but only when the head of the fetus is round like a skein of yarn.

If the stillborn fetus remains in the mother, there is no ritual defilement, since this is a situation of tum’ah belu’ah – “swallowed defilement” – which does not ritually defile (see Ḥullin daf 71). Once the uterus opens, we view it as if the fetus had been born and there is ritual defilement in the entire house. The Mishna teaches that this is only true in a case where the fetus had developed to the extent that its head is “the size of a skein.”

The sugya begins with the disintegrated fetus expelled as a bloody mass. Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov rules that the mass must be buried and that the mother is exempt from any later offspring being treated as a firstborn, yet Rabbi Ḥiyya teaches that the mass transmits neither impurity by touch nor by carrying. The tension is obvious. If a fetus was present strongly enough to count as the mother’s first offspring, why does its dead tissue not convey the impurity of neveilah? Rabbi Yoḥanan answers with the principle of bittul berov: the fetal flesh is a minority within the larger mass of blood and other material and is therefore nullified for purposes of impurity.

Bechorot 21: הַשִּׁלְיָא בַּבַּיִת — הַבַּיִת טָמֵא

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The expulsion of a murky discharge, which is sufficient to exempt an animal from having its future offspring counted a firstborn, prevents it from being impregnated for no less than thirty days. If an animal becomes pregnant within thirty days of expelling a murky discharge, evidently that discharge was not the sign of a fetus, and therefore the offspring will have firstborn status.

The Talmudic category of the me'uberet, the pregnant fetus, is more complicated than it first appears. Biologically, pregnancy begins at conception. Halakhically, however, the law is often concerned not simply with whether conception has occurred, but with when pregnancy has become sufficiently established to be recognized. The rabbinic phrase for that threshold is hakarat ha-ubar—הכרת העובר—the recognition of the fetus. In several passages the Talmud places this transition at approximately three months of pregnancy.

That three-month threshold is particularly interesting when we explore ancient Greek and Roman medical literature. The comparison suggests that the rabbis were working with an observational category familiar throughout the ancient Mediterranean world: the distinction between an early pregnancy that was hidden, uncertain, and known chiefly through indirect symptoms, and a later pregnancy that had become sufficiently manifest in the woman's body to be treated as an established fact.

Bechorot 20: לְתַנָּא קַמָּא אֵינָהּ יוֹלֶדֶת לִמְקוּטָּעִין

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The first Mishnah of the third chapter deals with a person who purchased an animal from a non-Jew and does not know whether it had previously given birth and was thereby exempted from the laws of the firstborn. The Mishnah specifically discusses one who purchases from a non-Jew, while the Gemara in our sugya records a dispute among the Amoraim regarding someone who purchased an animal from a Jew:

“Rav said: it is definitely a firstborn… Shmuel said: it is a doubtful firstborn… and Rabbi Yoḥanan said: it is definitely ordinary, non-sacred property.”

All three Amoraim attempt to assess the presumed intention of the seller. Rav maintains that the seller’s silence proves with certainty that the present offspring is a firstborn. Shmuel holds that his silence proves nothing conclusively and may be interpreted in different ways. Rabbi Yoḥanan, by contrast, maintains that the seller’s silence is clear evidence that the animal had already given birth previously. Rabbi Yoḥanan explains his position with the principle:

“Since there is a prohibition involved, he certainly would have informed him.”

investigation falls instead upon the purchaser rather than the seller.

According to Tosafot, the position of Rav and Shmuel is grounded in the prohibition:

“You shall not place a stumbling block before the blind” (lifnei iver lo titten mikhshol) to which we explore its varying applications.

Bechorot 19: אַלְמָא בְּכוֹר לְדָבָר אֶחָד הָוֵי בְּכוֹר

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Suppose the mother's first offspring is delivered through the abdominal wall — יוצא דופן, essentially a Caesarean delivery — and the next offspring is delivered vaginally. Which one is the bekhor?

Rabbi Tarfon treats both as doubtful. The Caesarean offspring is first chronologically, but it is not פטר רחם, the one that "opens the womb." The second offspring really do open the womb, but it is not the mother's first offspring. Thus, each possesses only half of what we ordinarily mean by bekhor. The Gemara formulates Rabbi Tarfon's uncertainty beautifully:

בכור לדבר אחד אי הוי בכור

Is something that is a firstborn in one respect considered a firstborn?

Rabbi Akiva answers no. The first animal fails because אינו פטר רחם; the second fails because קדמואחר—another offspring preceded it. Thus, bekhorah requires the convergence of two biological/legal facts: first offspring + first emergence through the womb.

We explore What does "firstborn" mean when biological chronology and anatomical birth no longer coincide?

That is an unusually modern-sounding problem hiding in Bechoros 19. The Caesarean case forces חז"ל to distinguish chronological firstness, anatomical firstness, sexual firstness, and halakhic firstness. The body supplies several possible definitions of "first"; Torah law must determine which combination constitutes בכור.

Bechorot 18: זָכָר וּנְקֵבָה — אֵין כָּאן לַכֹּהֵן כְּלוּם

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Suppose the mother's first offspring is delivered through the abdominal wall — יוצא דופן, essentially a Caesarean delivery — and the next offspring is delivered vaginally. Which one is the bekhor?

Rabbi Tarfon treats both as doubtful. The Caesarean offspring is first chronologically, but it is not פטר רחם, the one that "opens the womb." The second offspring really do open the womb, but it is not the mother's first offspring. Thus, each possesses only half of what we ordinarily mean by bekhor. The Gemara formulates Rabbi Tarfon's uncertainty beautifully:

בכור לדבר אחד אי הוי בכור

Is something that is a firstborn in one respect considered a firstborn?

Rabbi Akiva answers no. The first animal fails because אינו פטר רחם; the second fails because קדמואחר—another offspring preceded it. Thus, bekhorah requires the convergence of two biological/legal facts: first offspring + first emergence through the womb.

We explore What does "firstborn" mean when biological chronology and anatomical birth no longer coincide?

That is an unusually modern-sounding problem hiding in Bechoros 19. The Caesarean case forces חז"ל to distinguish chronological firstness, anatomical firstness, sexual firstness, and halakhic firstness. The body supplies several possible definitions of "first"; Torah law must determine which combination constitutes בכור.

Bechorot 17: וְאִי אָמְרַתְּ אִי אֶפְשָׁר לְצַמְצֵם בִּידֵי אָדָם

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If an ewe gave birth to two male lambs and their heads emerged from the womb simultaneously, then Rabbi Yose HaGlili says that both are firstborn and both are given to a kohen, since the Torah said, "The males belong to God."

However, the Sages disagree and say that it is impossible for two events to happen exactly at the same time. Therefore, one was the firstborn, only we don't know which one, and the kohen gets one animal.

Rabbi Yose then says that this Torah phrase is exactly the source teaching that simultaneous events occur. And the Sages? The say that "males" just means all males in general.

On our daf the Gemara connects this tannaitic dispute to the broader question of whether “it is possible to achieve exactness” (efshar letzamtzem): whether one may rely on sensory perception to determine that two objects are exactly equal in size, that two events occurred at precisely the same time, or that a particular object possesses an exact size, shape, or weight.

My question is what this legal discussion can contribute to an apophatic theology of encounter. In my work on divine concealment, the patient as a subject of interpretation, and therapeutic tzimtzum, I have argued that a claim to know can overreach its object We explore this.

Bechorot 16: אֵין מְקַבְּלִין צֹאן בַּרְזֶל מִיִּשְׂרָאֵל מִפְּנֵי שֶׁהוּא רִבִּית

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Our Mishnah states:

“One who accepts tzon barzel [a fixed-value livestock arrangement] from a non-Jew — their offspring are exempt [from the law of the firstborn].”

The Rishonim disagree regarding the precise terms of the contract known as tzon barzel (see Tosafot, s.v. ein), but the basic principle is that livestock belonging to a non-Jew is placed in the possession of a Jew; the non-Jew and the Jew share in the offspring, and ultimately the Jew is expected either to pay the non-Jew the value of the livestock or to return the livestock itself to him.

The Gemara explains why such livestock is exempt from the law of the firstborn:

“For if the non-Jew comes and demands money, and [the Jew] does not give it to him, he may seize the animal.”

The non-Jew’s ability to seize the animal in the event of nonpayment is regarded as a defect in the Jew’s ownership and therefore exempts the animal from the law of the firstborn.

The rabbinic institution known as tzon barzel, literally “iron sheep,” presents an unusually sophisticated form of divided proprietary interest. Property is transferred into the economic control of one party, who enjoys its produce and frequently assumes the risk of deterioration or destruction, while another party retains a fixed capital claim secured by the property. The institution appears in several areas of rabbinic law, most famously in the law of marital property, but also in the laws of interest and, strikingly, in the second chapter of tractate Bekhorot. There the rabbis ask whether livestock received by a Jew from a non-Jew under a tzon barzelarrangement remains sufficiently connected to the non-Jewish owner to exempt its offspring from the sanctity of the firstborn.

Our discussion demonstrates that rabbinic ownership cannot always be reduced to a binary distinction between owner and non-owner. Liability, possession, economic benefit, security interests, and residual powers of seizure may be distributed among different parties.

We explore how the Roman dos aestimata makes that distinction much easier to articulate.

Bechorot 15: אַהֲנִי הֶיקֵּישָׁא וְאַהֲנִי קְרָא

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As we learned on yesterday’s daf according to the Mishna if an animal that was a ba’al mum – it had a permanent blemish that precluded it from being brought as a sacrifice – was consecrated by its owner and then was redeemed, it becomes an ordinary animal. This stands in contrast with an animal that was consecrated as a sacrifice and developed a mum – a permanent blemish – afterwards. In such a case, even though its condition does not allow it to be brought as a sacrifice and it must be redeemed, nevertheless it retains an element of holiness.

The baraita on our daf that makes this point concludes the discussion of each type of animal with a general principle. Regarding the animal that was a ba’al mum prior to being consecrated the baraita states:

The principle in this matter is: They are like non-sacred animals in all matters. They have only the mitzva of valuing them for redemption.

Regarding the animal that became a ba’al mum only after being consecrated as a sacrifice the baraita states:

The principle in the matter is that they are like consecrated animals in all matters. You have only the permission to eat them.

We explore how the mishna's distinction turns on which kind of sanctity the animal ever had. If a permanent blemish came before consecration, the animal could never go on the altar, so the consecration only attached to its monetary value (kedushat damim). When it is redeemed, that sanctity transfers fully to the redemption money, and the animal becomes ordinary ḥullin, liable to the firstborn obligation and the priestly gifts (zero'a, leḥayayim, keivah).

If the animal was consecrated while unblemished, the sanctity attached to its body (kedushat ha-guf). A later blemish and redemption let it be eaten, but they do not fully erase that bodily holiness. This is why pesulei ha-mukdashin remain forbidden to shear or work even after redemption. The animal is permitted but not fully profane, and the Torah's image for that in-between status is "as the gazelle and the hart." It is eaten the way game is eaten, not the way a flock animal is eaten.