Reply To: Klerr about Kavua

I am not sure I grasp what you are saying, but let me try to formulate something in my own words which is coming to me from your remarks.

We have a case where a guy was mekadesh a random woman and doesn’t know who. There we do not say kavua. Then we have a case where a guy threw a rock at ten people and we aren’t sure who it hit – the yid or the goy; there we do say kavua.

At first glance it seems that we can differentiate between an inherent difference and an accidental difference. By the rock, the question is if it is a Jew or a non-Jew. There is an inherent difference there, or in other words, the issur and heter are b’etzem two different types. By the woman there is nothing inherently different about a woman who is mekudeshes to you and one who isn’t.

To put it in more yeshivishe terms, when Tosafos says it is nikkar, he means there is a difference b’etzem – la’afukei the kiddushin case where there is only a difference klapei outside factors. The latter case is not called yadua v’nikkar bimkomo, and is therefore subject to bitul.

But what do you do when you come to pieces of meat? You seem to imply that we are only matir meat when it is one piece that we have various tzdadim on. Yet when we have three pieces of meat, two kosher and one not kosher, sitting separately on a table, and we don’t know which is which, the halacha is that it is batel and we do not say kavua. One could be pig’s meat and the other two cow’s meat; it doesn’t matter. This is the Gemara in Chullin 95a and the halacha in Shulchan Aruch YD 109:1. Why is this not comparable to the yid and goy case? Why would this not be called an inherent difference? Or in your words, why is the non-kosher piece a reality?

To put it more simply: what is the difference between three pieces of meat sitting on a table and ten stores in a town? Here I think we are forced to understand Tosafos’s chiluk the old fashioned, simple way I thought originally, and that is that the stores are known in their places and the pieces are not. But if this is pshat then we are back to square one.

It could be I am missing your point. If so please try to explain it again.