A thought on פרשת נח

"...kol asher b'charava mesu..." "...every creature on land died..." (7:22) Those of us from out West, and for that matter, most people who even heard about the Old West, think of the buffalo as a native American beast. Even the word has that "Indian" sound to it. We've probably all heard that Western song about "Give me a home where the buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelope play." Some years ago, I read that antelope are not even found in North America, which casts doubt about the poetic accuracy of that cowboy song. Which led me to wonder about the word buffalo as well. That word shows up in Shulchan Aruch of all places, in discussing aspects of animal kashrus. We know that its author, Rav Yosef Karo, never came to the New World and may not have even heard of America. How did he know about buffalo? We move towards an answer with this week's comments of Rabbeinu Avigdor. Notice that our verse above states that all the creatures on land died in the flood. He notes that this verse would support our sages' view in the Talmud that the decree against living things did not extend to fish and sea creatures. He then asks how another passage queries how the "orzila d'yama" - a type of ocean animal (yama meaning ocean or yam in Aramaic) - was able to survive the flood. If the decree never affected sea creatures, why is that a question? On the basis of this, Rabbeinu Avigdor writes that an editorial error fell into some editions of the Talmud, and the correct version would read "orzila d'raema." A raem is a wild ox, and the Talmud was asking how a very large wild ox which did not fit into the ark would have survived the flood (you had to be there, or at least study Talmud, to appreciate that passage and its questions). The Talmudic concern had nothing to do with fish, since they survived the flood as our verse implies. The concern had to have been about that big wild ox, the raem. On the basis of this scholarly reasoning, Rabbeinu Avigdor sides with a view of Rabbeinu Tam, an earlier and foremost Tosafist, that because that raem is classified in halacha as a beast (chaya) and not as an animal (behaema), we must conclude that the animal which European Jews refer to as a buffalo cannot be the same as a raem. This means that a buffalo has the halachic status of an animal and not as a beast. This means that its chelev -certain internal fat - is forbidden. The prohibition on chelev only applies to the behaema, not the chaya. Whereas the buffalo is a form of non-domesticated ox or bovine, it is not the "wild ox" once known as the raem, he concludes. He then asks why the Talmud wonders about the survival of this raem during the flood. It could have survived by running to Israel, which the flood waters did not reach (another Talmudic opinion, based on a verse in Yechezkel 22:24). Rabbeinu Avigdor suggests that even though Israel was not flooded, water flowing down from nearby mountain peaks surely entered the Holy Land, so the terrain was submerged even there. Hence, the Talmud wonders how that original giant raem survived if it was not admitted entry onto the teiva. And from our verse about how all land creatures died during the flood, Rabbeinu Avigdor rules that buffalo are not classified as chayas, but as beheimas. Therefore, there are kashrus restrictions on some portions of buffalo meat fats. By the way, the American buffalo is actually a bison and looks very different than the European buffalo. This would mean that the song is totally inaccurate: neither buffalo or antelope ever roamed the plains of America (and William F. Cody should have been nicknamed Bison Bill!) Good Shabbos. D Fox