Yoav asked Staff ago In Leviticus it is written about the animals one is allowed to eat.
It is written: “And the camel, which does not have split hooves…” As far as I know, the camel does have split hooves.
I have checked the responsa of rabbis and I saw that in their opinion the camel has flat but not split hooves, and that is why it is not a kosher animal.
Another answer is that the camel’s hooves are only split halfway.
Is the camel meant to be a kosher animal?
Do the rabbis’ answers justify what is written in Leviticus (that the camel does not have split hooves)?
Are there other animals with flat hooves which should have been included in the category of “animals with only one sign of permissibility”?
Yoav-San
jsadmin Staff answered 18 years ago
Dear Yoav,
The camel’s hoof is basically a nail. There are animals with nails coming out of every toe, who do not walk on their nails but on the pads, like cats, dogs…and they are categorized by the Torah as not having hooves. There are animals which have nails upon which they walk, like horses, donkeys, cows, and sheep. And they are categorized as having hooves (but the horse and donkey do not have split hooves, and so are not kosher). The camel has two large nails but does not walk on them, so it is part of the same category as the dog and the cat, which do not have hooves. That is why the Torah says the camel does not have split hooves. We learn all this from the following verse:
“Every animal that has true hooves but without clefts through the hooves or that does not chew the cud are unclean for you; whoever touches them shall be unclean. Also all animals that walk on paws, among those that walk on fours, are unclean for you ” (Leviticus 11:26-27). There is a difference between those that walk on their paws and those that walk on their nails (and the camel walks on its paws). But zoologists have different categories (not based on the observer’s point of view but on toe bones), so they categorize the camel as having split hooves.
Some of the Torah commentators were somewhat confused. Thus, for example, Rashi thought that the camel has hooves, but that they are not split. (Rashi lived in France and probably never went to the trouble of seeing a camel.) See what we wrote in our essay What the Sages Knew about animals. Radak included the dog amongst hoofed animals in explaining the verse “who sacrifice sheep and break the necks of dogs, who present as oblation the blood of swine” (Isaiah 66:3). Radak writes, “It mentions the dog and swine as the dog has hooves, though they are not split, and the swine has split hooves.”
Sincerely,
Daat Emet