What is the status of a dangling limb of an animal? Does it impart ritual impurity like a the 'imperfection' of a severed limb? Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Yehoshua said to Rabbi Akiva: We have not heard a ruling from our teachers in that specific case, but we have heard with regard to a dangling limb of a person that it is ritually pure. In Jerusalem, people who have mukei shechin, boils, would do the following in Jerusalem: Each would go on the eve of Passover to the doctor, who would cut the limb with boils almost completely and leave it connected only by a hairbreadth of flesh so that neither would be rendered impure by a severed limb. Then the doctor would impale the limb on a thorn attached to the floor or wall and the afflicted would pull away from the thorn, thereby completing the severing. In this manner both that man and the physician could participate in the Passover offering. And it seems to us that your case may be derived from this by a kal va-chomer, an a fortiori conclusion.
In the Mishna, 'shechin' might includes a number of different ailments beyond boils. It is possible that the reference here is to leprosy, which is mistakenly the common translation for the Biblical tzara’at. In Steinsaltz's notes, we learn more about leprosy: it affect the skin and the nerves, leading to changes in the sensory experience of cold, heat and pain. One suffering with leprosy might experience severe damage including burns or deep cuts, resulting in infection that requires the removal of a limb.
Rashi says that the removal of the limb was done for aesthetic reasons. He explains that the limb was removed in the described way so that it would stay in a state of ritual purity (as long as it was attached to the body).
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