Chullin 86: Compromised Slaughterers, Rabbi Chanina's Piety

A new Mishna teaches us that in the case of a deaf-mute, an imbecile or a minor who properly slaughtered an undomesticated animal or bird with a supervising witness, the slaughter is valid.  The witness is obligated to cover the blood.  If they slaughtered the animals themselves without supervision, one is exempt from the obligation to cover the blood.  

Similarly when one of these three groups of people slaughters a mother and its offspring on the same day, a supervising witness will affirm that it is prohibited to slaughter the offspring after the mother.  If they slaughtered the mother animal among themselves, Rabbi Meir says that it is permitted to slaughter the offspring while the rabbis prohibit this action. The rabbis agree that if one slaughtered the offspring he is not punished with forty lashes because the mother was possibly not slaughtered properly.

The Gemara teaches us about piety.  Rav Yehuda said in the name of Rav that every day a Divine Voice says that "the entire world is sustained with food in the merit of my son Chanina, and yet for my son Chanina one kav of carob fruit is sufficient to sustain him from one Shabbat to the next".  

Beyond this idealization of masochism, the rabbis teach that this story refers to the pious Chanina ben Dosa, student of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai.  The rabbis suggest that Rabbi Chanina did not starve himself; rather he was accepting of his lot in life.  Rabbi Avraham Chayyim Shor (Torah Chayyim) suggests that rabbi Chanina was judged based on attributes of law and of merit.  When Rabbi Chanina is equated with the entire world, he receives the strict judgement of the law allowing the rest of the world to receive the lenient judgement of mercy.