Комментарий к Вайикра 17:3

ישחט שור או כשב‎ ‎‎‏ אשר [WHAT MAN SOEVER] THAT SLAUGHTERETH AN OX, OR A LAMB — Scripture is speaking here of consecrated animals since it says (v. 4) "and bringeth it not unto the appointed tent to offer an offering" (cf. Sifra, Acharei Mot, Section 6 3; Zevachim 106a).

איש איש …אשד ישחט, any person who slaughters, etc. Why is the word איש repeated here? In Zevachim 108 they explain this in terms of Rabbi Shimon who claimed that if someone slaughters an animal (intended as a sacrifice) on behalf of a private individual he would be guilty of slaughtering sacred things outside the Temple precincts. They base this on the repeated mention of איש meaning איש לאיש. They do not explain it as meaning that if two people combined in that act that they would both be culpable for that sin. The reason is that the Torah phrased culpability by referring to האיש ההוא, i.e. a single individual. The Talmud also explains the restrictive word ההוא as excluding anyone who committed this act accidentally, erroneously or inadvertently. At the same time they explain the word as excluding two people who combined to slaughter the animal by saying the Torah did not write ההם, but ההוא. We find this somewhat difficult seeing that Torat Kohanim is on record as deriving this halachah from the words דם שפך and not from the word ההוא. One may answer that inasmuch as there are two separate restrictive expressions, i.e. ההוא as well as שפך (verse 4), Torat Kohanim derives from the one that when two people slaughter jointly that they are not culpable, and from the other that if the act did not occur intentionally and without outside coercion the perpetrator is not punishable.

אשר ישחט שור או כשב או עז במחנה או מחוץ למחנה, “who will slaughter either an ox, a sheep, or a goat inside the camp or even beyond the boundaries of the camp, etc.” According to the commentary by Nachmanides our paragraph discusses two separate subjects. Subject number one is the prohibition for Israelites while in the desert to eat meat which was not part of a sacrificial offering, something which in halachah we call בשר תאווה, meat eaten merely to satisfy one’s craving for it. The penalty for violating the commandment is karet, the same penalty as is applied to people who deliberately eat on the Day of Atonement, or people who violate the Sabbath deliberately when there are not any witnesses whose testimony would lead to a conviction in court. Even slaughtering non-consecrated animals outside the confines of the Tabernacle is equally forbidden when these had not been brought to the entrance of the Tabernacle to be offered there as שלמים, peace offerings, in which case the fat parts and the blood are sprinkled or burned on the altar as the case may be, and the remainder, after the priest has received his statutory share, may be eaten by the owners. Subsequent to this legislation, the Torah continues in verse eight to deal with the reverse situation, when an Israelite arrogates to himself the right to perform priestly procedures within the confines of the Tabernacle. The Israelite as well as the priest is warned not to erect altars even to Hashem outside the confines of the Tabernacle. While it is true that upon entry into the Holy Land the regulations concerning בשר תאווה were considerably relaxed, the prohibition to erect private altars was never rescinded. Even a עולה, a burnt offering, of which the owner of the animal does not receive anything, must not be offered on a private altar in a private domain. While it is true that immediately after the Israelites entered the Holy Land, some altars outside the Tabernacle were permitted for the purpose of offering communal offerings, in the main, that was only a temporary arrangement. The permission to eat meat that had not first been part of a sacrificial offering was a concession to the fact that once in the land of Israel, the journey all the way to either Shiloh, or later on Jerusalem, was a great inconvenience for the people, who, but for this concession, would normally have eaten meat only on the three pilgrimage festivals when at least the male had to appear in the Temple. At any rate, it is hard to understand that the mere fact of slaughtering an animal that had not been consecrated as an offering should carry the karet penalty, seeing that even Rabbi Yishmael derives this prohibition from what is written in Deut. 12,20, and there the Torah speaks about animals which had been consecrated as offerings. Rabbi Akiva, on the other hand, does not agree that meat that had not been consecrated was ever forbidden. From that verse we can derive that while the people were in the desert and the Tabernacle was right in their midst, only consecrated meat was allowed. But nothing had been spelled out about someone slaughtering such animals becoming guilty of the karet penalty.