(b.) In case of urgency, when, e.g., the meat is wanted for a patient, or when on Friday afternoon there would not be left time enough for cooking or roasting the meat, it need only be kept in water for fifteen minutes and in salt for half-an-hour.
(c.) In kashering poultry all the inner parts of the animal must be taken out and salted separately; the rest must be sprinkled with salt both within and without.
(d.) Liver is salted a little and roasted on fire, not in the oven or in any vessel. This done, the liver may be cooked or roasted in any way.
(e.) The heart is cut open before the salting, and a piece is cut off at the apex, in order that the blood may run off more easily.—For the same purpose the horny part of the legs is cut off.—The head must be opened and sprinkled with salt on both sides, after the brain has been taken out; from the latter the skin is drawn off, and then it is salted.
(f.) Eggs found in poultry are treated as meat, but must be salted separately.
(g.) The vessels used for soaking and salting the meat should not be used for other purposes.
4. On Page 459—1c.
The law of shechitah applies only to cattle, beasts, and birds (בהמה, חיה and עוף); there is no commandment as regards the killing of fish. Tradition supports this exception by reference to the distinction made in Num. xi. 22: “Shall the flocks and the herds be slain (ישחט) for them, to suffice them? or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together (יאסף) for them, to suffice them?” Although the latter term (יאסף) is also used of quails (ibid. 32), no such inference is made with regard to birds, because in ver. 32 the term יאסף is not contrasted by ישחט; besides, the verb שחט is frequently applied in the Law to birds, but never to fish. Comp. Babyl. Talm., Chullin, p. 27b.
There is this difference to be observed between בהמה on the [[465]]one hand, and חיה and עוף on the other. In the case of the latter two the shechitah must be followed by the covering of the blood (כסוי דם Lev. xvii. 13). The object of this law is, according to some, to prevent the blood being used for idolatrous and superstitious purposes, as birds and beasts were generally hunted in the fields, mountains, and woods, places frequently associated in the imagination of the ancients with evil spirits and the like. (Comp. Commentary of R. Obadiah Seforno on the Pentateuch, ad locum.) The law was perhaps intended to impress the lesson on the mind of the hunter that the blood shed of a living being presents a ghastly sight that offends the eye of man. He will accustom himself to think that taking away the life of another being, even of an animal, is an act of grave responsibility, and will not be led to misuse his weapons against any of his fellow-men.
5. On Page 460—3b.