חלבו האליה תמימה, ”its choicest part, the entire tail.” Normally, in Hebrew, the fat which is separated from the meat is called חלב, and it is peeled off the meat which it adjoins. The expression שומן applies to fat which is so much part of the flesh that it is not easily separated. When Moses said (Deut. 32,15) וישמן ישורון...שמנת עבית, “Yeshurun (Israel) has become fat,...you have become corpulent,” he referred to the fact that this “fatness, grossness,” had become an inseparable part of the personality of the Jewish people. We also have a verse in Psalms 63,6 חלב ודשן תשבע נפשי, “I am sated as with rich fat.” Our sages in Chulin 49 describe this kind of חלב, as תותב קרום נקלף “a sheet or layer which can be peeled off.” The reason they named it thus is because it is like a garment covering the meat. The Hebrew translation of the word תותב is שמלה, “garment, dress.” From all the above it is clear that not only are the terms חלב and שומן different but that these terms describe totally different parts of the animal. Whereas חלב is almost impossible to boil or otherwise make edible, שומן, is an integral part of the meat. It is warm and moist, whereas חלב is cold and dry. Seeing that this is so, we must ask why the Torah describes the tail of the sheep, אליה, as covered with חלב instead of with שומן? This tail does not have any of the fat parts which we defined as typical of those which the Torah describes usually as חלב. The fat of the tail is an integral part of the tail, not peel-able. If, on the other hand, we would conclude that here the Torah used the word חלב for something which is really שומן, what are we to make out of verse 17 in our chapter where the Torah commands כל חלב וכל דם לא תאכלו, “you must not eat any fat or any blood?” Surely if the words חלב and שומן are used interchangeably, then that verse prohibits the eating of שומן also, and only red meat is permissible.

In view of these difficulties we have to understand the expression חלבו האליה תמימה, in the Torah as not referring to שומן but to חלב. Seeing that you will ask: “what חלב is there to be found on this tail?” The Torah means that when one separates the entire tail from the animal, the עצה, spine, to which it is attached will be removed with it (part) together with the considerable amount of חלב found attached to that part of the lower spine.

This is also how Rav Saadyah Gaon explains our verse. He understood the words חלבו האליה as equivalent to חלבו והאליה, “its fat plus its tail.” We find that when enumerating the descendants of man the Book of Chronicles I 1,1 writes: אדם, שת אנוש when clearly the meaning is אדם, שת ואנוש “Adam, Sheth, and Enosh.” The same is true when the Torah enumerates constituent parts of the Tabernacle, writing: קרסיו, קרשיו, בריחיו, ועמודיו ואדוניו (Exodus 39,33). Although the connecting letter ו is omitted a couple of times, the verse is to be read as if the Torah had written it. The same is true of Leviticus 7,37 where the Torah writes לעולה למנחה. Clearly, the Torah did not mean to tell us that the burnt-offering is identical with the meal-offering, but the meaning is: “the burnt-offering as well as the meal-offering.” By the same token no one in his right mind would assume that Ezra (author of Chronicles) would have believed that Adam, Sheth, and Enosh were identical just because the connecting letter ו is absent in the text.

לעמת העצה יסירנה, “which shall be removed close to the backbone.” The word עצה in our verse is a combination of the words עץ and עצה, “wood” and “counsel.” The word עץ is appropriate as it is hard as wood; the word “counsel” is appropriate as it is located near the kidneys the source of man’s “counsel.” The tail is to be removed starting at a point above the kidneys. This is the meaning of (verse 10) על הכליות יסירנה, “he is to remove it above the kidneys.”