According to the Torah (Sefer Vayikra 1:14), the two types of birds that can be brought as sacrifices are torim and benei yonah – turtledoves and pigeons. The tor that is referred to is identified as Streptopelia turtur, while the yonah is identified as Columba livia domestica. These birds are consistently referred to differently, the former are called torim, while the latter are called benei yonah. This is understood by the Sages to mean that a tor is only qualified to be brought as a sacrifice when it is an adult bird, while the yonah can only be brought when it is young, before it reaches adulthood. According to the Mishna in Massekhes Chullin (1:5), these two periods are mutually exclusive, and what would be an appropriate sacrifice in a pigeon would be inappropriate in a dove, and vice versa. The cut-off point between the two is just four or five days after hatching, when the bird’s body becomes covered with plumage – gold in the case of torim and yellow in the case of benei yonah.
What was involved in the service of melika?
The ruling of the Mishna is that torim that are too small and benei yonah that have already reached adulthood cannot be brought as sacrifices and therefore performing melika on them would not be effective in any way. Because of this a bird that was killed by means of melika would simply be non-kosher and would, in fact, lead someone who ate the meat of a bird that was killed this way to be ritually impure. This would also be true of other situations where melika was done improperly or inappropriately, for example if melika was done with a knife rather than with the kohen’s thumbnail or if the melika was done on a non-sacrificial bird in the Temple, or a sacrificial bird outside the Temple. The Mishna teaches, however, that there are cases where the melika will not be appropriate for technical reasons, but the bird will not ritually defile someone who ate its meat, like a case where melika was done at night or where the kohen performed melika with his left hand.
Rav Zutra bar Toviyya quotes Rav as teaching that the kohen would hold the wings with two fingers and the legs with two fingers stretching out the bird’s neck, and the bird would be killed by means of the kohen‘s thumbnail. According to the baraita, the bird’s body was held in such a way that it was outside the hand of the kohen, and – while holding the wings with two fingers and the legs with two fingers – the kohen would kill the bird with his thumbnail.
According to Rav Ovadya mi-Bartenura, as well as the Rambam, the kohen would hold the bird in his left hand according to one of the two opinions, and would perform melika with the thumb of his right hand. This parallels cases of slaughter in the Temple, where both hands are used. The Shita Mekubbetzes quotes Tosfos as suggesting that the entire melika service was done with the right hand. According to this approach we can easily understand why this service is considered to be the most difficult one, since the bird had to be held and killed with a single hand.
