Parshas Re’eh
“Nevertheless you may slaughter and eat any meat which your heart desires…. the pure and the impure may eat, like the deer and the hart.”
It is a positive commandment to redeem sanctified animals that have become blemished and to buy an alternative animal as an offering with the money. After the redemption they become ordinary and the owners may slaughter and eat them like completely ordinary animals. About this it says “Nevertheless you may slaughter and eat any meat which your heart desires…. the pure and the impure may eat, like the deer and the hart.” After the verse mentions the complete offerings and the obligation to offer them only in the place which Hashem will choose, it mentions afterwards regarding the offerings themselves that if they become blemished, we may redeem them and eat them to our hearts content, that is to say that we can do whatever we want with them like a deer or hart, whose body can never be holy (for no wild animal is ever offered on the altar) and so Chazal have accepted, that this verse refers to the invalid offerings, that must be redeemed.
Amongst the roots of the commandment: that one of the kindnesses of G-d to us is to allow us to benefit from the animals of the offering after they have become blemished even though they have already been sanctified and the name of Heaven has rested upon them. Hashem is righteous and performs charity with His creations and He will not be exact with them saying “Don’t touch anything holy after it was mine for even one minute”. More than that, His kindness is wondrous with us for He obligates us with a positive commandment. If the matter rested in our realm alone, we might perhaps consider it worthy to refrain from touching the animal, but since there is an act of fulfilling a commandment here, there is no doubt left in our minds and for this reason the verse explains explicitly “the impure and the pure may eat it like the deer and the hart” that is to say that the holiness of the body will never rest upon them and with this Hashem is saying “Eat it without any doubts whatsoever”.
This commandment applies to men and to women at the time when the temple exists. Nowadays, in our times, Chazal have said that we don’t sanctify (animals as offerings) and therefore the law is that we don’t redeem them. Even though one who does sanctify an animal in our times, his sanctification is valid, definitely redemption does not apply nowadays in any way.
