On yesterday’s daf (=page) we learned that one can eat udder without concern about the prohibition of mixing meat and milk if it was cut open and the milk was removed. Similarly, Rav Nahman recommended that his wife, Yalta, should eat roasted udder if she wanted to taste meat and milk. According to the Gemara on today’s daf, even during Talmudic times there was no clear consensus regarding the permissibility of eating udder.
The Gemara relates:
In Sura people did not eat the udder at all, in Pumbedita they used to eat it.
Rami bar Tamri, also known as Rami bar Dikuli, of Pumbedita once happened to be in Sura on the eve of Yom Kippur. When the townspeople took all the udders of the animals that they had prepared for the pre-fast meal and threw them away, he immediately went and collected them and ate them. He was then brought before Rav Hisda who said to him: ‘Why did you do it?’ He replied: ‘I come from the place of Rav Yehudah who permits it to be eaten.’
Although the Gemara relates that Rav Hisda rebuked Rami for keeping the traditions of another community while visiting Sura, Rami replied that he had made sure to eat outside of the city limits in order to avoid the appearance of rejecting the local Rabbinic authority’s rulings.
The reason for the large amount of animals that were slaughtered just prior to Yom Kippur, would appear to be based on the Gemara in Masechet Yoma (daf 81b), which teaches that someone who eats and drinks on erev Yom Kippur is credited as though he had fasted on both the ninth and the tenth days of Tishrei. This is generally understood to mean that there is a special mitzvah to eat on the day before Yom Kippur. Nevertheless, we learned above (daf 83) that Tosafotexplained it was only in the Galilee that people ate meat; in other places people preferred lighter fare, like fish or poultry. One suggestion is that the story on daf 83 related to the times of the Mishnah in the Land of Israel, while the story on today’s daf takes place in Babylonia generations later, by which time traditions had changed.