One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
שְׁאָר אֲבוֹת הַטֻּמְאוֹת
Other Sources of Impurity 3-5
Sefer Taharah · Why the carcass of a kosher bird can be carried all day and defiles only once it is swallowed, why a sealed bone is silent until it is perforated to the slightest degree, and why the law says outright that touching the inner part of the body is not considered as touch
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Creeping animals named in the Torah, and the only species anywhere that impart this impurity at all
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Twelve hour periods after relations within which discharged semen still defiles, not counting the period in which the relations took place
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Years, the age below which a boy's discharge imparts no impurity whatsoever
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Foot a man must be able to stand on while removing his other shoe, the test that decides whether he counts as a healthy youth
Ch 3The bird carcass, and its single address
- An impurity with one location. The carcass of a kosher fowl defiles neither by touch nor by carrying nor even while in a person's mouth, but only in the gullet, since Scripture speaks of one who partakes and thereby fixes the chamber of the soul as the place and an olive sized portion as the measure, and while it is going down he renders vessels impure but not a person and not an earthenware container. (3:1)
- The severe grade asks for no intent. Nothing needs to be thought or decided for this impurity to take hold when an olive sized portion is in the gullet, whereas the lesser impurity of foods attaches only where the man intended to eat it, and then it is a primary derivative without ever having touched another source. (3:2)
- The wrapper decides, and so does direction. A portion wound in lettuce and swallowed defiles even though it never touched his throat, while the same portion wound in tree bast leaves him pure, and a portion swallowed and vomited before it is digested conveys nothing on the way back up, since it imparts impurity in the gullet when swallowed and not when vomited. (3:5, 3:6)
- What may be counted toward the olive. Thin feathers, wooly hairs, the tips of the wings, the tip of the tail and the bones even where they are soft are all excluded from the reckoning, while the soft portions of the beak and the nails close to the flesh are treated as meat and counted, so that a whole small bird may fall short and a pair of soft nails may complete the measure. (3:8, 3:9)
- Slaughter purifies, and the worse bird is the clean one. A kosher fowl found tereifah is rendered pure by proper slaughter even in the Temple Courtyard while melikah does not purify it, the carcass of a fowl from a non kosher species imparts no impurity in the gullet at all, and a limb separated from a living bird is pure altogether, since Scripture excluded fowl from that law. (3:12, 3:14, 3:15)
RememberNothing in this chapter follows from how repellent the thing is. Everything follows from whether it got in.
Ch 4The eight, and the interior that stays silent
- Touch always, carrying never. The eight creeping animals named in the Torah share one impurity, defiling a person and vessels by touch and an earthenware container through its inner space, never defiling when carried, never rendering the toucher's own clothes impure, at a minimum measure of a lentil into which all eight may be combined. (4:1, 4:2)
- A limb has no measure and a strict definition. There is no minimum size for a limb of a sheretz, but to count as one it must be intact as when it came into being, with flesh, sinews and bones, and with enough flesh or marrow inside to have regenerated and returned to wholeness, while flesh separated from a living sheretz is pure and a kidney, liver or tongue counts as flesh even though it would never grow back. (4:3, 4:4, 4:5, 4:6)
- Four hides pure, four hides flesh. The hides of the weasel, the mouse, the ferret and the mole are pure even while fresh and unprocessed, while the hides of the hedgehog, the chameleon, the lizard and the snail count as their flesh at a lentil sized portion until they are processed or trodden for as long as it takes to walk four millin. (4:8)
- Sealed is silent, perforated speaks. A thigh bone of a sheretz is pure to touch while its marrow rattles, since such marrow could never have regenerated flesh, and it defiles where the marrow is in its natural place and sufficient to grow flesh outside the bone, while perforating either that bone or an egg with a formed embryo to the slightest degree makes touching any part of it impure. (4:9, 4:10)
- Form runs ahead of substance, and the list is closed. A sheretz half flesh and half earth defiles at the flesh and not at the earth, unless its form is already apparent over its entire length, in which case even the unformed earth defiles, and no creature outside the eight imparts impurity at all, not a frog, a snake or a scorpion, while a decapitated one still in its death throes does. (4:11, 4:14)
RememberA sealed interior is not merely hidden from view. It is legally silent, and the smallest hole in it is what gives it a voice.
Ch 5Emergence, sensation, and a surface that is not one
- Nothing exists in law until it emerges. Semen is a primary source of impurity defiling by touch and never by carrying, at a lentil for one who touches it and the slightest amount for the man from whom it came, and he is not impure until it has left his body and reached the orifice, whether the discharge was natural or entirely beyond his control. (5:1)
- No sensation, no impurity. Where the body does not feel the discharge nothing is conveyed, and a sensation at the beginning suffices even where the departure was not felt, so that a man who dreamt of relations and woke to find his organ warm is presumed impure, while sexual thoughts without warmth or warmth without such thoughts leave him pure. (5:4, 5:5)
- Touching the inner part of the body is not touch. Both parties to relations are primary derivatives of impurity by Scriptural law, and the woman is impure not as one who touched the substance, since the inner part of the body is not a surface that can be touched, but exactly as a man who discharges is impure. (5:9, 5:10)
- Three periods, and then putrefaction. Semen discharged within three twelve hour periods after relations renders the woman impure and defiles others who touch it, while after that time both she and the substance are pure because it has already putrefied, and the period in which the relations took place is not counted, so that relations on Friday night are measured by the Sabbath day, Saturday night and Sunday. (5:11, 5:12, 5:13)
- Which of these are Scriptural. The man who ejaculates, the woman who has relations, one who touches the substance and a woman who discharges it within three periods are impure by Scriptural law, while every other case in the chapter, the dream and the questionable urine among them, rests on Rabbinic decree that reaches terumah alone and leaves ordinary food pure. (5:14, 5:15)
RememberThe chapter refuses to rule on anything that has not come out and anything the body never felt. What is still inside is not innocent. It is simply not yet a case.