One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
מקואות
Mikvaot 5-7
Sefer Taharah · Immersion Pools · Three chapters on one defect: water that a person lifted. What quantity ruins a pool, what counts as a vessel, and why only color matters.
40
Se'ah: the full measure
3
Lugim of drawn water that disqualify
1/320
Share of a full pool that ruins it
0
Weight given to taste or smell
Ch 5The Three Log Measure
- Three lugim disqualify, and they combine. Drawn water poured from one, two or three keilim reaches the disqualifying measure together, provided the second starts descending before the first finishes. Two men each emptying a log and a half, a wrung out garment falling from several folds, or a distributor pouring from several spouts all count the same way (5:1-5:2)
- Disqualification is total, and addition does not cure it. Once a mikveh is invalidated, all of its contents are considered drawn, as if every drop had been drawn with a container. Divide such a pool in two and fill each half to a full 40 se'ah of rainwater and both halves are still invalid (5:5)
- The two real remedies: flush it, or join it. A cistern stays unfit until less than three lugim of the original water remains; 20 se'ah with a se'ah of drawn water needs the original 20 plus better than five and a quarter kabbin flushed out. Or build a mikveh of 40 se'ah of acceptable water and join it, and the acceptable water purifies the unacceptable (5:6)
- What left the pool, and what never did. Mud pushed from the floor up the sides, three lugim running back down: acceptable. The same mud lifted out by hand, set on the rim, three lugim running back in: disqualified. Three lugim splashed in off a passing legion's hands and feet: acceptable, even if the mikveh was made that way from the start (5:7-5:8)
RememberDrawn is not a measure of dirt. It is a record of whose hands the water passed through.
Ch 6What Counts as a Vessel
- A vessel is a hollow made to receive. Water passing over or into a k'li with a receptacle becomes drawn, but only where the receptacle was made to serve that purpose. Wide pipes that merely bulge in the middle disqualify nothing, in wood, metal or earthenware (6:1-6:2)
- Impurity is not the issue at all. Stone keilim and keilim of unfired earth cannot contract ritual impurity and still disqualify water. A basin hollowed in living stone is no k'li; cement a k'li onto that stone and it is one; hole it from below, or from the side at the width of a drinking pouch's mouthpiece, and it is acceptable again. A great barrel holed and sunk permanently in the ground is itself a kosher mikveh (6:1, 6:3-6:4)
- Position counts as much as shape. A board with raised edges under the drainpipe makes the water running over it drawn; the same board with no edges does not; and stood on its point to be washed it disqualifies nothing, edges and all, because in that position it was not put there to receive (6:5)
- Beside it, or in the middle of it. A pool of drawn water touching a mikveh of under 40 se'ah does not disqualify it, being a pool next to a pool; the same water in its middle does. Three pools of 20 se'ah with the drawn one on the end mix to a valid 40 and everyone is pure; put the drawn pool in the middle and nobody has immersed. A hole in a dividing wall counts at 1/320th of a lower pool of 40 se'ah (6:11-6:14)
RememberNothing here asks whether the water is clean. Everything asks who built the hollow it passed through.
Ch 7Only the Color
- Taste and smell are irrelevant; color decides. A mikveh is disqualified neither by a change in the taste of its water nor by a change in its smell, only by a change in its color, and only where another substance caused it. A color that changed on its own accord is acceptable (7:1, 7:12)
- Three bins for every liquid. Complete and never disqualify: snow, hail, sleet, ice, salt, flowing mud, so 39 se'ah plus a se'ah of snow is complete and 40 se'ah of snow crushed in a hollow is a mikveh outright. Disqualify and never complete: drawn water pure or impure, pickling water, cooking water, grape dregs before vinegar, and beer. Neither: fruit juice, fish brine, fish oil, and those dregs once they turn to vinegar (7:3-7:5)
- Wine disqualifies by color, not by volume. Three lugim of wine, milk, blood or fruit juice do not disqualify, since the three log rule was said of drawn water alone; but one log of wine into 100 se'ah that turns the color makes the pool unfit. Water of dyes runs the other way: three lugim disqualify, a color change does not (7:1, 7:8)
- Repairs, and the stained patch. Under 40 se'ah, wait for rain to restore the color; with 40 se'ah of acceptable water, fill buckets and pour until it reverts. Even in a valid pool, immersion in the discolored part is no immersion, and a barrel of wine broken into the Mediterranean ruins immersion at that spot (7:9)
RememberA mikveh may taste wrong and smell wrong and purify completely. What it may not do is stop looking like water.