One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
שְׁאָר אֲבוֹת הַטֻּמְאוֹת
Other Sources of Impurity 9-11
Sefer Taharah · Why the Sages made the rinse at the end of an immersion defiling, how the holiest scroll in the house imparts impurity to clean hands while the passage written to be erased does not, and where each chain of impurity is finally required to stop
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Lugim of drawn water on the head and the greater part of the body that make a man a secondary derivative until he immerses
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Containers from which drawn water never combines toward that sum, even where one began before another ceased
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Letters that must remain on an erased scroll for it still to impart impurity to hands
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The degree of remove at which even consecrated food is finally pure, one past the fourth where it is disqualified
Ch 9Two decrees written against a wrong conclusion
- The rinse is made to defile. A man who immerses his head and the greater part of his body in drawn water, or has three lugim of it fall on them, is a secondary derivative until he immerses in a mikveh, decreed because people who washed with fresh water after a foul cave came to believe the washing conveyed purity and grew careless about the immersion. (9:1)
- The measurements that undo it. Water from two or three containers combines only where the next began before the one before it had finished, from four it never combines at all, and water on the head without the body, or on the body without the head, or arriving from the side or from below, leaves him pure. (9:2)
- The loaves, the mice and the scrolls. Terumah set beside the sacred scrolls on the reasoning that these are holy and these are holy drew mice that tore the scrolls, so the Sages ruled that terumah touching Holy Scriptures becomes a tertiary derivative and that a man with perfectly pure hands who touches a scroll has hands that are a secondary derivative. (9:5)
- What counts as a scroll. Tefillin straps while attached, the blank margins while joined, an erased scroll retaining eighty five letters, the strings and straps sewn in, and the case and mantle once sewn on all impart impurity to hands, and so do all the Holy Scriptures, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes included, since they are words of wisdom. (9:6, 9:9, 9:10)
- What does not, and why. A translated passage, the Ivri script, anything not written on parchment in ink, the texts of blessings despite their divine names, scrolls written by heretics, and the passage of the sotah, which is exempt for the single reason that it is written in order to be blotted out. (9:7, 9:10, 9:11)
RememberBoth decrees in this chapter answer a bad inference rather than a bad act. Nobody sinned by rinsing or by shelving bread beside a scroll, and the Sages corrected the reasoning by changing what the practice does.
Ch 10The man who immersed and is waiting for the sun
- Immersed and still called impure. Anything that contracted impurity from a primary source is a primary derivative until immersion and a secondary derivative until nightfall, from the verse that has the vessel put into water and be impure until the evening and pure afterwards, so that Scripture itself calls a thing already immersed impure. (10:1)
- Severity makes no difference at the end. One purifying from a zav, from a human corpse or from tzara'at and one purifying from the carcass of a teeming creature hold the same rank for the same afternoon, and anyone owing nightfall, whether by Scriptural law or Rabbinic decree, is a secondary derivative for that stretch. (10:2)
- He disqualifies only where the stakes are high. His contact leaves ordinary food and drink entirely pure, brings terumah to the third remove and consecrated food and liquids to the fourth, and the same holds for one lacking atonement with regard to consecrated food. (10:3)
- Saliva that behaves like what he touched. The fluids such a man discharges are governed by the rule of the liquids he touches rather than by his own rank, so that his saliva or urine falling on a loaf of terumah leaves the loaf pure, while a pot of terumah liquids he handles is disqualified though the pot itself stays pure. (10:5, 10:6)
- The census of the system. A person and a vessel can be a source or a primary derivative by Scriptural law and a secondary derivative only by Rabbinic decree, earthenware can never be a source, food can never be a source, liquids can, and neither a person nor a vessel is ever a third or fourth degree derivative under any law. (10:7, 10:8, 10:9, 10:10)
RememberHe has done everything asked of him and the law still counts him impure, because the thing that completes the purification is not an act of his at all. It is the sun going down.
Ch 11Where each chain is required to stop
- Disqualified is the end of a line. When food is called disqualified the food itself counts as impure and imparts nothing further, so that another food it touches is pure. (11:1)
- Three ladders of three different heights. Ordinary food is disqualified at the second remove, terumah at the third, and consecrated food at the fourth while a fifth is pure, each derived from its own verse and the last by an inference from the lighter case to the heavier. (11:2, 11:3, 11:4)
- A decree the Rambam signs himself. Ordinary meat is pure and was nevertheless decreed a third remove toward consecrated food though not toward terumah, and the Rambam writes that it appears to him the Sages did this solely so ordinary meat would not become mixed with sacrificial meat and be eaten in impurity by mistake. (11:5)
- Eating and touching are not the same stringency. One who ate terumah of the third remove may not eat terumah until he immerses and may still handle it without disqualifying it, though for consecrated food he counts as a secondary derivative, since what is pure with regard to terumah can be impure with regard to what is holier. (11:11, 11:12)
- The day closes on a suspension. Foods joined by liquid contract impurity together while it remains unresolved whether they count as one item or as a first and a second remove, and dough of doubtful contact is prepared in purity and has challah taken from it that is neither eaten nor burnt. (11:6, 11:16)
RememberThe holier the food, the deeper impurity is permitted to travel into it. Ordinary food is almost unreachable, and consecrated food can be reached at four removes. Elevation here is exposure.