One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
טֻמְאַת מֵת
Defilement by a Corpse 21-23
Sefer Taharah · Why a sealed vessel protects only through its mouth, the smallest breach that destroys a seal, and the Rabbinic decree that narrowed the protection for everyone so that one Jew would not be written off
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Handbreadth of wall, the minimum for a vessel to shelter as an ohel
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Handbreadth of wall plus a half handbreadth border still fails
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Substances named as valid seals, from lime through mortar
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Categories an earthenware seal still protects under Rabbinic law
Ch 21The mouth, the back, and what counts as a tent
- The verse speaks about earthenware, and only about its opening. Numbers 19:15 rules an open vessel without a sealed covering impure, and the Oral Tradition applies it to earthenware, which contracts impurity only through its opening; from there the same protection extends to vessels that cannot contract impurity at all, made of cow dung, stone, packed earth, fish bone, oversized wood or unfinished metal. A tent needs only a covering; a vessel needs a covering smeared shut. (21:1)
- Inverted, every protecting vessel is a tent except earthenware. Turn one upside down on the ground with an inner space a handbreadth in each direction and it protects to the depths without any clay, but an earthenware jug inverted and smeared all around leaves everything beneath it impure, since the verse says a covering on top of it and not a closed covering on its back. Set the same jug mouth to the wall and seal the join and it protects. (21:3)
- The handbreadth of wall must come from one entity. A vessel shelters as an ohel only where its wall stands a full handbreadth; half a handbreadth of wall joined to a half handbreadth border fails even though the empty space measures correctly. (21:3)
- What the vessel is leaning against decides it. A samovar with walls a cubit high, laid on its side outside a tent with its mouth flush to the tent wall, keeps its contents pure over impurity; set against the wall of a courtyard or a garden in the identical position, everything inside is impure, since those are not the walls of a tent. (21:4)
- A covering is tested by removing what is holding it. Where a protecting vessel over a cistern rests on the flower of a lamp inside it, we ask whether the covering would stay in place if the lamp were removed; if it would, everything in the cistern is pure to the depths and even the lamp is pure, and if it would fall, everything is impure. An earthenware pot inverted over a jug and sealed protects, while the same pot set upright and sealed does not, since it takes impurity from its inner space and an impure vessel cannot intervene. (21:7, 21:11)
RememberThe man who packed clay around the whole rim lost, and the man who sealed nothing won. Only one side of the vessel was ever in the conversation.
Ch 22The smallest breach that ends a seal
- Only a container can be sealed. The handles of a large earthenware vessel, the bulges at its base and the outer face of its walls do not protect their contents in a tent of the dead; cut off and shaped into containers, those same pieces protect at once. Clay filling half a vessel does not stop it from being a vessel, and objects sunk in that clay are protected. (22:1, 22:2)
- A sealed vessel is disqualified long before a broken one is. An earthenware vessel stops being a vessel at a hole a pomegranate can pass, or at damage to most of a large one, but a vessel relying on its seal fails at a hole olives can pass if it held food, at a hole liquid could seep through if it held liquid, and at the stricter measure if it served both. (22:3)
- Cracks are measured by shape, not by intuition. A cracked oven cover fails at a crack as wide as the mouth of a plow rod even where the rod could not be inserted, and a round crack is not reckoned as though it were drawn out into a line; the eye of an oven fails at a reed inserted and withdrawn while burning, and a hole in its side at a reed that need not be burning. (22:4, 22:5, 22:6)
- A hole made by a hand has no minimum. The clay seal of a wine jug fails at the second joint of a rye stalk and a large cask at the second joint of a reed, but a vessel made for other liquids fails at the slightest hole, and even a wine vessel fails at the slightest hole if it was perforated by human hands, and nothing is protected until that hole is closed. (22:6)
- An impure object cannot intervene, and a loose lid is not a seal. A sealed jug may be closed with lime, clay, gypsum, pitch, wax, mud, filth or mortar, but never with tin or lead, which will not spread; a plump fig never made susceptible to impurity may serve, a twig needs clay smeared around it, two slivers or two boards need clay between them unless pegged into one piece, and a covering that has merely come loose no longer protects though it has not slipped. A tube running into a sealed jug leaves the jug pure and the tube impure, since one end stands open in the tent. (22:7, 22:8, 22:9)
RememberThe law is patient with a crack and merciless with a pinhole, because a breach that a hand made on purpose is an opening at any size at all.
Ch 23What the seal is permitted to save
- Scripture protects everything, the Sages narrowed it. By Torah law a sealed vessel protects food, liquids, garments and implements that can be purified in a mikveh alike, but by Rabbinic law an earthenware vessel sealed shut protects only food, liquids and other earthenware, because earthenware itself contracts impurity and an impure vessel cannot intervene. (23:1)
- The decree was written flat so that nobody would be a category. The Sages could have ruled that the sealed vessel of a chaver protects everything while that of a common person protects nothing, and did not, since the common person does not regard himself as impure and would say there is no difference between me and him; so the protection was narrowed for the careful man as well. (23:1)
- They kept it exactly where a mistake could not do lasting harm. Food, liquids and earthenware can never be purified, so a chaver borrows them only on the assumption that they are already impure and no stumbling block arises, while an implement he could immerse and use for pure food by nightfall is precisely where a false confidence would cause real damage. (23:1)
- Rare cases were left alone, and so was the red heifer. A person sealed inside a cask is pure even where the cask was made the covering of a grave, and the Rambam states that this is his own reasoning, since the Sages did not decree on infrequent situations; and common people are believed about the purity of a vessel meant for the ashes of the red heifer or for consecrated food, because everyone is careful in that one matter. (23:2, 23:3)
- The loft is the decree drawn in one room. An intact earthenware dish over the aperture between a house and a loft leaves the loft's food, liquids and earthenware pure while every person up there and every implement that could be immersed is impure; a metal vessel of liquid contracts seven-day impurity while its liquid stays pure, and a woman kneading in a wooden trough is impure along with the trough while the dough she is working stays pure, until she stops and touches it again. (23:4)
RememberThey took protection away from the careful man in his own house rather than write a law that told his neighbor he was a different kind of Jew.