One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
שְׁאָר אֲבוֹת הַטֻּמְאוֹת
Other Sources of Impurity 15-17
Sefer Taharah · Which doubts the Sages ruled pure and why, the single clause that decides them all, and the reason a blind man is convicted on a question he could not have answered while a donkey in a graveyard walks out clean
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People alone in a private domain, the arithmetic borrowed from the sotah, which is why a doubt raised there is impure
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People present, at which point that same private domain is judged as leniently as the open street
10
Containers filled from one drawing bucket, of which only the one holding the carcass goes impure
4
Thresholds by which a child passes from unquestionable to answerable, ending with the one who guards his own body
Ch 15The doubts that were ruled pure, and the moment they are read from
- Rabbinic doubt goes free, unless it is a source. A doubt about whether he ate impure food, entered drawn water, or then touched pure things is pure, and so is questionable terumah, but a doubt about an av hatum'ah is impure even where the source is Rabbinic, unless the source is itself of doubtful status, such as a beit hapras or the earth of the Diaspora. (15:1)
- Judged by what was found, not by what may have happened. Where a creeping animal was thrown among loaves and it cannot be told whether the pure loaf was touched, the loaves are pure, since the status of all questions of ritual impurity depends on the situation at the time the matter is discovered, and we do not suppose it touched and then fell aside. (15:6)
- Impurity that never comes to rest. A mole crossing terumah loaves with a creeping animal in its mouth, or a dog carrying carrion between pure substances, leaves them pure because the impurity has no fixed place, and only where the animals pecked their burdens on the ground is it treated as fixed and made to defile retroactively in a private domain. (15:7)
- Burnt, worn and broken are read as they lie. A burnt carcass found on food, a garment already worn out, or a needle snapped or rusted found among vessels leaves everything pure in a public and a private domain alike, since nobody may reconstruct a moment when the needle was whole. (15:10)
- An answer that is not a verdict. Where an impure entity stood in one domain and a pure one in the other and he touched one without knowing which, he is pure, and the court tells him that if he immerses he has not lost anything, that immersing is praiseworthy, and that if he declines and handles pure things they remain pure. (15:9)
RememberThe law refuses to reconstruct. Whatever the arrangement was when a human being finally looked at it is the arrangement that will be judged.
Ch 16Why the doubt needs somebody who can be asked
- The two reasons behind the whole system. Doubt in the public domain is pure because the community brings the Paschal offering in impurity when most of the nation is impure, so that if definite impurity is superseded by the community a mere question certainly is, and doubt in a private domain is stringent because of the sotah, who is forbidden to her husband on a doubt alone. (16:1)
- Two is a sotah, three is the street. Since a sotah case is two people alone, a doubt involving two in a private domain is impure and a third person present makes it pure, and all of it applies only where the one who might have contracted impurity has the knowledge to be asked, so a deaf mute, one whose mind is compromised, or a minor who cannot answer is pure. (16:2)
- Convicted for being answerable. A blind man, a sleeping man and one walking at night are impure in a private domain because they have the knowledge to respond to questions, and the leniency for those who cannot be asked holds only where the possibilities are evenly balanced, so an impure child with dough on his hands renders the dough impure, since a child's habit is to pat dough. (16:3)
- The room is measured before the animal is blamed. Where impure liquids and a pure terumah dough sat with animals and teeth marks appear, the dough is pure if a cow had room to wipe her tongue on her lips, and pure beside the liquid where a dog was present, since a dog does not leave food and go to water, and the whole chicken inquiry falls away if the water was murky. (16:4)
- Four thresholds, and a test made of ordinary food. A child is graded from the infant left where his mother set him down, to the one who moves between domains, to the one who can answer questions and is therefore impure in a private domain, to the one who guards his body, who is immersed, handed ordinary food, told to treat it as terumah, and watched. (16:10)
RememberThe category is not knowledge of the facts. It is standing to be interrogated. A sleeping man qualifies and a jar never will.
Ch 17Water, olives, and the majority of the town
- The raven, and ten containers. Where an olive of a corpse is in a raven's beak and it is unknown whether it passed overhead in a private domain, the man is impure and the vessels are pure, and one who draws with a single bucket into ten containers renders impure only the container holding the carcass, unless the drawing bucket had a rim, in which case all are impure. (17:1)
- The explanation he removed himself. Barrels dipped into a cistern go impure from the first barrel onward if the carcass is found there and alone if found in the last, and where he drew and poured only that barrel is impure, but where he checked every barrel first, poured, and covered them, all of them are impure. (17:3)
- Three days of settling. Olives brought up from a storage pit to dry leave the pit pure when a carcass is found on the roof, and a carcass found in a mound on the roof renders the pit impure only within three days, since after that the olives may have compressed into a mound on their own. (17:4)
- Where nothing can be traced, the law counts. Meat found in the streets of a city holding both carcasses and slaughtered animals is judged by the majority, as is a carcass that might be a creeping animal and might be a frog, according to the majority in that town at that time, and this is stated as the general principle for any questionable entity found. (17:8)
- Two women, and their hands. A woman gathering fertilizer is pure where the carcass of a creeping animal is found down in the load, since such a carcass does not impart impurity when carried, and impure where it is found on top of it, and the same holds for one sifting grain, because perhaps she touched it. (17:9)
RememberVessels are acquitted of everything, forever, and the reason is not that they are innocent. It is that nobody will ever put a question to them.