One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
שְׁאָר אֲבוֹת הַטֻּמְאוֹת
Other Sources of Impurity 12-14
Sefer Taharah · Why consecrated food needs no water before impurity can enter it, how a lapse of attention makes a man impure without anything having touched him, and the twelve doubtful situations the Sages ruled clean in advance
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Stringencies that apply to consecrated food and not to terumah, the first six extending also to ordinary food kept at that standard
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Categories of clothing, each level a midras for the level above it, ending at the offering of the red heifer
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Doubtful situations severe enough that terumah touched by them is burned
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Doubtful situations the Sages deemed pure, among them floating impurity, hands, and anything arising in a public domain
Ch 12Eleven ways being cherished costs something
- The vessel that cannot shelter another vessel. Keilim may be immersed inside other keilim for terumah and not for consecrated food, lest the opening of the outer container be narrower than the mouthpiece of a drinking pouch, so that what was inside counts as immersed in the water of a k'li rather than in the waters of the mikveh, though the rule falls away where the outer container was itself impure. (12:1)
- An outer surface that takes everything with it. When the outside of a container contracts impurity from liquids, for terumah the inner space and the fingerhold stay pure and a man may drink from it without concern that liquid in his mouth will touch the outside and flow back, while for consecrated food the k'li becomes impure in its totality. (12:2)
- Work done perfectly and immersed anyway. Keilim whose fashioning was completed in purity, even by a Torah scholar scrupulous about keeping them pure, must still be immersed before use for consecrated food, as a decree lest the spittle of an unlearned person touched the vessel while it was being made and was still moist. (12:6)
- Everything in the container is one thing. Raisins and dried figs lying separately in a container are all impure for consecrated food when a source of impurity touches one of them, and figs collected on a board or a hide with no hollow space are likewise joined, with the allusion drawn from the golden ladle filled with incense. (12:7)
- Cherished, and therefore breakable. Dry food never made susceptible to impurity may be eaten with impure hands where it is terumah, while the cherished quality of consecrated food causes it to count as susceptible, so that a man with impure hands may not eat it even by way of a weaving needle or from the hand of a friend. (12:13)
RememberOrdinary food must meet water before impurity has any way in. Consecrated food skips the water, because chibat hakodesh has already opened it. Elevation is not armor.
Ch 13Levels, intentions, and the lapse that counts as contact
- Five rungs, and nobody on them is a zav. The clothes of an unlearned person are a midras for those who eat ordinary food in purity, whose clothes are a midras for those who eat the second tithe, whose clothes are a midras for terumah eaters, whose clothes are a midras for those who eat consecrated food, whose clothes are a midras for the red heifer, while the people themselves are not treated as zavvim at any rung. (13:1)
- Same water, and the intention sets the ceiling. A man who immerses without intent is pure only for ordinary food, one who immerses for the second tithe is fit for it and forbidden terumah, and so upward, until one who immerses for the sake of the red heifer is fit for everything, since whoever immerses for the more stringent purpose is acceptable for the more lenient one. (13:2)
- Diverted attention is itself the impurity. A man pure for terumah who diverted his attention from it may not eat until he immerses again, and though he protests that he knows his hands did not contract impurity, they are impure through the diversion, for hands are busy, and all the more so with regard to consecrated food. (13:3)
- A knife, and the day it was found. Keilim found in markets and roads are presumed impure while everything found in Jerusalem is pure, excepting knives for slaughtering sacrifices, which may be used immediately when found on the fourteenth of Nisan or on a festival, and which when found on the thirteenth are sprinkled and immersed and used the following day. (13:5, 13:6)
- Two doubts, and a third verdict. Terumah touched by any of six doubtful sources is burned, among them a beit hapras, earth of the nations, the clothes of unlearned people, found keilim and found saliva, while a compounded doubt, where it is not even established that contact occurred, leaves the terumah neither eaten nor burnt but held in abeyance. (13:12, 13:13)
RememberNothing touched the man who let his attention drift, and he is impure. Nothing is established against the doubly doubtful loaf, and it is neither eaten nor destroyed. The chapter measures minds, not contacts.
Ch 14Twelve doubts, ruled clean before anyone asked
- What floats does not settle. A creeping animal's carcass floating on water leaves a man who descended into that water pure unless he is certain he touched it, even where the pool or container holds room for nothing but the man and the impurity, though a carcass suspended above the water or dragged along it counts as placed down. (14:3)
- Purity floats too. A loaf of terumah wrapped in bast or paper inside a kneading trough impure from a corpse, riding on water that filled the trough, is pure despite the question of whether it touched the wall, since the same leniency granted to floating impurity is granted to what is floating and pure. (14:5)
- One cistern, two answers. Where a creeping animal's carcass floats on a cistern in a winepress, a doubt concerning the terumah is deemed impure while a doubt concerning the workers is deemed pure, since the impurity is floating. (14:6)
- Ask while the water is still there. Where pure and impure liquids were sprinkled in a house and liquid is afterwards found on a loaf of terumah, taking it and inquiring at once leaves it pure, since a doubt whether liquids imparted impurity is pure, while leaving it until the water dries makes it impure, since only a doubt in a private domain now remains. (14:10)
- Told one thing, judged by another. Every doubt about hands is ruled pure across four permutations of pure and impure hands and loaves, and a man who knows one hand is impure without knowing which is instructed not to handle pure articles until he washes both, yet whatever he touched before washing remains pure. (14:11, 14:12)
RememberThe same loaf under two verdicts, a sentence apart, and the only variable is when it was brought. What is unknowable was ruled clean in advance. What was knowable and went unasked was not.