One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
מְטַמְּאֵי מִשְׁכָּב וּמוֹשָׁב · שְׁאָר אֲבוֹת הַטֻּמְאוֹת
Those Who Render Couch and Seat Impure 13, Other Sources of Impurity 1-2
Sefer Taharah · How a man's declared attention keeps a jar pure for a year, why an animal that died is impure while the same animal slaughtered is pure in every circumstance, and how the treatise ends on a hole that was planned and never drilled
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Mil, and more, that the porters may walk ahead and keep the food pure, so long as he never told them to go on without him
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Millin of treading that turn a hide from flesh into leather
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Handbreadths of hide skinned for a mat, after which touching the skinned part is pure
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Days an offspring must be kept before its slaughter can save it from the status of a carcass
Ch 13Purity as a thing a person is holding
- A reputation that guards for a year. A priest's vessels put away from one pressing season to the next keep their presumed status, since unlearned people will not touch a priest's vessels in his winepress because he partakes of pure food, while an Israelite's are impure unless he states that in his heart there was a resolve to guard against an unlearned man entering and touching them. (13:1)
- An immersion he has to watch. A man producing pure wine or oil with unlearned workers immerses them and must stand over them while they do it, since they are not familiar with the laws of immersion and interposing substances, and workers who step outside remain pure only until they are hidden from the chavair's sight. (13:2)
- Careful is not the same as competent. Where vessels carrying midras impurity stood in the locked vat the entire olive press is impure, even though he saw the workers taking care not to touch them, because they may have moved them, and unlearned people do not know that moving such vessels conveys impurity. (13:4)
- Go on ahead, and the load is lost. Porters carrying pure food more than a mil in front of the chavair stay pure because they assume he is watching and expect him at any moment, and the moment he tells them to go on and that he will follow, the food is impure as soon as they pass beyond his sight. (13:5)
- Attention has a direction and a grain. A man who guarded the tunic and let his attention off the cloak keeps the tunic pure and the cloak impure, and one who guarded a basket and pitchfork only against what would make them a source of impurity, and not against what merely disqualifies, leaves the basket pure, the pitchfork impure, and the terumah in the basket disqualified by it. (13:6)
RememberWhat keeps food pure in this chapter is not a barrier. It is a mind, and the halacha measures its direction, its range, and the exact moment the line of sight broke.
Ch 1The carcass, and the death that nobody performed
- What a carcass does, and how. An olive sized portion of the flesh of an animal that died defiles a person and vessels by touch and an earthenware container through its inner space, and one who carries it defiles the garments he is wearing, though even while carrying he defiles neither another person nor an earthenware container. (1:1)
- Slaughter purifies in all circumstances. The ritual slaughter of a kosher domesticated or wild animal purifies it even where the act itself was a violation, as with an ordinary animal slaughtered in the Temple Courtyard or a consecrated animal slaughtered outside it, while a disqualifying factor inside the slaughter leaves the animal exactly like one that died. (1:2)
- What conducts and what cannot constitute. Bones, horns, hoofs, hide, sinews and even the sauce and spices cooked with the meat do not defile once separated from the carcass, and yet touching any of them while they are attached to an olive of carcass flesh defiles, although none of them may be counted toward that olive. (1:7)
- Purpose decides what a hide is. Hides that count as flesh become pure once processed, or trodden for as long as it takes to walk four millin, or once any deed negates their use as meat, as when a donkey's ear is turned into the handle of a basket. (1:9)
- Two halves, and the hand that joins them. Two half olive portions lying on a hide are nullified and defile neither by touch nor by carrying, while the same two flattened and skewered so that they are lifted together defile the one who carries them, and two separate pieces on a single skewer may be carried the entire day in purity, since something joined by man is not considered joined. (1:12)
RememberA carcass is not defined by death. Slaughter is also death. It is defined by death that nobody performed.
Ch 2Limbs, hands, and the hole that was only planned
- A limb from a living animal has no minimum. Flesh separated from a living animal is pure, while an entire limb taken from it defiles like a carcass at any size, even a barleycorn, provided it came into being intact with flesh, sinews and bones and had enough flesh to return to a state of wholeness. (2:3)
- Nothing gets into what is still alive. A living fetus found after the mother's slaughter requires no slaughter of its own before it steps on the ground, and contracts no impurity at all, neither that of foods nor that of a carcass, even where the mother's slaughter failed and she is a carcass around it. (2:7)
- A perfect technique that does not purify. An animal slaughtered by a non Jew is a carcass and defiles when carried even where a Jew supervised and the knife was acceptable, and the Rambam adds that according to his estimation this too is a Rabbinical decree, rooted in the impurity attached to false deities. (2:10)
- The bone is judged by what is inside it. A thigh bone from a carcass is pure to touch and to carry because it is closed on all sides, and perforating it to the slightest degree makes it defile, but that whole rule holds only where the marrow rattles, since marrow in its natural place and sufficient to regenerate flesh makes the bone defile like any other limb. (2:11)
- The hole he has not yet drilled. One who touches a thigh bone that its owner thought of perforating and has not yet perforated contracts impurity of doubtful status, since it was left unresolved whether not having carried out the deed as of yet counts as no significant deed at all. (2:12)
RememberA plan that has not been carried out is not the deed, and the Rambam declines to call it innocence either. He rules doubt and closes the chapter there.