One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
טֻמְאַת צָרַעַת
The Impurity of Leprosy 5-7
Sefer Taharah · How a boil and a burn become liable only once they begin to heal, which surfaces of the body are beyond the reach of a blemish, and the ruling that a man covered head to foot in tzara'at is pure while one lentil of healthy skin keeps him impure
12
Surfaces listed as beyond the reach of a baheret, from the inside of the ear to the nail
1
Lentil of healthy flesh, even on a fingertip, that keeps a fully covered man impure
8
Shades, four of white and four of petuch, all combining into a single blemish
100
Times a body may pass from pure to impure and back, each cycle judged the same
Ch 5Boils, burns and baldness, and when damaged skin becomes liable
- Fire decides the name. A wound caused by fire, by a coal, embers, or iron or stone heated in flame, is a michveh, a burn; a wound from anything else, a blister from wood or stone, a wart, eczema, a wasting or feverous swelling, an infection that ruined the skin, is a sh'chin, a boil; a heated spit with a rounded end makes a burn and with a pointed end leaves the question unresolved, and a scald in the hot springs of Tiberias or in olive dregs is a boil. (5:1, 5:2)
- Least liable when it is worst. While boils and burns are fresh festering wounds, called mordin, they do not impart impurity because of tzara'at at all; healed completely so that the flesh is restored, even with a scar remaining, the place is ordinary skin with three signs and two weeks of isolation; and with a scab formed the thickness of a garlic peel it takes only two signs, white hair or expansion, and one week. (5:3, 5:4)
- Nothing combines and nothing spreads across. A healing boil and a healing burn are never joined, a baheret the size of a gris lying across both leaves the man pure, and a blemish spreads neither from one into the other nor into or out of ordinary flesh; a boil that became a burn is nullified by the burn, and where it is unknown which one it is the ruling is unaffected, since both take the same signs and Scripture separated them only to bar the combining. (5:5, 5:6)
- The count does not carry over. One isolated for a baheret in a boil whose boil then healed into ordinary flesh by the end of the week, or isolated for a baheret on ordinary flesh that then became a boil, is given an initial examination and begins again. (5:7)
- Baldness answers to two signs only. Hair lost through sickness, a wound, foods eaten or lotions applied makes a man a keireiach at the back or a gibeiach at the front even though he may grow it back, and on those surfaces impurity comes only through healthy flesh or expansion with two weeks of isolation, since white hair cannot be a sign where no hair grows; the two baldnesses do not combine, and a head or chin where hair never grew is ordinary flesh with three signs until hair appears. (5:8, 5:9, 5:10, 5:11)
RememberThe wound is beneath the law's notice while it is open and fully liable once it has closed. The system is not measuring the damage. It is asking whether there is a surface there yet.
Ch 6The unreachable surfaces, and how doubt follows the verdict
- Twelve places a blemish cannot touch. The inside of the eye, ear, nose and mouth, the folds of the stomach and neck, under the breasts, the armpits, the underside of the foot, the nail, the head and chin while hair grows, and open boils and burns, with the red of the lips counted among hidden places; none becomes impure, none combines, none can be expanded into, and none counts as healthy flesh within a blemish. (6:1)
- Only what can be ruined holds up the verdict. The unreachable surfaces staying clean does not prevent a man whose whole body has turned white from being declared pure, whereas a head or chin that has lost its hair, or a boil or burn that has scabbed over, does prevent it, because those have become fit to contract a baheret. (6:1, 6:2)
- A blemish needs somewhere to go. A baheret standing next to the head, the eye, the ear, or a boil or burn is pure, since the priest is told to see the blemish in the flesh of the skin, meaning the ground immediately outside it must be ordinary flesh fit to be spread into. (6:3)
- What passed through exemption stays pure. A baheret on a gentile who then converted, on a fetus that was then born, in a crease that then straightened, under hair that then fell, or on skin over which a boil or burn formed and then healed, is pure even where the skin was susceptible before and after, since it was exempt in the interim; but a change in shade, whether the white deepens or weakens, sends it back for an initial examination. (6:4)
- Doubt follows whatever verdict is already standing. Before a man is deemed impure every doubt resolves toward purity, so two men isolated at a gris and a sela who both return at a sela with nobody able to say which grew are both pure, and the same holds for two blemishes on one body; once a man has been deemed impure every doubt resolves against him, and the pair stays impure even after shrinking back to a sela until both recede to a gris; and if signs vanish before the priest has actually pronounced him impure, the stringent ruling is not given. (6:5, 6:6, 6:7)
RememberIdentical facts and identical ignorance produce opposite rulings, and the only thing that changed between them was a sentence a priest had already spoken.
Ch 7Covered head to foot, and the lentil that keeps a man impure
- The same covering, two opposite results. A man deemed definitively impure, or placed in isolation, whose tzara'at then spread until his skin turned entirely white is pure, whether it came at once or little by little; a man released from the inspection process who was then covered entirely is definitively impure; and one who arrives already white is isolated a week and then a second and is pure if no sign emerges, since the vast baheret follows the law of a small one. (7:1, 7:2)
- Healthy flesh convicts, white hair does not. On the day he exhibits healthy flesh he is deemed impure, measured at a square superimposed on a lentil, so a covered man whose healthy flesh vanished stays pure even if white hair remains or emerges, and one deemed impure through white hair who then turns entirely white is pure. (7:3)
- The fingertip and the bohak. The tips of the limbs, which do not count as healthy flesh when they lie within a baheret, do prevent a covered man from being pure, so a lentil of healthy flesh on a fingertip or the tip of the nose leaves him impure and returns him to impurity after he was cleared; a lentil of bohak likewise blocks the covering, since the verse requires tzara'at over the skin, yet bohak appearing after he was declared pure does not reverse him, since that verse requires healthy flesh. (7:4)
- A hundred cycles, judged alike. Coverage purifies, a lentil of revealed healthy flesh defiles, coverage purifies again, and so on even a hundred times; and once healthy flesh begins to grow and the tzara'at recedes, the man stays impure until what remains of the baheret is smaller than a gris. (7:5)
- Going early can cost a man his purity. Skin fit to contract a baheret prevents the ruling of total coverage while it stays healthy and unfit skin does not, so a hairless head or a scabbed boil must be covered too, and a clean baheret that spreads over the whole body purifies a man deemed impure through the other one; and a man who never had the chance to show a vanished sign before the covering arrived is pure, though had he shown it early he would have been released and therefore ruled impure, while a man whose unsigned baheret covered him before he could show it is impure, though had he gone early he would have been isolated and therefore pure. (7:6, 7:7)
RememberThe man who is entirely ruined walks out pure. The man with one lentil still intact does not, and will not until it is gone.