One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
טֻמְאַת צָרַעַת
Defilement by Leprosy 8-10
Sefer Taharah · How a bare patch on the head is read and why total baldness is pure, who may examine a blemish and in which four hours of the day, and the life of a man who must announce his own impurity
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Weeks of isolation for a netek, and never a third
4
Hours fit for inspection: the fourth, fifth, eighth and ninth
1
Priest, the one who saw it first, may rule that it spread
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Handbreadths, the partition that admits a metzora to a synagogue
Ch 8The netek, and the hair that has to be surrounded
- A square gris, and from heaven only. A netek is hair fallen from its roots on the head or in the beard leaving skin bare, no smaller than a square gris; the word deep is used only to teach that it must come by the hand of heaven, so a bare place a person made on himself is pure, and a woman or a seris who grows facial hair can contract it if the hair falls off. (8:1)
- Two signs, two weeks, and nothing more. Netakim become impure through two short golden hairs or through spreading, with one week of isolation and then a second after the priest shaves around the netek leaving two hairs on every side; if nothing appears by the end of the second week the man is released, and golden hair or spreading after release makes him definitively impure. (8:2, 8:3)
- Golden hair must be short, black hair must be bendable. Golden hair of the required hue is a sign only when short, and long golden hair is no sign at all; black hair counteracts only in pairs long enough to bend back to their own base, and one black hair beside one golden or one long beside one short prevents nothing. (8:4, 8:5, 8:7)
- Hair that grew saves anywhere, hair that stayed saves only in the middle. Two black hairs that grow in the netek prevent impurity wherever they stand and overturn a verdict already given, while black hair that merely remained saves only in the center with room for two hairs between it and the healthy hair outside; two netakim divided by a line of black hair are impure when the line is broken in one place and pure when it is broken in two, since the remainder now stands in the middle. (8:6, 8:10)
- Entirely bald, and therefore pure. A netek that expands until the whole head is bare with less than two hairs left leaves the man pure by the verse itself, whether that happened during isolation, after a definitive ruling or after release, and the same holds for a beard lost entirely by the Oral Tradition; head and beard are two separate categories that neither combine nor spread into one another. (8:12, 8:13, 8:14)
RememberPartial affliction is impure and total affliction is pure. What condemns a man is the untouched margin left beside the trouble.
Ch 9Who may look, who may speak, and in what light
- Anyone may inspect except himself. Everyone contracts these blemishes, a newborn and servants included but not gentiles or resident aliens, and anyone at all is fit to inspect them, with the single exception that a person may not inspect his own. (9:1)
- The word belongs to the priest, the judgment to the trained. A sage may stand beside a priest who cannot assess blemishes and tell him what to declare, and the pronouncement holds even from a priest who is a minor or intellectually incapable; but a priest relying on his own understanding may assess nothing unless he was taught by a master and knows every blemish and its name. (9:2)
- A wrong ruling changes nothing, and no ruling releases nobody. A priest who declared a pure man impure or an impure man pure has altered no status, and yet a man who has healed remains impure for years until a priest tells him that he is pure; a challal may not inspect, nor a priest blind in one eye or of failing sight, though physical blemishes do not disqualify. (9:3, 9:5)
- Only the first priest can say that it grew. The priest who inspected the blemish at the outset must inspect it at the end of the first week and of the second; if he dies or falls sick another takes his place and may not deem the man impure on account of spreading, since only the first can tell whether it increased. (9:4)
- Four hours, no roof, no cloud, and the working posture. Blemishes are inspected only by day, in the fourth, fifth, eighth and ninth hours, never at early morning or evening, never indoors or under cloud where a duller white reads brighter, never at noon where a brighter white reads darker, and never on Shabbat or a festival; a bridegroom keeps his seven days first, and the priest examines only what shows while a man stands as one hoeing or harvesting olives and a woman sits as one kneading, nursing or weaving, without searching the creases of the flesh. (9:6, 9:7, 9:8, 9:12)
RememberGrowth is not an observation but a comparison, and the comparison belongs to whoever held the first image.
Ch 10Removing the signs, and the life of the metzora
- Lashes only where the removal worked. Pulling out signs of impurity, burning the healthy flesh in a baheret or cutting a blemish off skin, garment or building violates a negative commandment at every stage, but lashes follow only where the act was effective, so pulling one of three white hairs brings stripes for rebellion and not lashes; shaving the hair adjacent to a netek carries lashes when the whole surround is taken with a razor. (10:1)
- The timing of the removal decides everything. One who removed the signs before any inspection is pure, and one who removed them during isolation is pure at the end of it, while one who removed them after being deemed definitively impure stays impure until the affliction covers his whole body or the baheret shrinks below a gris; cutting the baheret out unintentionally leaves him pure, and cutting it out deliberately with a hair's width of surrounding flesh leaves him permanently unable to become pure. (10:2, 10:3, 10:4)
- Circumcision goes ahead over a blemish. A baheret on the foreskin does not delay circumcision even out of its proper day, since a positive commandment supersedes a negative one, and if the removal of the foreskin removed the sign the man still brings the offerings of one purified from tzara'at. (10:5)
- Cloaked like a mourner, and calling out his own name. A man deemed definitively impure covers his head, cloaks himself to the lips, tears his clothes and notifies passersby, a high priest included, and may not greet others, though he may read Scripture and learn and teach and may wash, anoint, wear shoes and live with his wife; he dwells alone outside the town in walled cities of Eretz Yisrael, a woman does not cover or rend or cloak but dwells outside and announces herself, and a tumtum and an androgynus do all three because of the doubt. (10:6, 10:7, 10:8, 10:9)
- A dwelling, not only a touch. The metzora is a primary source of impurity by touch, by being carried and through what he lies or sits upon, and beyond that he defiles a building by entering it so that all inside become primary derivatives without contact; a pure man who passes under a tree where the metzora is standing becomes impure, while a metzora who passes under a tree where a pure man is standing conveys nothing, and a synagogue admits him behind a partition ten handbreadths high enclosing four cubits by four, entering first and leaving last. (10:11, 10:12)
RememberThe impure man is the one appointed to warn everybody else. Nobody in the town is deputized to watch him.