One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
טֻמְאַת צָרַעַת
Defilement by Leprosy 11-13
Sefer Taharah · How an afflicted person is purified and shaved twice, how a blemish on cloth is watched through two weeks of isolation, and why the garment that is treated exactly like a person for spreading impurity is given no way back at all
7
Sprinklings of blood on the back of the afflicted man's hand
2
Shavings, and two hairs missed at the first make it only one
13
The day of the second inspection, when the garment is decided
100
Times the living bird is sent away again if it keeps returning
Ch 11How the afflicted person is purified, and by whom
- Two birds, cedar, hyssop and crimson. A new earthenware container holds a fourth of a log of living water; the healthier of two kosher sparrows is slaughtered over it until the blood is visible, and buried in a hole in the afflicted man's presence; a cedar branch a cubit long, a hyssop with no additional name at least a handbreadth long, and a crimson strand weighing a shekel are bound and dipped with the living bird, and the man is sprinkled seven times on the back of the hand. (11:1)
- The bird that will not leave. The priest stands in the town and casts the living bird outside the wall, not turning its head toward the sea, the town or the desert, and if it returns he sends it away again, even a hundred times. (11:1)
- Shaved to what can be seen. A razor passes over all the visible skin until the flesh is smooth like a squash, and the verse names the beard and the eyebrows to include everything like them and to exclude the hair of the nose, which is not visible; the whole day is acceptable for the shaving, which must be done by a priest with a razor, and leaving two hairs voids it. (11:1, 11:3)
- Seven days inside the wall and still impure. After the first shaving he launders, immerses, and may enter the town, yet for seven days he remains a primary source of impurity conveying impurity by touch and not by being carried, and he is forbidden intimacy though an afflicted woman is not; on the seventh day he is shaved a second time exactly like the first, and if two hairs were left at the first and removed at the second, only one shaving has been performed. (11:1, 11:2, 11:3)
- Anyone may serve, except another metzora. The purification is carried out in the Land and outside it, whether or not the Temple stands, and everyone is acceptable to perform it, even a zav or one impure from a corpse; but a person afflicted with tzara'at may not purify another, and two afflicted people are not purified at once, since mitzvot are not performed in bundles. (11:6)
RememberThe razor stops at the hair inside the nose, because nobody can see it. This entire system is adjudicated by what is visible.
Ch 12Blemishes on cloth, and what counts as spreading
- A gris, and three signs. The minimum affliction for a garment is a gris, as for a person, and the marks are intense green like the wings of a peacock, intense red like fine scarlet thread, and spreading; the two colors combine with each other. (12:1)
- Two weeks, and many ways out. The garment is isolated seven days and inspected; if it expanded it is definitively impure and burnt, if it is unchanged or faded or intensified without expanding the place is washed and it is isolated a second week, and on the thirteenth day a third color means washing and purity, a switch from green to red or red to green means tearing out the place and sewing in a patch, and only an unchanged appearance means the whole garment is burnt. (12:1)
- Inward growth is not growth. When an unblemished portion inside the blemish is swallowed by it, the blemish has not increased, since it must increase outward, and the same holds for a person's body, for garments and for buildings; spread to the immediately adjacent place counts however slight it is, while a new blemish at a distance must itself be a gris. (12:3, 12:4)
- Only white cloth is in the system. Colored garments do not contract this impurity, whether dyed by human activity or naturally colored, and a knit under three fingerbreadths by three does not either; but patches each under that size sewn into a garment can, because sewing is like weaving and the result is one garment. (12:10, 12:11, 12:12)
RememberA blemish that fills in its own interior has grown in every ordinary sense and has not grown at all. The law is watching a border, not a quantity.
Ch 13Which garments, which connections, and the verdict that cannot be undone
- Wool, linen and leather only. Garments of wool and linen, cloths whose warp or woof is wool or linen, leather utensils hard or soft, felt and tents are susceptible; garments belonging to gentiles are not, and one purchased from them is viewed as if for the first time; camel wool mixed with sheep wool follows the majority and is susceptible when equal. (13:1, 13:2, 13:3)
- Things nobody sits on are still included. Utensils unfit for the impurity of a zav's treading are susceptible here, among them a ship's sail, a curtain, a barber's sheet, a mantle for scrolls, a belt, and shoe laces a gris wide; a two-sided leather pouch has spread when the blemish crosses from its inner side to its outer side or back. (13:6)
- A string is not a connection. Two balls of thread joined by a thread, warp divided between the frames of a loom, or one side of a cloak tied to the other by a single strand: a blemish on one leaves the other pure despite the tie, though a blemish that spreads from a blanket's protruding strands into the blanket does make it impure. (13:9)
- Isolated can be saved; convicted cannot. A garment merely isolated that was dyed, sold to a gentile, mixed with others, or cut into strands under three by three is pure and may be benefited from, while a garment definitively deemed impure renders every garment it is mixed among impure, even one among thousands, and every strand it is cut into is impure and forbidden. (13:11, 13:12)
- The coat is a person, and gets no purification. An isolated or convicted garment is a primary category of impurity analogous to a person afflicted with tzara'at in all respects, conveying impurity by touch, by carriage and by entering a building, and an olive-sized portion renders a pure house and everything in it impure; blemished garments are sent outside a city walled or unwalled, a stringency relevant to garments over humans. (13:13, 13:14, 13:15)
RememberThe man is sent out of walled cities and brought back through the gate. The coat is sent out of every city and burned, because a coat has nothing under its surface that outlasts the surface.