One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
מקואות
Mikvaot 2-4
Sefer Taharah · Immersion Pools · The law of chatzitzah, something interposed: what blocks a body, what blocks a vessel, and what stops water from being a mikveh at all.
40
Se'ah, the minimum mikveh
3
Lugim of drawn water disqualify
1x1x3
Cubits, the measured volume
4
Handbreadths of chain to immerse
Ch 2What Comes Between a Body and the Water
- Wet or dry decides it. Crusts over a wound, dried blood, a bandage, dough under a nail, potters' clay and the mud of the thoroughfares all intervene, the last even in summer. Ordinary mud does not intervene while wet, because it dissolves in the water; dried, it does. Honey, ink, milk, blood and the sap of fig, wild fig and carob intervene only when dry, while the sap of other fruits intervenes either way (2:1-2)
- The ruling changes with the person. A married woman's hidden area is presumed to carry intervening substances unless she washes first; an unmarried woman's is not, because she is not concerned about the cleanliness of that area. Tight necklaces, nose rings, rings and metal plates over a broken bone intervene; loose ones do not. A thread at the neck does not intervene, a choker does, because she tightens it to look fuller (2:3-6)
- One knotted hair, and only if she minds. Two or more hairs knotted together do not intervene, since water passes through. A single knotted hair intervenes only where the person is particular about it. The Rambam adds his own view against the Geonim: hair is not a separate entity from the body, so even if every hair were tied individually, a person who is not particular has immersed (2:15)
- Nobody is carried in. One who holds another person or a utensil and immerses them leaves them impure, even if he loosens his hand under the water, a decree lest he not loosen it; wetting his hand first saves it. A woman who slings her infant over her back has not immersed. Hair in the mouth, clenched fists, pursed lips, a bone between the teeth: as if she did not immerse. A swallowed impure ring, by contrast, is no barrier at all (2:8, 2:11-13)
- Rabbinic barriers do not reach a marriage. Ezra ordained combing the hair before immersing, praiseworthily at night and immediately after. But the stringencies of this chapter govern immersion for pure foods; for returning to her husband she is permitted even having fed her son cooked food, with an old scratch, or having shut her eyes tightly (2:16, 2:22)
RememberThe knot is not the barrier. Minding the knot is the barrier.
Ch 3What Comes Between a Vessel and the Water
- The owner's objection is the test. Tar inside a craftsman's cup intervenes, outside it does not; on a homeowner's cup either side does; on a large pot or bowl it always does. Pitch on a clean tabletop intervenes because he objects, on a dirty one it does not. A homeowner's bed yes, a poor man's bed no; a saddle yes, the wineskins beside it no (3:1-3)
- Same stain, different man. Pitch on the clothes of Torah scholars intervenes even on one side, because they keep their clothes clean; on unlearned people's clothes only when it is on both sides. On the handkerchiefs of tar workers, potters and tree pruners, never. Blood on a butcher's garment does not intervene, nor oils on the garments of one who sells them (3:4-7)
- Indifference has a ceiling. Since the whole leniency rests on the owner not objecting, the Rambam rules that if the larger portion of the vessel is covered with tar or mortar the immersion is invalid even though he does not object, and no type of vessel is treated differently (3:10)
- Water must actually reach everywhere. Hollow handles immersed upside down, inserted but unrinsed, or bent metal: invalid. A container immersed mouth down, or narrow at both ends, or with a rolled rim, must be tipped onto its side. An inkwell needs a hole bored in its side. A vessel full of any liquid has not immersed, but full of water it has, and vessel and water become pure together. Laundered clothes must stay in until air bubbles rise (3:11-14, 3:18, 3:24)
- Measures and exemptions. Excess fittings that will be cut off are immersed only as far as needed: four handbreadths of chain for a large bucket, ten for a small one. Tefillin, an amulet, a ball and a round leather cushion are immersed closed, on the principle that whatever is not commonly opened and filled needs no water inside. Small vessels inside a larger one are purified with it, unless it was tipped sideways, where the opening must be as wide as a pouch mouthpiece (3:23, 3:25-26)
RememberA butcher's bloodstain is not a stain. A scholar's one spot is a wall. The substance never changed.
Ch 4What Comes Between Water and Being a Mikveh
- Forty se'ah, and Scripturally drawn water is fine. Any gathering of water suffices by Torah law provided a whole body can immerse at once, measured as a cubit by a cubit by three cubits high, which is forty se'ah, and drawn or undrawn makes no difference. The disqualification of drawn water is Rabbinic, derived from the verse naming a spring, a cistern and a gathering: not wholly man's work, not wholly heaven's (4:1-2)
- Three lugim ruin a pool under forty. If a pool held less than forty se'ah of fit water and three lugim of drawn water fell in, bringing it to forty, all of it is disqualified. Once forty se'ah of fit water is already there, one may pour drawn water in with a pitcher all day; a stacked upper pool overflowing forty se'ah into a lower one leaves the lower fit; and a se'ah added and a se'ah removed is fine while the majority of the original water remains (4:6-7)
- Intent, not the water, is what gets ruined. Barrels left on a roof to dry that fill with rain may be broken or overturned and the water is fit, since he did not fill them by hand; lift and pour them out and it is all drawn. Barrels set under a drainpipe, in any season, even stone ones that cannot become impure, yield drawn water, because a drainpipe is relied upon to conduct water. Even forgetting them there is disqualified, by decree against the one who forgot (4:3-4)
- The sky at the moment he set them down. Vessels left in a courtyard under a dense sky give unfit water; left out when the clouds were dispersed, or under dense cloud that dispersed and gathered again, the water is fit. A lime worker's container forgotten in a mikveh, holding most of the pool's water, may be broken in place and the whole mikveh is acceptable (4:4-5)
- Flowed water, and a dispute the Rambam closes. Three lugim disqualify only when they fall from a vessel; drawn water made to flow along the ground or a conduit does not disqualify provided the majority of the forty se'ah is fit. Some scholars of the west held that flowed water is pure outright with no majority requirement, which would make every bathhouse pool a kosher mikveh; the Rambam answers in one line that never has anyone been seen to act that way (4:8-10)
RememberThe rain is the same rain. What disqualifies it is that a person was expecting it.