One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
טֻמְאַת מֵת
Defilement by a Corpse 9-11
Sefer Taharah · How much earth belongs to a buried body, what happens when a grave is plowed and the bones can no longer be found, and the decree that made the soil of the whole Diaspora impure while marking every route through it that stays clean
3
Fingerbreadths of virgin soil removed with a corpse, the tevusah
20
Cubits inspected out from the last of three graves found together
100
Cubits square, the full reach of a beit hapras from the plowed grave
40
Days of gentile residence that make a dwelling require inspection
Ch 9Corpses found in the ground, and how far the impurity reaches
- The tevusah is the measure of a body's reach into the earth. One who finds many corpses in a single pit, or bodies of the slain, or a corpse sitting or with its head between its knees, need not fear that the place was a cemetery; he removes the corpses, the soft earth beneath them, and three fingerbreadths of virgin soil below that, and the rest of the field is as pure as before. (9:1)
- Three ordinary graves make a burial area and trigger a search. Three corpses buried in the usual manner with four to eight cubits between them, the space for a bier and its bearers, require checking twenty further cubits out from the last grave; but if one of them was slain, or sitting, or lying unusually, no check is made, since we presume they are gentiles, whose graves convey no impurity through a tent. (9:3, 9:4)
- Several findings carry no tevusah and no inspection at all. A corpse missing an organ whose loss would kill a living man, and corpses lying openly on the surface, require neither; a corpse buried without the landowner's permission requires the tevusah but no inspection; and two graves plus one already known is not three, since a known grave does not turn a place into a burial area. (9:5, 9:6)
- The inspection is a trench dug in alternating cubits. One digs a cubit, leaves a cubit, and continues to the end, because there is never less than a cubit between one grave and the next, digging down until he reaches rock or virgin earth, and water counts as virgin earth; reaching a river, an irrigation channel, or a public road, he stops, the burial area having been interrupted. (9:6, 9:7, 9:8)
- Everything built on doubt here is Rabbinic. The man doing the digging stays pure and may eat terumah until impurity is actually found, while one clearing a landslide may not, since bodies are certainly under it; and the Rambam states plainly that all these doubtful impurities are Rabbinic safeguards, Scriptural law deeming impure only one who definitely contracted impurity, except that acting into a possible karet violation is Scripturally forbidden. (9:9, 9:12)
RememberA body reaches three fingerbreadths into the ground and no farther. The halachah measures the damage so that it cannot spread.
Ch 10The plowed grave, and the field that cannot be searched
- A beit hapras is a field in which a grave was plowed over. Since the blade crushes and disperses the bones, the Sages decreed the field impure even where there was a coffin, stone slabs, or two stories of earth above the body, and the decreed area is a hundred cubits square from the grave, land sown with four se'ah of grain. (10:1, 10:2)
- It defiles by touch and by carrying, never through a tent. Its earth conveys impurity when touched or carried, but one who merely stands over a beit hapras is pure; and a man who shook out his plow or struck it against a rock or fence before completing the hundred cubits made a beit hapras only that far, while beyond a hundred cubits the ground is pure, bones not being dragged farther. (10:2, 10:3)
- Only a definitely known grave, plowed in one's own field, creates it. Plowing a trench of bones, a field where a grave was lost or discovered, or a corpse itself, creates nothing, since the Sages decreed on the common case; nor does a man create one in a field not his own, whether as trespasser, partner, sharecropper, or guardian, nor does a gentile plowing his own field, and rain that washes the earth downhill leaves the lower field pure, for a beit hapras does not make a second beit hapras. (10:4, 10:5, 10:6, 10:7)
- What may be grown there, and what must be burned on the spot. Trees and bushes may be planted, their roots running below three handbreadths where the field is pure, since the bones lie spread across the surface; crops harvested by uprooting must be threshed in that field and the grain sifted twice, beans three times, lest a bone the size of a barleycorn be among them, and the chaff burned there, lest a man sell it and spread the impurity. (10:8)
- Purification is by sieve, by covering, or by removal, never by halves. One who crosses on stones that do not wobble underfoot, or rides a man or animal of formidable strength, stays pure; and to purify the field itself, before two Torah scholars, one sifts the movable surface earth for bones the size of a barleycorn, or lays three handbreadths of outside earth over it, or strips three handbreadths off, and half the field treated each way is effective, while a handbreadth and a half taken off with a handbreadth and a half laid down is of no consequence. (10:11, 10:12)
RememberCover three handbreadths and the field is pure. Remove three handbreadths and the field is pure. Do a handbreadth and a half of each and nothing at all has happened.
Ch 11The earth of the Diaspora, and the routes that stay clean
- Two decrees on foreign soil, the second lighter than the first. A clod of earth from outside the Land was decreed to be like a beit hapras, defiling by touch and carrying, and afterwards its very space was decreed impure, so that inserting one's head and the greater part of one's body defiles; but earth impurity burns terumah, lasts seven days, and requires the ashes of the Red Heifer on the third and seventh days, while airspace impurity requires only immersion and sunset and leaves terumah suspended, neither eaten nor burned. (11:1, 11:2)
- The measure is a clod the size of a seal for sacks. This is the size of the large ball of a sackmaker's needle, and separate pieces of earth clinging to a vegetable do not combine to reach it; letters once arrived from abroad for the sons of the High Priests bearing a se'ah or two of seals, and no concern was raised, since no single seal was as large as the seal of a sack. (11:3)
- Sea, air, and Syria mark the edges of the decree. Walking the mountains and boulders abroad brings seven day impurity, while travel by sea or along the strip the waves wash escapes the earth decree though not the airspace decree, and entering in a cabinet or chest carried through the air does not help, since a movable tent is not a tent; Syria's earth is impure but its airspace was never decreed, so a stretch of it abutting the Land with nothing impure between may be entered in purity in a sealed chest. (11:5, 11:6)
- Gentile dwellings inside the Land are inspected after forty days. Such a place is treated like foreign soil until inspected, lest a miscarried fetus be buried there, forty days being the time for a woman to conceive and miscarry a fetus that conveys impurity, and even a man dwelling alone triggers it as a fence around the household with a woman; what is inspected are the deep drains and cisterns of foul water, and where a pig or a mole could have dragged the fetus out, no inspection is needed. (11:7, 11:8, 11:9)
- Ten kinds of place are exempt, and so are the pilgrim roads. Among them are Arab tents, sukkot, storage areas, roofed spaces on pillars without walls, guard houses, the open space of a courtyard, a bathhouse, a weapons workshop, and soldiers' barracks, all excluded as impermanent, as is a covered walkway with nowhere to hide a fetus; and although the roadways taken by festive pilgrims up from Babylon are surrounded by the earth of the Diaspora, they are presumed pure. (11:10, 11:12)
RememberThe Sages declared the ground of the entire exile impure and then, in the last line of the chapter, ruled that the road to Jerusalem running through it is presumed pure.