Daily Talk
A man can hold the carcass of a kosher bird in both hands all day long and stay entirely pure, and the moment an olive sized portion of it passes his throat he is impure and so are his garments. A thigh bone sealed on every side is pure until somebody makes the smallest hole in it. Then the last chapter of the day rules that a woman is not made impure by touching, because touching the inner part of the body is not considered as touch. Why do three chapters of birds, creeping things and seminal discharge keep deciding their cases at one line, the line where inside becomes outside?
Touching the Inside Is Not Touching
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About This Talk
Chapter 3 takes up the carcass of a kosher fowl and rules that its impurity has only one address, holding that it defiles neither by touch nor by carrying nor even while in the mouth but only in the gullet, which Scripture calls the chamber of the soul, that the measure is an olive sized portion, that a man who swallows it makes vessels impure while it is going down but not a person and not an earthenware container, that he needs no intent at all for this severe impurity while the lesser impurity of foods does require thought, that a portion wound in lettuce defiles even where it never touched his throat while the same portion wound in tree bast leaves him pure, that vomiting it back up conveys nothing on the way out, that thin feathers, wooly hairs, wing tips, the tip of the tail and even soft bones are excluded from the reckoning of the olive while the soft portions of the beak and the nails close to the flesh are counted, that ritual slaughter purifies a fowl found tereifah while melikah does not, and that the carcass of a non kosher fowl and a limb taken from a living fowl are pure altogether. Chapter 4 turns to the eight creeping animals named in the Torah and rules that they defile by touch and never by carrying at a measure of a lentil, that a limb has no minimum measure at all but must be intact as when it came into being with flesh, sinews and bones and enough substance to regenerate, that kidney, liver and tongue count as flesh and are pure once separated from a living sheretz, that the hides of four of the eight are pure even while fresh and the hides of the other four count as flesh until processed or trodden for the time it takes to walk four millin, that a thigh bone is pure while its marrow rattles and impure the moment it is perforated to the slightest degree, that an egg with a formed embryo follows the same rule, that a sheretz half formed out of earth defiles at the flesh and not at the earth unless its form is already apparent over its entire length, and that nothing outside the eight species defiles at all. Chapter 5 rules on seminal discharge as a primary source of impurity, holding that it defiles by touch and not by carrying, that the measure is a lentil for one who touches it and the slightest amount for the man from whom it issued, that he is not impure until it has left his body and reached the orifice, that a discharge the body did not feel conveys no impurity at all, that a man who dreamt of relations and awoke to find his organ warm is presumed impure while thoughts alone or warmth alone leave him pure, that a woman is impure not as one who touched but as one who discharged because touching the inner part of the body is not considered as touch, that the substance defiles for three twelve hour periods and is pure afterwards because it has putrefied, and that most of the doubtful cases in the chapter are Rabbinic and reach terumah alone.