The Vessel You Cannot Wash

About This Talk

Kelim 27 grades the contents of a house by threes, seventeen times over, and the grade is set by what the article was made for rather than by what it is made of: a chest broken at the side takes midras impurity, one broken from above takes only the impurity of a human corpse, an oversized one is pure entirely, and the same triad runs through kneading troughs, wagons, shields, leather wrappers, bases, beds, baskets, mats, pouches and satchels, hides, sheets, cloths, gloves, hairnets, sandals and writing tablets. A wrapper a bloodletter leans against, one people eat on, and one olives are spread on land in the three different grades because only the first two serve a purpose that directly benefits a person, a shield made for Arabs to play with is pure since it is only a shape, and a camel's rope net is not a vessel at all but only ropes. The measures do the sorting among the soft goods: a cracked kneading trough holding between two lugin and nine kabbin, a leather pouch at four kabbin and a satchel at five, with fish skin pure entirely; patch a worn basket onto an intact one and the intact one governs, a small onto a large and the large governs, equals and the inner one governs, and any of them perforated enough for a pomegranate to fall through is pure. The chapter's general principle exempts whatever was not made to be sat or ridden upon, except that a cloak or veil also used for sitting takes midras impurity anyway, and the grades turn out to be a ladder, since midras susceptibility carries corpse impurity with it and corpse impurity carries every other impurity, Scriptural and Rabbinic, including what liquids impart. Kelim 28 then divides a vessel against itself: liquid impurity on the outer surface of a vessel with a receptacle leaves the inside fit for terumah, along with the outside of the neck, the handles and the fingerhold, and liquid on a base or rim is simply dried off, while impurity inside carries all of them; the same holds for goats hair sacks, leather pillows and bolsters and wooden vessels down to baskets, and a pouch with an inner pocket at level rims keeps one impure and the other pure, though a crawling animal's carcass takes them all. Flat rimless surfaces nobody sits on are not susceptible by Scriptural law, but a bed, a chair, a hide one sleeps on, measures for wine and oil, a two sided cooking vessel and filters for mustard and wine have no inner and outer at all and go impure entire like garments; a plow carries impurity seven handbreadths from the lance and four from the metal peg and no further; and a revi'it and a half revi'it carved into one block stay separate inside while the whole outer surface goes together, because an outer surface is not divided, the block being immersed in its entirety at one time. The treatise ends refusing to suspect that liquid left a boiling kettle, touched its impure outside and ran back in. Mikvaot 1 then narrows every remedy to one: all impurity, in persons and in keilim, is removed only by immersion in water gathered in a pool in the ground, and washing flesh or laundering garments always means the whole body or article, so that a man who immersed all but the tip of his little finger is impure. Three things fall outside the water, an earthenware container which the verse purifies only by breaking even when nailed down or filled with lime, a glass vessel which the Sages placed with earthenware, and a reed mat which takes midras impurity although it has no receptacle and can be cleansed only by being torn below six handbreadths by six. A zav needs living water while everyone and everything else may use a mikveh, a nidah and a woman after childbirth immerse at night, all immerse naked and at once with the hair counted as body though clothes do not intervene, and intent is required, so that an immersion to cool off serves ordinary food and permits a nidah to her husband but leaves her impure for terumah and sacrificial food until she immerses meaning to. Hidden places need not be reached but must be fit for water, which is why the folds are rinsed first and why a harbor without modesty mats and a perch on an earthenware jar are ruled out, while jumping in, immersing twice and a friend's hand on your shoulder are reprehensible rather than invalid; and an intervening substance invalidates by Scriptural law only over the greater part of the person or the vessel and only where he objects to it, until the Sages closed both gaps and left a mustard seed of dough disqualifying the man who minds it.