Water Nobody Carried

About This Talk

Mikvaot 5-7 define the pool entirely by one defect, water that a person lifted, and spend three chapters measuring it. Chapter five fixes the quantity at three lugim of drawn water, combining from one, two or three keilim provided the second begins descending before the first finishes and never combining from four, though that whole timing rule applies only where there was no intent to increase the water: where there was, even a dinar size measure added each year combines until the three lugim are reached. Two men pouring a log and a half each, a wrung out garment, a distributor with several spouts and the water lifted out of a leather cushion all count, while mud pushed from the floor up the sides does not and mud lifted out by hand and set on the rim does, and three lugim splashed off a passing legion's hands and feet are acceptable even if the mikveh was made that way from the start. Once three lugim enter a pool short of forty se'ah the whole body is invalidated and all of its contents are considered drawn, as if every drop had been drawn with a container, so dividing such a pool and filling each half to forty se'ah leaves both invalid, a cistern stays unfit until less than three lugim of the original remains, and the only repairs are flushing the water out or joining the pool to a mikveh of forty se'ah of acceptable water, which purifies it; less than three lugim of impure drawn water in a small pool still serves for challah, terumah and washing hands but not as the base for an acceptable mikveh. Chapter six asks what counts as a vessel and answers that the hollow must have been made to receive, so wide pipes that merely bulge disqualify nothing in wood, metal or earthenware, while stone keilim and keilim of unfired earth, which cannot contract impurity at all, disqualify like a copper pot; a basin in living stone is no k'li until a k'li is cemented to it, holing it from below or at the width of a drinking pouch's mouthpiece restores it, a holed barrel sunk permanently in the ground is itself a kosher mikveh, a board under the drainpipe disqualifies with raised edges and not without them and not at all when stood on its point to be washed, a hollow cut into a loose wooden pipe disqualifies forever while the same hollow cut after the pipe was affixed does not, an earthenware pipe needs a revi'it, and a sponge or bucket that falls in with three lugim inside does not disqualify, since the rule speaks of water falling in and not of a container into which water had fallen. Its geometry runs the same way: a barrel tipped into the sea ruins immersion at that spot while a river may be used because it flows, drawn water touching a small mikveh is merely a pool beside a pool but the same water in its middle disqualifies, a hole in a dividing wall counts at one three hundred and twentieth of a lower pool of forty se'ah, and of three pools of twenty se'ah the drawn one on the end leaves everyone pure while the drawn one in the middle leaves nobody immersed, because the good water never met. Chapter seven turns from quantity to appearance: neither taste nor smell disqualifies, only color, and only a color another substance changed, so a color that changed on its own is acceptable; snow, hail, sleet, ice, salt and flowing mud complete a mikveh and never disqualify it, forty se'ah of crushed snow being a kosher mikveh outright, while drawn water pure or impure, pickling water, cooking water, dregs before vinegar and beer disqualify and never complete, and fruit juice, fish brine, fish oil and those dregs once vinegar do neither; three lugim of wine, milk or blood do not disqualify since the three log rule was said of drawn water alone, yet one log of wine into a hundred se'ah that turns the color makes the pool unfit, dye water runs the opposite way, repairs are rain for a small pool and poured buckets for a full one, and immersion in a discolored patch is no immersion even where forty se'ah of unchanged water remains.