The Water You Never Wanted

About This Talk

Chapter 10 sorts which wetness counts as a liquid, ruling that the fluids of the eye, ear, nose and mouth and human urine are derivatives of water while animal urine and melted salt are fruit juices, that only the blood at the end of a kosher slaughter is a liquid while blood let for healing is pure, that human milk nobody needs is not a liquid while a woman's milk always is because an infant could drink it, that impure water drunk and brought back up becomes pure only through immersion, loathsomeness or urination, that sweat is not a liquid unless it follows a bath in drawn water, that moisture between a pure and an impure pool is impure, and that the blood and rinsing water of the Temple butchering area are always pure, while consecrated food needs no liquid at all to be susceptible to Rabbinic impurity because its cherished nature is its readiness. Chapter 11 carries the principle into the harvest, explaining the Rabbinic decree that grapes cut for the wine press are susceptible without any liquid because the farmer who squeezes a test cluster cares about its juice, distinguishing grapes laid on leaves or in a pit from grapes in baskets or on the earth, relaxing the decree in a beit hapras, and ruling that olives become susceptible only when the work of preparing them for pressing is complete, so that a man who intended to buy more and was prevented by forces beyond his control or a celebration keeps them pure even when zavim tread on them, unless he acts with guile, and that an intention to move the olives counts only if formed before the harvest. Chapter 12 grounds the whole system in the Oral Tradition of ki yutan, requiring that the liquid reach the crops by the owner's will after both were separated from the ground, ruling that desire at the beginning or the end suffices while produce hidden in water from thieves is untouched, and then drawing the line between the water on a drinker's mustache and on his nose, the rope a man needs and the rope he does not, rain shaken off at once and water sought under a drainpipe, a niddah washing radishes in a cave and lifting them out, and turmos beans taken by hand from a basket in a mikveh and beans lifted out inside it.