Daily Talk
A man slices a cucumber, sets it on the table, and says he will eat half in the morning and half in the evening, and the Rambam rules that the half he began is still one piece and the other half is not. The same knife cut both, and a sentence about supper divided them. Why do three chapters about the size of food end up measuring what a person means to do with it?
What Still Counts as Attached
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About This Talk
Chapter 4 separates receiving impurity from passing it on, ruling that food contracts impurity in the slightest amount but imparts it only at the size of an egg, that one who eats impure food is disqualified only by an egg and a half and one who drinks impure liquid only by a revi'it, that an impure portion which shrank in the sun is pure while fat or piggul swollen back by rain returns to its status, that bread, meat and dried fruit are measured as they are now with only empty cavities compressed, that impure foods combine at the level of the weaker degree, and that dividing a mixed mass can lower the degree of each portion. Chapter 5 introduces the yad and the shomer, holding that a handle receives and imparts impurity without being counted toward the measure while a guard is counted with the food, deriving both from the need to eat and sow the food, so that grapes for the winepress and produce for a sukkah have no handles, stripped sprigs are pure unless a grape remains, there is no guard for a guard, only the inner peels of an onion count, and a peel around a rotted pomegranate is not combined because its protection is of no benefit. Chapter 6 asks when pieces are still one piece, ruling that shells, marrow bones and fish scales stay connected until actually broken or peeled, that a cut cucumber is connected until separation begins and only the half one began is connected even after he declares half for the morning and half for the evening, that vegetables cut for cooking are separated while those cut to pickle or serve stay connected, that a lifted piece which brings the other with it is connected, that nuts on a rope lose their connection once he begins undoing them even if a hundred kor remain, that garlic braids and skewered esrog pieces are never joined and only the seven liquids join food, that stored olives are one mass until the spade turns them, and that terumah loaves take their degree from the moment the impurity was contracted, with a tertiary loaf attached afterwards leaving the others pure.