Daily Talk
A man who immersed this morning touches one of two loaves that fused in the oven, and only that loaf is disqualified, though anyone else who is impure would have affected both. The same man presses his hand over a hole in a barrel of terumah, and the entire barrel is lost. A stream poured into an impure vessel stays pure, unless the heat is below. Why do three chapters about crusts, bubbles and steam keep asking when two things are one thing?
Lacking Only Nightfall
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About This Talk
Chapter 7 establishes that a poured stream is not a connection, neither to impurity below nor to purity above, so that pure liquid poured into an impure container or onto a creeping animal stays pure in the air and in the upper vessel, with the single exception of pure cold liquid poured into impure hot liquid, which is joined because the vapor rises like a pillar of smoke and vapor is itself considered liquid, a principle the Rambam carries to a woman's hand gathering steam over a hot pot, to the honey of Zif that stretches like glue, and to the tevul yom, who does not affect ordinary food, renders terumah a tertiary derivative, and in certain joined articles disqualifies only what he touches because he is lacking only nightfall. Chapter 8 works through what counts as one thing for that person, separating loaves the baker meant to pull apart from loaves he did not, hollow first bubbles from bubbling oil, a spike of dough smaller than a fingerbreadth from a pebble, oil resting on stew from oil mixed into it, and challah still in the dough from challah removed and returned, while ruling that a tevul yom who closes the hole of a perforated barrel with his hand disqualifies all of it, that a tank of a hundred kor is joined throughout, that the Yom Kippur coals are holy while the daily coals are swept into the drain, that bottles immersed that day may receive wine declared terumat ma'aser at nightfall, and that a zav on the seventh day may not work in an olive press lest a discharge undo all seven days. Chapter 9 turns on the moment solid becomes liquid, holding that impure oil and honey stay first degree derivatives forever, that frozen masses and squeezed fruit yield pure liquid at the size of an egg or less and impure liquid above it because the first drop is defiled by the mass it leaves, that a zav who squeezes a single grape or milks a goat produces impure liquid because the first drop was carried, that a pressed mound of olives larger than an egg defiles an oven while a hundred separate olives do not, that the ring of clusters around an unlearned man's hand protects the rest of the winepress, and that consecrated loaves with liquid in their hollows are primary derivatives to the hundredth loaf.