Daily Talk
Spoiled figs seal a window against the impurity of a corpse. Fresh straw does not. Neither one can catch impurity and both are perfectly clean, so the difference lies somewhere other than in the material, and the Rambam builds three chapters on it. Why should a wall depend on the state of somebody's mind?
What Nobody Intends to Move
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About This Talk
Chapter 15 rules that a window blocks impurity only when the substance closing it both resists impurity and is something its owner has no intention of moving, which is why rotting figs and bitter grass and a worn Torah scroll given a grave in the wall all seal a house while fresh straw, clean water and ice do not, and it closes on the fragment of bone that blocks an olive of flesh yet fails against a quarter kab of bones because it is counted together with them. Chapter 16 turns to openings in a roof, where the patch of floor beneath an aperture is pure because it stands open to the sky, where a handbreadth of open space is the measure at which impurity departs, and where a foot laid over the opening makes house and aperture one ohel and leaves the man himself pure or impure depending only on whether he or the corpse arrived first. Chapter 17 works through projections that convey impurity by Rabbinic decree, the ledges and windows they serve, and the earthenware jug that stays pure when a corpse lies beneath the thickness of its wall and becomes a road for impurity the moment it has been rendered impure itself.