Daily Talk
A man carrying water for the ashes kills a scorpion in the road and the water is ruined. The same man kills the same scorpion and the water is fine. What decides it is whether the scorpion was blocking his way. Why should purity turn on what else a person was thinking about?
What the Other Hand Was Doing
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About This Talk
Chapter 8 rules that any work performed before the ashes are placed on the water disqualifies it whether the carrier stood still or not, while an act that is not work disqualifies only if he stopped walking, which is why delivering a ruling, rendering a judgment, witnessing a chalitzah or giving a traveler directions all ruin the water, and why killing a scorpion that blocked his path or eating as he walks does not; it then turns on intention so finely that leftovers thrown under a fig tree disqualify if he meant to preserve them and not if he meant to be rid of them, protects the whole system with watchmen who may work in turns so long as they never all work at once, and rules that a man working with one hand ruins his own water and not a colleague's, since work disqualifies water only in the hands of its owner or its watchman. Chapter 9 sets the order, water into the vessel and ashes laid on top so that they are seen floating, requires that the ashes be cast by hand with focused intent so that ashes spilled by wind or by a friend's shove leave the water unsanctified, then works through what joins two bodies of water and what ruins one, from a film as thin as a garlic peel to the dove that sucks without drooling and the mole that licks, and closes on the vessel left open and found closed, which is disqualified because a person certainly covered it and his purity cannot be established. Chapter 10 divides the labor between one who draws, one who sanctifies and one who sprinkles, records the boat on the Jordan and the decree that followed it along with the permission to wade to the neck and the release of unsanctified drawn water, insists that the container be carried in front of the man rather than slung behind him because the verse calls it a safekeeping, disqualifies water used as a counterweight since a weight is not a watched thing, and ends by requiring precise intent of the one sprinkling while asking nothing at all of the one being purified, who may be sprinkled without his knowledge.