It Defiles Until It Cures

About This Talk

Chapter 14 rules on where the ashes of the red heifer may rest, holding that an earthenware container touched on its outside by a carcass stays pure while the same container set on top of that carcass leaves the ashes impure, since Scripture requires a pure place and even a light Rabbinic impurity underneath disqualifies the place, that a container over an aperture into a house holding a corpse defiles the ashes at any size of opening when it hangs into the airspace and at a handbreadth square when it does not, unless the container is of stone, in which case the ashes are pure either way, that a tight seal protects unsanctified water and empty purified vessels but not the ashes or sanctified water, that a man standing on an oven not purified for this process defiles the vessels he holds out past its rim because being supported by the oven counts as resting on it, and that a fig of terumah the size of an egg defiles the water it fell into whether it was pure or not. Chapter 15 rules that sanctified water touched or carried for any purpose other than sprinkling is a primary source of impurity in the slightest quantity and defiles garments once there is enough to immerse the tops of the hyssop stalks, that this stops entirely once the water has performed its mitzvah so that runoff from a person properly sprinkled is pure, while hyssop dipped to sprinkle something not susceptible to impurity has performed nothing and its runoff still defiles, that disqualified water defiles the man pure for terumah and leaves the man pure for this process untouched, that mixtures follow the majority and disqualified water may not be hidden in mud, and that a man sprinkled from a public window who later learns the water was disqualified is exempt while one sprinkled from a private window brings an adjustable guilt offering. Hilchot Tum'at Tzara'at then opens with four shades of white, snow, the wool of a newborn sheep, the lime of the Temple building and the membrane of an egg, anything paler being bohak and nothing at all, all four joining as a single blemish and the mixed shade petuch measured against four cups of milk holding two, four, eight and sixteen drops of blood, before ruling that none of it is a blemish unless it appears deep beneath the surface of the skin, that the minimum size is a square gris where thirty six hairs could grow, that the shade is judged as it would appear on a person of average complexion rather than on an albino or a black man, and that white hair, healthy flesh and expansion are the three signs, with at most two weeks of isolation and no third.