Daily Talk
A zav who administers lashes to a pure man makes him impure, and not from the blows. The reason given is that if the man being struck stepped aside, the man striking him would fall over. He was leaning the whole time. Four cloths under the legs of a bed are all impure and four cloths under the feet of a donkey are all pure. Why should a piece of furniture hold a man more truly than an animal does?
The Reach That Does Not Pass Down
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About This Talk
Chapter 7 fixes the five ways a zav renders a bed, a seat or a saddle impure without ever touching it, by standing above it, sitting on it, lying on it, hanging from it or leaning on it, so that a stone laid between them changes nothing, and it fixes the seven ways such a surface conveys impurity back to a person, sets the threshold at the majority of the body so that five benches end to end are all impure and the same five side by side are all pure, rules that four supports under a bed's legs are all impure because a bed cannot stand on three while four supports under an animal's feet are all pure because an animal can and an assist is not significant, and closes with the rule that an article not made for sitting stays pure because its owner can be told to stand up and let the work go on. Chapter 8 sets out heseit, the impurity a zav conveys by moving a pure person or a pure vessel, which the Rambam calls an extra dimension that has no comparison in the entire Torah, reaching further than touch so that a sealed earthenware jar he touches stays pure while the same jar he nudges is impure, requiring a revealed limb to move but not to carry, grading a balance scale by which way the beam tipped, making every shaky plank, thin tree, unnailed ladder and unmortared beam a channel of impurity while a large boat and a mortared beam are not, ruling that a zav who administers lashes defiles the man he strikes because he is leaning on him, and closing on a finger held above a body with a note that this impurity appears to the Rambam to be Rabbinic. Chapter 9 draws the line between a man's own force and the trembling of a support, so that whatever falls from the power of his blow is impure and whatever falls because the support was already unsteady is pure, rules the loaf knocked off a firm oven pure even if it is terumah and impure if a shard of the oven clings to it even if it is ordinary bread, and then rules that a surface which has itself become midras conveys only by touching, so that anything above it or below it without contact, even with a sheet of paper between, is pure, before closing with the garments treated as midras by force of doubt in a small boat and on a shared bed.