The Force of Your Force

About This Talk

The cycle crosses a book boundary. Mikvaot 11 closes the whole of Sefer Taharah on the subject of hands: hands that require immersion may be immersed only in a valid mikveh of forty se'ah, since only where a person immerses his body may he immerse vessels and hands, while hands that merely need washing may not be dipped at all and must have drawn water poured over them from a container by human effort; a revi'it is the minimum for the first washing while a log suffices for a hundred at the second, because the second water only rinses off the first; that first water, having touched the hands, is impure, so a loaf of terumah falling into it contracts impurity and the same loaf falling into the second water does not; purity runs to the joint, water that passed the joint and returned makes the hand impure, washing one hand and then both together renders both impure, and anything that intervenes for the whole body intervenes for the hands. The chapter then ends the book in the Rambam's own voice: purity and impurity are chukim, impurity is not mud or filth that water could wash away, so immersion requires the intent of the heart and one who immersed without meaning to purify himself is as though he never immersed, with the allusion that whoever resolves to purify his soul of wicked thoughts and bad traits immerses it in the waters of knowledge, as Ezekiel promised pure water poured over Israel. Nizkei Mamon 1 then opens Sefer Nezikin: a man pays for whatever his living property damages, for any animal, beast or fowl and not only an ox; natural acts, eating what suits it and breaking vessels underfoot, cost the full loss collected from his choicest land, while deviations, goring or biting, cost half taken only from the body of the animal that did it, so a cheap ox that kills an expensive one is simply handed over; mu'ad is what the animal does by nature and tam is a deviation, with five deviations that can become habits and five species, wolf, lion, bear, tiger and leopard, forewarned from birth even domesticated, along with a biting snake; and liability has a geography, since he pays only where the animal entered the damaged party's domain, with no payment for eating or treading in the street or in a courtyard the parties set aside for both produce and animals, though goring and its derivatives are paid anywhere, and a courtyard set aside for produce alone makes him liable even for eating and treading. Nizkei Mamon 2 works the categories and their derivatives through: pebbles propelled by a walking animal's hooves cost half even in a private domain and from his choicest property, a law the Rambam says was received by the Oral Tradition, while a deliberate kick that propels a stone costs only a quarter because the question was never resolved and a seized half is not recovered; paying the loss is a monetary obligation and paying more or less is a fine, which rests on witnesses alone so that an admission absolves, with the half for propelled stones named as the single exception; and then the case law, the rooster crowing into a jar, the string tied to its leg that is a pit in motion, the goat that jumps or falls from a roof where climbing up was already negligence, and the dog that carries an ember into a grain heap, with the rule that whoever is negligent at the outset is liable for damage that arrives afterward through forces beyond his control.