Daily Talk
A man stacks clay jars from floor to roof to keep the impurity of a corpse out of half his house. Turn the mouths toward the clean side and the wall holds. Turn the same jars around and impurity crosses as though nothing had been built there. Nothing was added and nothing was removed, so what exactly is doing the work?
Which Way the Jars Are Facing
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About This Talk
Chapter 24 works through partitions without ever weighing one, ruling that a wall of jars protects only when the mouths face the clean side, that straw stops dividing a house the moment there is clearance enough to show the owner means to remove it, and that a wall serving a house is judged by which half the impurity falls in, so that an owner who adds plaster to the outer face moves the impurity into the inner half and makes his own house impure, while a skin of rock as thin as a garlic peel is a complete barrier. Chapter 25 runs the same instrument backward, since a solid pillar holds impurity to a single vertical line while a hollow of one cubic handbreadth inside a pillar or a wall turns it into a sealed grave that leaves ten stories impure, and the chapter ends with a doorstep decided by the lintel, a dog decided by where in its body the flesh is lodged, and two rings that certainly touched inside a man's stomach without anything happening at all. Parah Adumah 1 opens the red heifer with the same test in a different material, disqualifying her for two hairs of the wrong color, for a yoke laid on her whether or not she ever plowed, and for a lead rope folded onto her back, while leaving her fit for a rope that restrains a rebellious animal, a shoe that keeps her from slipping, a garment spread against flies, and a full morning standing in a threshing team she never worked in.