Daily Talk
A man who has had no discharge in four years is impure this morning exactly as he was on the first day, because he never went into the water. A woman who touches nothing makes a thousand mattresses impure by sitting on a stone laid across the top of the pile. Weight travels through anything. Time travels through nothing. Why should the years count for so little and one afternoon on a stone for so much?
Nothing Expires by Waiting
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About This Talk
Chapter 4 sets out the four women who are impure only from the moment they discover bleeding and never retroactively, the pregnant woman once her pregnancy is obvious, the nursing woman for twenty four months even if the child died or was weaned, the girl who has never menstruated and the woman called elderly in her presence who does not protest, and it fixes when a young girl begins to defile retroactively, ordains the morning and evening inspections that shorten the reach of the unknown, and turns to bloodstained garments, which are presumed impure from Jewish homes and pure from gentile ones and pure when found lying in the streets, are treated with seven detergent agents and immersed, and are classified after the fact by how fussy the owner proved to be about the last remaining trace. Chapter 5 rules that days alone purify nobody, that a zav or a woman after childbirth who let years pass without immersing is impure exactly as before, that blood discharged while descending into the mikveh is impure and blood discharged while ascending is pure, that a woman in her days of purity holds the standing of one who immersed today and has not yet seen nightfall, and that a discharge before dark on the seventh spotless day unravels the entire count. Chapter 6 defines the surfaces on which one lies, sits and rides, derives from two verses why touching a riding surface leaves the garments clean while carrying one does not, makes what rests above a zav impure by Rabbinic decree, keeps a bed impure after its owner dies until the flesh decomposes lest he only lost consciousness, and rules that a thousand mattresses under a single stone are all primary sources of impurity while food and vessels lying beneath an untouched zav are pure.