The Seam They Left Showing

About This Talk

Chapter 6 opens the last of the primary sources of impurity by ruling that the impurity of false deities is of Rabbinic origin with only an allusion in the Torah, listing four categories under that heading, holding that a false deity defiles persons and vessels by touch and an earthenware container through its inner space but never when carried, that its measure is an olive-sized portion so that it should not be stricter than a portion of a corpse, that a limb cut from it is pure even as large as the steering rod of a plow and that an idol taken apart stays pure even where every part is present and an ordinary person could reassemble it, that its accessories are governed more stringently in that even an olive-sized portion cut from an implement defiles, that the stones, beams and earth of a shrine defile like the other accessories and that a man who puts his head and most of his body inside is impure as though he touched, that what is offered to a deity and wine poured out to it defile when carried like a carcass, that nullification purifies a deity and its accessories, and that a source of impurity cast into a mikveh still defiles whoever touches it there while the man who touched it becomes pure the moment he ascends. Chapter 7 turns to foods and liquids, ruling that Scripture makes them contract impurity but conveys nothing from food to food, that the Sages decreed that impure food defiles food and liquid while food never defiles a vessel, that impure liquids alone among the derivatives defile vessels on the model of the spittle of a zav, that liquid falling into a vessel's inner space renders the whole vessel impure while liquid on the outside leaves the inner surface clean for terumah though not for sacrificial food, that the Sages drew that distinction so that it would be known to be their own institution and terumah would not be burnt on account of it, and that foods descend by degrees to a fourth while liquids have no degrees at all, so a chain of a hundred leaves every link a first derivative. Chapter 8 sets out the impurity of hands, ruling that hands touching a primary derivative are impure to the joints and fixed forever at the rank of a secondary derivative, that piggul, notar and the remnants of meal offering flour defile hands at an egg-sized portion and so does the intact bone of such an offering as the base of a forbidden thing, that sacrificial meat taken past its boundary is an unresolved doubt and therefore does not defile hands while meat of the Paschal offering taken out is pure because the company is vigilant, that the decree of hands was never applied inside the Temple, that one impure hand leaves the other pure for terumah but not for sacrificial food, that Solomon and his court decreed that hands are always secondary derivatives because hands are busy, that liquids made impure by hands defile foods and other liquids but not vessels, that a person who eats a quarter of a loaf of impure food or drinks a revi'it of impure liquid within the time it takes to eat half a loaf becomes a secondary derivative until he immerses, and that the nursing son of an impure woman is pure and a pregnant woman may eat under the measure because of the danger.