A New Entity

About This Talk

Chapter 6 rules that a vessel which contracted impurity regains purity once it is broken past the use it was made for, and fixes the measure by that use, so ordinary wooden and bone vessels are pure when a pomegranate would fall through, small containers when an olive would, a breadbasket when a loaf would, a gardener's bushel when a bundle of vegetables would and a bathhouse attendant's when stubble would, and it rules that a vessel perforated and patched again and again until the holes together come to a pomegranate is pure although patched over entirely, because it is a new entity, before working through baskets and trellises made full of holes from the start, a frame of any size that makes them susceptible again, a chest that cannot hold bowls but can hold pots, a chamber pot that holds no liquid but holds waste, a divided wooden vessel against the double table, double bench and compartment pot that were two things from the outset, a table pure once its legs are gone unless a man means to eat off it like a board, wicker saved by the least bit of its border seal, a fallen bench retied with rope, camel saddle-baskets released and tied ten times in a day, and a table so completely covered in marble that it is pure. Chapter 7 fixes the moment leather becomes a vessel item by item, a shepherd's satchel when its edges are folded and its straps made, tefillin when the cube is finished though the strap is still to come, a shoe when it is set on the mold, and rules that a hide with no form of a vessel is pure, so the thorn gatherer's hand covering, the dung hide, the muzzle, the bee chaser and the fan are all pure, that fruit reapers' finger coverings alone are susceptible because sumach berries gather in them, and it gives the principle that leather made as a receptacle, as protection from thorns or for a good grip is susceptible while leather made only against sweat, so the work is not spoiled, is not, before following straps any ordinary person can retie, a pouch flattened back into plain hide, an amulet wrapper pure and impure ten times a day, and the four compartments of the head tefillin removed and restored until the impurity runs out. Chapter 8 rules that metal is not susceptible until nothing at all remains to be done to it, so a sword is pure until it is smoothed and a knife until it is sharpened, that whatever is made from ore, bars, plates, rims or handles is unfinished and pure while whatever is made from broken or worn vessels is susceptible, that a vessel lacking only its lid is susceptible because a lid is not part of it, that flat metal is susceptible where flat wood is pure and unfinished wood is susceptible where unfinished metal is pure, that weapons and human ornaments are susceptible while ornaments for animals and vessels are not unless they sound a note a person wants, and finally that any vessel can be made susceptible by thought alone and can never be released by thought, because a deed undoes a deed or a thought while a thought undoes neither.