SUNDAY, AUGUST 23
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What Nobody Intends to Move
Tum'at Met 15-17 | Sefer Taharah
Spoiled figs seal a window against the impurity of a corpse. Fresh straw does not. Neither one can catch impurity and both are perfectly clean, so the difference lies somewhere other than in the material, and the Rambam builds three chapters on it. Why should a wall depend on the state of somebody's mind?
TODAY'S CHAPTERS
RECENT
A Man Is Not a Roof
Set a wide plank over a portion of a corpse and rest it on four stones, and everything lying on top of the plank stays pure. Rest the identical plank on four men, or on four stone vessels that could never become impure in a thousand years, and everything on top is impure, including the objects sitting at the far end where nothing lies beneath them. The plank has not changed. Neither has the height, nor the corpse. Why should the ruling turn on what the roof is standing on?
Three Handbreadths of New Earth
A field where a grave was plowed over can be made pure by laying three handbreadths of fresh earth across it, or by stripping three handbreadths away. Do a handbreadth and a half of each and the Rambam says your actions are of no consequence. The distance is identical. Why does half of one remedy plus half of the other come to nothing?
What the Lime Is For
A vessel of stone is one of the few things in the world that can never become impure. Lay that same stone across the mouth of a grave and whoever touches it carries seven days of impurity, and lift it off and it is a stone again. Nothing entered it and nothing was done to it. What changed, if the stone did not?
Everything That Grows Back
Every element of a corpse is impure, the Rambam writes, with the exception of the teeth, the hair, and the nails. He gives the reason in four words. For they are replaced. The severest impurity in the Torah stops at exactly the parts of a body that were still growing when it stopped. Why should renewal be the one thing death cannot touch?
The Roof and the Womb
The last chapter of Sefer Korbanot is about animals that nobody consecrated. Holiness reached them in the womb, because of what their mothers were, and not one word was spoken over them. Then the book closes, Sefer Taharah opens, and the first thing the Rambam wants you to understand is that a man who puts the tip of his nose across a doorway is impure for seven days. What is it that both books think passes between two bodies that are not touching?
The Sin That Consecrates
A man says six words over an ordinary ewe and takes forty lashes for a transgression that involved no deed at all. Then the law informs him that the six words worked. Both animals are holy now, the one he wanted to release and the one he brought forward in its place, and neither one is going home. Why forbid an exchange and then enforce it?