One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
טֻמְאַת מֵת
Defilement by a Corpse 15-17
Sefer Taharah · What may be packed into a window and why the owner's intention decides it, the opening in a roof that shelters instead of leaking, and the clay vessel that can only be injured from inside
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Handbreadth square, the opening at which impurity leaves a room
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Handbreadths, below which a projection conveys impurity at any size
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Fingerbreadths, the most a projection may sit above a functional window
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Kab of bones, the measure that imparts impurity through ohel
Ch 15What may be packed into a window
- Two conditions, not one. A functional window closed entirely, or reduced to less than a handbreadth by a handbreadth, blocks impurity only if the sealing substance both resists impurity and is something the owner does not intend to move; unspoiled foods that cannot contract impurity still fail, because he means to clear them out. (15:1)
- Rot is the qualification. Spoiled foods intervene and sound ones do not; rotting straw intervenes and fresh straw does not; grain growing against the wall does not intervene, because the owner will cut it before it damages the wall, unless the roots stand off and only the leaning heads fill the opening. (15:1)
- An inventory of the unwanted. Bitter grasses unfit for fodder, filthy patches too small to wipe a scratch, a bound royal prisoner nobody may release, an eighth-month infant on the Sabbath who may not be moved, and thorn-filled salt on a shard all reduce a window, because they resist impurity and are not fit for work. (15:2)
- A worn Torah scroll, once it has been given a grave. A scroll placed in a window reduces it only where the owner decided it would be entombed there; snow, hail, sleet, ice and water never reduce a window at all, since they are susceptible to impurity. (15:2)
- The fragment that joins its own kind. Less than an olive of flesh, less than a barley-corn of bone and less than a lentil of a creeping animal all intervene, being pure and unimportant; but where a fourth of a kab of bones stands in the house, a sub-barley-corn bone fails, since it counts as part of those bones, though it still blocks an olive of flesh. (15:3, 15:5)
RememberThe wall holds where the owner stopped making plans. A barrier is a decision that happens to be made of matter.
Ch 16Openings in a roof, and who is standing over them
- The opening is a refuge, not a leak. With impurity under the roof of a house, the space directly below an aperture is pure because it is open to free space and the rest of the house is impure; if the impurity lies under the aperture alone, the whole house is pure. (16:1)
- The foot, and the order of arrival. A foot set over an aperture of a full handbreadth makes the house and the space below one ohel; where the impurity was under the aperture first he is impure, but where his foot was there before the impurity he is pure, because his foot is part of the ohel and impurity does not depart to him. (16:1)
- What hangs in the opening is not what lies under it. An olive of a corpse held in a raven's beak within the space of an aperture renders the house impure even though the aperture is smaller than a handbreadth by a handbreadth. (16:2)
- Impure objects never intervene. With a house and a loft whose apertures align at a full handbreadth, an entity susceptible to impurity placed over either one leaves everything impure, while an entity not susceptible confines the impurity to the house, or to house and loft, depending which aperture was covered. (16:3)
- Too narrow to shelter, too narrow to spread. Beams less than a handbreadth wide, aligned or staggered, let impurity pierce upward and downward to whatever is directly above or below and no further, since impurity not under a covering a handbreadth wide and a handbreadth high is treated as flush. (16:6)
RememberTwo men in the identical posture over the identical corpse, and the only question the halacha asks is which of them was standing there first.
Ch 17Projections, and the vessel injured only from within
- Twelve handbreadths, and an admission. A projection facing downward from an entrance conveys impurity at any size when it stands twelve handbreadths or less above the earth, and the Rambam states plainly that this is merely a Rabbinic ordinance, as is every case where impurity is conveyed by something that is not a sturdy ohel. (17:1)
- Which window it serves changes the measure. A projection across a functional window conveys impurity at a thumbbreadth if it sits two fingerbreadths or less above it and needs a full handbreadth above that height; over a window made for light it conveys at any size and any height. (17:3)
- Stacked projections carry impurity in bands. Two projections a handbreadth square with a handbreadth between them confine impurity to the space where it sits; below a handbreadth in size, impurity pierces upward and downward whether or not there is space between them, because the arrangement is flush. (17:4)
- The thickness of a wall decides a jug. An earthenware jug on its base in open space with an olive of a corpse below its inner space is impure, while impurity below the thickness of its walls leaves it pure, since an earthenware container contracts impurity only from its inner space. (17:6)
- An impure jug is a road, not a wall. All of that applies to a pure jug resting on the earth; if it was impure, raised a handbreadth, covered, or overturned, everything is impure, and jugs touching each other over a handbreadth are treated as a single ohel. (17:6)
RememberA clean vessel stops impurity at the thickness of its own wall. The same vessel, already compromised, stops it nowhere and carries it everywhere.