Daily Talk
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?
Everything That Grows Back
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About This Talk
Chapter 3 sets out the full inventory of what conveys the impurity of the dead, twelve entities by touch, carrying and overshadowing and seven more by touch and carrying alone, then narrows the category of rekev to a body buried naked and intact in stone or glass, rules that a corpse burned or ground past its form is pure, and records the Rambam's own view that any source not requiring a nazirite to shave is Rabbinic rather than Scriptural. Chapter 4 governs measurement and joining: a revi'it must come from a single body, only sources of equal measure combine, anything joined together by man is not considered joined while a grave or a shelter does join, an olive-sized portion lost in a house and later found renders the house impure retroactively, and carrying, touching and overshadowing are three separate categories whose half measures never add to one another. Chapter 5 follows the impurity outward, from seven days to a single evening, through the rule that a sword is like a corpse, to the limit of Scriptural liability at the second link, closing with the ruling that a covering becomes impure only if it is woven or made of hides on the model of the Sanctuary, while everything beneath it is impure regardless.