Everything That Grows Back

The Hook

Three chapters on the impurity of the dead, and the sentence worth stopping over is not about death at all. Every element of a corpse is impure, the Rambam says, with the exception of the teeth, the hair, and the nails, for they are replaced. That is the whole argument. Not that they are hard, or dry, or peripheral. That they grow back. Whatever was still renewing itself is not counted among the remains, even while it lies there among them.

Tum'at Met 3: Twelve, Seven, and the Ones He Is Not Sure About

The chapter opens with two lists. Twelve entities impart impurity three ways, by touch, by carrying, and by being under the same roof: the corpse itself, an olive of its flesh, an olive of netzal, a limb carrying the required flesh, the backbone, the skull, the majority of the structure, the majority of the number of the bones, a quarter kab of bones, and two kinds of revi'it of blood. Seven more impart impurity by touch and carrying but never through a roof, and the last two on that list are not body parts at all. The earth of the nations. A field in which a grave was ploughed. Places, treated like limbs.

Then the Rambam does something he does rarely and never lightly. He says it appears to him. A quarter kab of bones under a roof, a revi'it of blood, a limb without enough flesh, these he suspects are not Scriptural impurity at all. And he does not argue from the verses. A nazirite whose term is interrupted by the dead must shave and begin again, and for these sources he need not. A man who enters the Temple in Scriptural impurity is liable, and for these he is not. So the Rambam builds a diagnostic out of two unrelated tractates and turns it on this one. Every source of corpse impurity that does not require a nazirite to shave, he concludes, is not of Scriptural origin. He has taken a question about what the Torah says and answered it by asking what the Torah makes people do.

Much of the rest concerns rekev, the decomposed mass of a body, and how hard it is to qualify. The corpse must have been buried naked and intact in a coffin of marble or glass. A garment in the grave disqualifies it, because the rot of the cloth mixes in; wood because wood rots; metal because metal rusts. Two bodies buried together, or a man buried with his own trimmed nails, or a woman buried with the child she carried, and the laws do not apply. Nor do they if somebody ground the body up. It has to decompose on its own terms, uncontaminated by anything else decaying.

Then a run of rulings pointing one direction. A body burned until its form is destroyed is pure. The ashes of the burned are pure. Flesh gone powdery and flourlike is pure. Worms that come into being from the flesh of a corpse are pure, alive or dead. The severest impurity in the Torah has an expiry, because it attaches to a form, and the form eventually goes.

Two more should stop anyone reading fast. Human skin is flesh, and impure, but skin fully processed is pure by Scriptural law. The Sages made it impure anyway, and the reason is given without softening: a decree, so that people do not become accustomed to processing human skin and using it. And on why no decree covers the liquids that flow from a corpse, when such decrees exist for the living, he answers that since everyone withdraws from a corpse, they did not feel the need. A decree is built where appetite is.

Tum'at Met 4: What Adds Up and What Does Not

Chapter four is about addition, which is more interesting than it sounds, because the Rambam spends it explaining when two things are one thing. A revi'it of blood drawn from two corpses is pure; the whole measure must come from one body. A backbone assembled from the vertebrae of two men loses the power to work through a roof and is left with touch and carrying. A limb from a living person taken from two people is pure. Even from one person, if it was cut in two, it is pure. It was a limb. Now it is pieces.

Some things do combine. An olive of flesh from two corpses combines, and half an olive of flesh joins half an olive of netzal, because they share a measure. Everything else refuses, and the reason comes with no ceremony: because they are not of equal measures. You cannot add a quarter kab to a revi'it. They are not counting the same thing.

Then the rulings about joining, the heart of the chapter. An olive-sized portion cut into pieces, flattened and pressed back together, imparts impurity through a roof and when carried, but not to the man who touches part of it, because anything joined together by man is not considered as joined. Flesh grown on a bone through the influence of heaven brings impurity into a house when the bone is carried in; flesh pushed into the bone by human hands does not. A backbone that has lost most of its vertebrae no longer works through a roof even though its shape remains, unless it is in the grave, and then it does, because the grave joins it together. A substance divided and then carried into a single house is joined again by the shelter.

Two more will not leave you alone. An olive-sized portion is lost inside a house, searched for and not found, and the house is presumed pure. If it turns up later, the house is impure retroactively, from the moment it was lost to the moment it was found. And a revi'it of blood spilled on a doorstep that slopes, inward or outward, leaves the house pure, because the blood did not come to rest there. Level the doorstep and the house is impure. Impurity requires a place to settle.

The chapter closes with the rule governing everything above it. Carrying, touching, and being under the same structure are three different categories. Two halves from one category combine and impart impurity. Two halves from two categories do not combine and the man is pure. He stands over half an olive and touches another half an olive and has done nothing at all, because a quantity that is touched is never added to a quantity that is overshadowed.

Tum'at Met 5: How Far It Travels

The last chapter follows the contamination outward and watches it thin. The man who touched the corpse is impure seven days. The man who touched him is impure until evening. That is a steep drop. The Sages closed the gap in one narrow case, ruling that if the second man was touched while the first was still in contact with the body, both are impure seven days. But the Rambam immediately fences it. In what context does this apply? With regard to terumah and sacrificial food. A nazirite, or a man bringing his Paschal offering, who is touched by someone who touched a corpse is impure only until evening, and it makes no difference whether the first man was still holding on.

Vessels are another matter, and here the Torah is severe. A blade that touched a corpse is treated as the corpse, and whatever it touches contracts seven days in turn. Would you imagine, the Rambam asks, that a man who shot an arrow and killed somebody becomes impure for seven days? Of course not. The verse speaks of a man who killed with a sword, impure because he handled the implement and the implement touched a body. Distance is not the issue. The chain of contact is.

He lays that chain out in degrees and marks where the Torah's own liability ends. For entering the Temple or eating sacrificial food, only the first two are liable. Beyond that, he says plainly, these matters, although part of the Oral Tradition, are not considered as Scriptural Law. Then the governing principle: a primary source imparts impurity to people and to vessels, and a derivative imparts impurity only to food and drink. Cross one line and you can no longer contaminate a person. You can only contaminate a meal.

And then the strangest ruling of the three chapters. A tent that overshadows a corpse contracts seven days of impurity itself, though nothing touched it, but only if it is made of cloth, sackcloth, hide, or is a wooden vessel. If the roof is slats, or a mat, or bone, or metal, or building materials, the roof is pure. The reason is not hygienic. The term tent applies only to something woven or made of hides, as in the Sanctuary. Everything under such a roof is impure, people and vessels alike; the covering itself is vulnerable only if it resembles the Mishkan.

The Unifying Principle

Set the three chapters side by side and one instinct runs through them. Impurity is real, precise, and bounded on every side. It requires a minimum quantity, and a hair less is nothing. It requires a single source, and two half sources are nothing. It requires natural joining, and human pressure is nothing. It requires a place to come to rest, and a slope is nothing. It travels along a chain and the chain runs out. It attaches to form, and when the form is gone, so is it.

The Alter Rebbe's account of impurity in Tanya is not that it is a substance but that it is a concealment, a place where the divine vitality is hidden to the furthest possible degree, which is why a human corpse is the severest of all. Nowhere else does so much light withdraw at once. But a concealment has no power of its own, and the whole structure of these chapters rests on that difference. It can only ever cover what was there. Grind the flesh to flour and there is nothing left to conceal.

The Baal Shem Tov taught that a leaf turning over in the street turns because it was turned, that nothing is too small to be held in providence. That teaching is usually received as a comfort, and it is, but it is also a demand, and here is what the demand looks like in halachah. A quarter kab. Whether the doorstep slopes. Whether the coffin was glass or wood. The measuring is not fussiness. It is the refusal to say that anything is approximately the case.

And the Rebbe returned constantly to the principle that a Jew's essence is untouched by whatever has covered it, that the covering is real enough to require work and never real enough to have changed what lies underneath. Which is what the exemption for teeth, hair, and nails is doing on the page. The Rambam does not say they are too small to matter or too far from the vital organs. He says they are replaced. Whatever in a body was oriented toward renewal is not gathered up with the remains, and death, for all its severity, has no claim on the part that was still growing.

Modern Application

Most of us carry an internal accounting these chapters would throw out on the first reading. A small unkindness from Tuesday, a small evasion from Thursday, an old failure from a decade ago, added up into a total we then walk around under. The Rambam would want to know whether they are of equal measures. They are not. Carrying is not touching and touching is not overshadowing, quantities from different categories do not combine, and a man standing over half an olive while holding another half is clean. No amount of feeling otherwise makes the arithmetic legal.

Then the rule about joining, which cuts the other way and cuts deeper. Anything joined together by man is not considered as joined. You cannot press the fragments of a life into a shape and have the shape count. The pieces of an olive, flattened until they look continuous, will fool a roof and will not fool a hand. What heaven grew holds. What a grave holds, holds. What we compressed to look whole is still a pile, and everybody who touches it finds that out.

The lost olive is the hardest of them for anyone who has done a serious accounting of himself. He looked. He genuinely looked. He did not find it, the house was pure, and years later the thing surfaces and the ruling is retroactive. That sounds cruel until you notice what it protects. The Rambam refuses to say that a search settles a fact, and refuses just as firmly to say that a man who searched honestly and found nothing was living a lie. Both hold at once, and in the meantime you are permitted to live in the house.

And the decree about human skin belongs to this week more than any other passage here. The Sages forbade what the Torah permitted so that people would not get used to processing human skin and using it. Not because it was dangerous, but because of what a person becomes once the material stops registering as a person. The halachic answer is not an argument. It is a decree designed to keep the hands from becoming accustomed.

The Closing

These chapters land on the third of Elul, in a month whose entire work is a search of the house. The temptation of such a search is to conclude that so many small things must add to a large thing. Three chapters say otherwise with great technical patience. Measures that are not equal do not combine. What was crushed past its form is pure. What was pressed together by hand was never joined.

And then the exemption, the only warm sentence in a cold subject, doing all the work. The teeth, the hair, the nails. Not exempt because they are marginal. Exempt because they are replaced. Whatever in you is still in the business of growing back is not part of the inventory being taken this month, and never was. The search you are conducting is a search for what has stopped renewing, so that you can find out how little of you that actually is.