Hey ladies ... here is an opportunity to test your husbands and see if he really goes to the daf....
Also it is a good opportunity for the entire family to share thoughts on the daf ... so that the family feels united by discussing what the head of the house is studying.
You can copy and print this without my consent, since Torah belongs to all of us.....
See previous Daf Yoimie Snippets
"דף ל''ג "טמאת ידים
Page33 Mesectas Chullin
"Contamination (Tumah) of the Hands"
*This "snippet" is a bit longer than usual because of its complexity ...
When we talk about "tumah" "contamination" in the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch " "we speak about a "spiritual contamination."
From here on in, I will use the word that the Torah & Talmud use .. "tumah" ....instead of the English word "contamination" because the english translation doesn't do the meaning of "tumah" justice.
Before I explain this particular daf, I must introduce some concepts in "tumah," and so that's the reason this particular "snippet" will be a bit longer than my usual "snippets".
Introduction:
When a Jewish person touches a corpse with his hand, his entire body contracts "tumah"
There are many levels or degrees of "tumah." I will attempt to summarize them briefly..
The strictest level of tumah, is אבי אבות הטמאה ... which if translated literally, means "father of fathers" of tumah.
and that level of tumah can only be the corpse itself ....
The level below that, is far more common, and that is called
אב הטמאה, which means literally "father of tumah."
In order to contract this level of tumah a person would have to touch a human corpse or the carcass of one of the 8 species of creeping creatures listed in the Torah and these creatures are referred to as Sheratzim ...
Included in this tumah are kosher animals that died not by "ritually slaughter" but were killed for example by a bullet etc. and that animal is now a "נבילה"
Also included are the following humans :
Zav, Zavah, Niddah or Metzora ..
Now ......
Any object that comes in contact with an אב הטמאה,
becomes a ראשון לטמאה a tumah in the "first degree"
Under Biblical law ... people or vessels that came in contact with this mentioned tumah can no longer convey tumah to some other item.... it stops...
The exception:
Food items that came in contact with an אב הטמאה can acquire what is called : שני לטמאה ..."second degree" of tumah.
But in the case of "chullin" which is ordinary food, (not consecrated,) tumah can go no further than a שני לטמאה
so if a שני לטמאה touches "chullin" it conveys no degree of tumah.
However food items that are Terumah or Kodesh, due to greater degrees of stringency associated with them, can go beyond שני לטמאה
and can become שלישי לטמאה a third degree level and in the case of Kodesh food even a רביעי לטמאה a fourth level of tumah!
Back to our daf:
We discussed above that if one touches a corpse his entire body becomes tumah.....and he becomes a אב הטמאה
Now,
if this person who is now a אב הטמאה, touches another person, that person is as we mentioned above, becomes a
ראשון לטמאה ...
so, it would follow our logic that if this ראשון לטמאה, now touches another person, this "touched" person or object would not contract any tumah .....it would stop (except if he touched food.)
But the rabbis enacted a rule (תקנה) that the hands of this person who is a ראשון לטמאה becomes a שני לטמאה as well ...
his hands not his entire body..
So now he can still covey tumah to Teruma & Kodesh foods with his hands.
The rabbis enacted this rule so that people be careful what with their hands at all times and that is the novelty of this rule.
Therefore the Kohanim had to wash their hands before they ate terumah .. because of its greater sanctity.
The rabbis instituted that all of us should wash their hands before eating bread to be in the habit of being careful with our hands...... and now you know why we wash to bread ...
Press "read more" immediately below to continue to the rest of the dafim!