Shabbat 16: The Ritual Purity of Vessels of Different Materials, Water, and Samaritan Girls

The rabbis continue their discussion about metal, glass, wooden and leather vessels.  Different laws of ritual impurity apply to each type of vessel.  This is also dependance on on whether they have receptacles or are flat, whether they were ritually pure before broken, and how they might be reformed after having been broken.  Flat glass objects do not become impure at all.  Glass was decided to be distinct from other types of vessels, as the Sages used the principle: rabbinic ordinances after comparable Torah laws.

Rav Ashi says that glass vessels and earthenware vessels are similar because both should not become ritually impure from contact on their outer sides - their inner and outer sides look the same.  

Shimon ben Shatach, who brought us the ketuba, marriage contract, for women, also decreed impurity upon metal vessels.  The Gemara notes the Torah directive in Numbers (31:22-23): metal vessels are impure - gold, silver, bronze, iron, tin and lead, ie. anything that can be passed through fire or sprinkled with water to ritually purify.  

We are told of Shimon ben Shatach's sister, Shel Tziyyon or Shlomtziyyon the queen (married to King Alexander Yannai, following the Pharisees, ruling for nine years after her husband died which were considered the happiest years during the Second Temple period), whose vessels became impure for the wedding feast of her son.  The smith melded the broken vessels together to make new vessels, but the Sages judged that this was ineffective because the vessels will take on their previous impurity.

The rabbis explain that they are concerned that people will take short cuts rather than continue to properly purify their metal vessels.  Rava suggests that there was a decree to help the people remember that immersion on the same day is sufficient for a vessel to be purified.  It was not simply immersion but immersion and waiting until sunset that day.

We are told that several of the eighteen decrees were enumerated.  In another Mishna, we learn that one who places vessels under the drain pipe to collect rainwater are considered to hold drawn water.  This applies to stone, earth and dung vessels, small or large.  Only if the water leaks and flows into less than full mikvah does it disqualify that mikvah.  Beit Shammai says that this is true whether the vessels are left there intentionally or forgotten there.  Rabbi Meir says that they were counted in Chananya ben Chizkiya and Beit Shammai outnumbered Beit Hillel.  He says that Beit Shammai agree with Beit Hillel that the water is pure if the vessels are left in the courtyard and fill with rainwater.  Rabbi Yosei says that the dispute was not settled.

Rav Mesharshiya says that the Sages of the school of Rav say that Everyone agrees that if one places vessels in the courtyard before the rain begins, then the water is impure.  If one places the vessels in the courtyard while it is raining, the water is pure. 

Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak says that the decree that the daughters of the Kutim, Samaritans, are considered to have the status of menstruating women from their cradle.  This is because Samaritans did not accept that law that seeing menstrual blood in one's youth puts that girl into a state of ritual impurity.  The Samaritans did not accept that halacha.  Due to this the Sages assumed that some girls would see the blood of menstruation before their twelfth birthdays but would ignore those impurities, and so all Kutim girls were seen as ritually impure.

Our daf ends with another decree. We learned that all movable objects the width of an ox goad, a olng stick for directing plowing animals, transmit impurity.  This is because vessels could become impure if one side of the goad had been placed over a corpse and the other was over the vessels.  The impurity would be transferred due to the impurity of a tent over a corpse.