Pesachim 14a, b

I am not going to pretend that I understood today's daf.  One of the most challenging concepts for me was introduced in earnest today: ritual im/purity.  I will briefly walk through my understanding of the text; however, the details will do me in, I will leave many of them out.

At the very start of today's daf, the rabbis mention that the removal of two cows ploughing on the Mount of Olives on erev Pesach would signify to the community that it was time to burn leaven.  And why would it be alright to plough on the eve of a chag?  Because the ploughing was not labour but a symbolic act.

Alright, here we go.

A longer-than-average mishna teaches us about ritual impurity.  Rabbi Chanina (the deputy High Priest) says that in the days of the priests - as he lived through the destruction of the second Temple - meat that came into contact with a secondary source of impurity could be burned together with meat that came into contact with a primary source of impurity.  He says that this was done despite the fact that they added a degree of impurity to the impurity of the first piece of meat.

Rabbi Akiva adds that in the days of the priests, terumah oil that was ritually disqualified through contact with a person who immersed during the day would become pure in a lamp that became ritually impure with first-degree impurity through contact with one who had contact with a corpse.  This was done despite the fact that again they would add impurity to impurity.

Rabbi Meir said that these statements prove that we can burn ritually pure terumah  with impure terumah when removing leaven on erev Pesach.  Rabbi Yosei tells us that "aynah hi hamidah", this is not the inference (noting a logical error in legal discourse), for Rabbi Meir is speaking of pure terumah and impure terumah rather than two batches of terumah with two different degrees of impurity.

Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua believed that ritually pure and ritually impure terumah are burned separately.   However, Rabbi Yehoshua believed that terumah in abayance (unknown ritual status) may be burned together with impure terumah.  Rabbi Eliezer believed that they should be burned separately, as well.

Okay, that was the mishna.  Relatively clear... although the larger picture regarding ritual purity is still fuzzy.  In the Gemara, the rabbis try to better understand and extend the ideas introduced in the mishna.    Much of their conversation is a debate about first, second, third and fourth degree ritual impurity.  Steinsaltz provides us with an impressive chart to elucidate this piece of the system of ritual purity.  However, that foundational piece is missing for me.

I understand that the ultimate primary source of ritual impurity is a corpse.  Yet my understanding is that a "leper" (not a literal translation of the condition), a zav, an animal carcass and a dead creeping animal are also primary sources of ritual impurity.  They system of 'degrees' tells us that contact with a ritually impure object designates that new person or object as ritually impure as well, but at a lesser (2nd, 3rd, or 4th) degree.  Some things - people, vessels, foods - are able to contract the status of 'ritually impure' as a 'first-degree'.  Once that person, vessel or food contacts another object, it confers second-degree ritual impurity upon that object.  

Liquids and sacred items (including terumah, the consecrated food set aside for priests) contract ritual impurity differently than other objects.   Those who immerse themselves during the day after having contracted ritual impurity change status slightly (change 'degrees') up until the sun sets, when they are deemed fully ritually pure.  And items are called 'disqualified' when they are themselves ritually impure but they cannot impart ritual impurity to others.  

After many debates, the daf ends with a conclusion regarding the rabbis' ideas on burning impure and pure leaven together; on burning first degree impure and second degree impure terumah together.  Torah law is slightly different than rabbinic law regarding ritual impurity.  Thus the mishna must have been referring to an object that was a primary source of impurity by Torah law and another object that was a secondary source impurity by rabbinic law - but was entirely pure by Torah law.

The rabbinic system that informs us about which items confer which degree of ritual impurity upon which other items is relatively simple, and yet conceptually complex.  I look for patterns or meaning but I cannot figure it out on my own.  

I wonder about the ritual impurity of buildings, which is not mentioned in today's daf, and of women when menstruating.  I want to guess that ritual impurity has something to do with death or a connection to death, but I can't quite complete the analysis.  A woman's period could be seen to be related to death -- the presence of blood, the loss of a 'potential life'.  But a vessel?  Or a mouldy wall?

Hopefully I will be introduced to more detail (gulp) about this concept so that I can better make sense of its patterns and relevance.