What do you do with trumah erev Pesakh? Setting up the question TB 14

What do you do with trumah erev Pesakh? Setting up the question TB 14

 With today’s daf TB Pesakhim 14 we enter the theoretical world of halakha. When the Temple stood and for an elite group called haverim some times after the laws concerning ritual readiness (tahor- טהור) and ritual unreadiness (tamei-טמא) played a major role in the religious life of Israel. Priests who offered up sacrifices and the sacrifices themselves had to be tahor. Sacrifices had to be eaten in a state of ritual readiness. Trumah, the tithe given to the priests had to safe guarded to insure it remained in a state of ritual readiness. If it became tamei, the trumah had to be burnt and no benefit could be derived from it. Now that the Temple is no more all these laws were put in abeyance until the third Temple will be built.

The Mishnah asks the question how should a priest despose his hametz. Is he allowed to burn it with hametz trumah and thus purposely turn the trumah that is tahor into trumah that is tamei? Alternately, should he burn the tahor trumah separately from the tamei trumah, that means having two separate piles?

“Rabbi Meir said: From their statements we learned that one may burn ritually pure teruma with impure teruma when removing leaven on Passover eve. The rationale that applies to the two previous cases applies here as well. Since both items are being burned, one may disregard the fact that one item will assume a higher degree of ritual impurity in the process. Rabbi Yosei said: That is not the inference from which the halakha in the case of ritually pure and ritually impure teruma can be learned. In those first two cases, the two items are both ritually impure, albeit at different degrees of ritual impurity. Rabbi Meir is referring to the combination of impure teruma with pure teruma, which would render pure teruma ritually impure.

“And in fact Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua, who disagree with regard to the burning of leavened teruma, nevertheless concede that one burns this ritually pure teruma by itself and that impure teruma by itself. With regard to what did they disagree? They disagreed with regard to whether one may burn teruma in abeyance, i.e., teruma whose purity is uncertain, and definitely impure teruma together, as Rabbi Eliezer says: This teruma in abeyance should be burned by itself, and that impure teruma should be burned by itself; and Rabbi Yehoshua says: In that case, both of them may be burned as one. ” (Sefaria.org translation)

The Gemara doesn’t answer the question concerning the destruction of the tahor and tamei trumah on our daf. It continues to analyze the statements of Rabbi Ḥanina the deputy High Priest and Rabbi Akiva to see if their cases are analogous to our case of the trumah, You can check them out yourself at https://www.sefaria.org/Pesachim.14a.3?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en

Here are some definitions that are indispensable as we study this the next six dappim.

Av HaTumah (אב הטומאה) is a dead animal who died by some other means than ritual slaughter, one of the dead of the eight creeping crawlers the Torah identifies (Lev. 11:29-30) zav, zavah, niddah, metszora, a, and a woman after child birth (all these people have some kind of discharge) A human corpse is an avi avot hatumah (אבי אבות הטומאה) and a person and an article touching the human corpse is also considered an av hatumah.

“Tumah is communicable condition, and is transmitted by contact from the primary source to a recipient person or object, which in turn becomes a carrier to transmit tumah further. Upon transmission, however, the tumah generally becomes weaker and the recipient acquires a lower degree than that of the transmitter.” (Art Scroll translation and commentary on massekhet Pesakhim, page 14a 1)

When somebody or article touches an av hatumah, he or it becomes a rishon letumah (ראשון לטומאה). This level of tumah is also known as vlad hatumah (ולד הטומאה). The rishon letumah can create a sheni letumah (שני לטומאה) also known as vlad vald hatumah (ולד ולד הטומאה). In certain circumstances the transmission can become a shelishi letumah ( שלישי לטומאה) and a revii letumah (רביעי לטומאה).

When tumah can no longer be transmitted to anything else, the Gemara calls that ritually unready object pasul (פסול).

Finally you have to know who is a tevul yom (טבול יום). He is a person who completed the first stage of ritual readiness by immersing in a mikvah. He may eat regular non-sanctified food (hullin-חולין) immediately after his immersion, but has to wait until night fall to eat sacred food like trumah. If he touches the sacred food as a tevul yom, it becomes shelisi letumah.

These definitions will help us as we go further in our Gemara.