Hey there, and welcome back to Take One, the podcast that brings you just one

pure page of Talmud each day.

And I say pure, because in today's page,

Chulin 34, we get discussions like this one. Have a listen. Rabbi Yoshua said to Rabi Elisar,

we found that food with second degree impurity renders other food impure with second degree impurity by means

of liquids. Liquids that come into contact with food with second degree impurity by means of liquids. Liquids that come into contact with food

with second degree impurity render other food with which they come into contact impure with

second degree impurity. And on and on it goes. Now look, this is very, very, very, very, very dense

stuff. The sort of halakhic intricacy, it will take much more time than this here

humble podcast has at its disposal to properly explain. So, we're going to give you a very

brief primer followed by what we hope is an insight we can all take to heart, even if we don't

particularly care about the various degrees of tum-a or ritual impurity.

First, a brief explanation. Judaism, as we all know by now, if you listen to this podcast,

is deeply concerned with tum-a and tahara, or ritual impurity and purity, two states of

being that have a deep impact on a whole host of human relations and interactions and

behaviors.

But this condition is far from a binary because tum-a has various degrees.

A corpse, for example, a dead person, is considered the highest level of tum-a,

and it's literally called avot-a-tum-a, or literally the father of the father of impurity, the ultimate source of impurity.

Then we have avotatatuma, or the fathers of impurity, simply, which includes, for example,

a person afflicted with the biblical disease known as Tsarat, sometimes inaccurately translated

as leprosy, or a menstruating woman. And after that, we're looking at descending

...