Keilim, Chapter 26, Mishnah 1. This perek turns to vessels made of leather, and our mishnah opens with a particular kind of item: a piece of leather (or wood) that lies flat, yet by means of a string drawn through it can be gathered up and closed until it holds something inside. Is such a thing a receptacle or not? The mishnah answers by listing which utensils are governed by the coming halachah.
The first is the "sandal amki", a sandal of a certain type made of a piece of leather with slits along its edges and a string threaded through them, much like laces. A person would set his foot on the leather, pull the string tight, and the leather would close around the foot.
The second is the "kis shel shenatzot", a leather purse of the drawstring sort, with a cord running through openings around it. When the cord was pulled, the mouth of the pouch drew shut.
Rabbi Yehuda broadens the list with one more object: "af kefifah mitzrit", a basket of the Egyptian style plaited from strips of palm. Here too a cord ran through the weave, and once it was tightened the loose plaited sheet drew itself inward, its rim gathering until what had been flat now served as a container.
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel adds yet another: "af sandal ladiki kayotzei bahen", a sandal of the Ladiki type, built on the same principle as the sandal described above, and anything else of that kind.
Why the String Is Everything
The rule with leather, and likewise with wood, is that such materials are susceptible to tumah only when they form a receptacle, something that holds. That is precisely why the drawstring in all of these items is so significant. Once the cord is drawn and the flat leather or the flat weave closes into a container, the utensil is now capable of contracting tumah. And by the same logic, so long as the string is what created the receptacle, removing the string can undo it and leave the item unable to become tamei.
This explains the wording of the ruling. Such utensils, the mishnah teaches, are made susceptible to tumah and released from it "shelo be'uman", with no craftsman needed. Should any layman thread the cord through, the object has become a vessel with a cavity from that moment and is fit to receive tumah. Should any layman slip the cord back out, the susceptibility departs along with it.
Rabbi Yose's Question
Rabbi Yose's Question
Where the Real Distinction Lies
Rabbi Yose does not deny that these objects stand apart from ordinary vessels, nor that what sets them apart is what a layman, a hedyot, is able to do. His objection is only to the way the distinction was framed, since acquiring and losing the status of a container is nothing unique to them. Here is how he puts it: these particular items stay "temei'in" even after the cord has been loosened and drawn out entirely, and the reason is that anyone at all, with no trade or training, can thread it back in and turn the object into a vessel a second time.
In other words, precisely because restoring the drawstring is so simple a matter, the item is regarded as complete even while the string is absent. Once the string had been in place and the vessel existed, it does not shed its susceptibility to tumah merely because the cord was pulled out.
The Exception: The Egyptian Basket
The Exception: The Egyptian Basket
So our mishnah leaves us with a fine and very human measure. A vessel whose wholeness any ordinary person can restore in a moment is treated as whole even in the interval; a vessel whose repair lies beyond the reach of even a skilled hand is treated as broken.