Negaim, Chapter 3, Mishnah 8. Until now the Mishnah has been charting the four categories of tzara'as that attach themselves to a human body: the nega of the or basar (ordinary skin), the nega that settles on a shechin or a michvah (a boil or a burn), the netakim, which are the tzara'as of the hair-bearing areas of the rosh and the zakan, and finally korachas and gabachas, the nega of the bald scalp in front and in back. Now the Mishnah moves off the human body entirely. Tzara'as also visits objects, and the Mishnah turns first to begadim, garments.
Here is the Mishnah's own language. "HaBegadim mitam'im": garments are capable of taking on tumah. They do so, the Mishnah teaches, "uvishloshah simanim", through three indicators, and the whole process unfolds "bishnei shavu'os", across a span of two weeks. The three indicators are "yerakrak", "adamdam" and "pisyon". Yerakrak means green at full strength, and adamdam red at full strength. Hebrew conveys intensity by doubling a root, so that yarok yields yerakrak and adom yields adamdam. A garment bearing an everyday green or an everyday red is not our subject at all; what the Mishnah wants is a rich, heavy tone of either color. Pisyon means that the mark has grown, the very siman already met in the nega'im of the flesh.
Next the Mishnah assigns each siman its moments. "B'yerakrak uva'adamdam bit'chilah": the two colors carry weight already at the Kohen's opening inspection, and again "b'sof shavua rishon", once the first seven days have run their course, and again "uv'sof shavua sheni", once the second period has run its course, and even "ule'achar haptur", after a ruling of taharah has already been issued. Spreading, by contrast, is listed only from the close of the first period onward: it counts when the first seven days are up, when the second seven days are up, and after the p'tur, but never at the initial viewing. The Mishnah then adds up the days involved, and that reckoning will occupy us at the end.
Why the colors are simanim here and not by a person
The Rav raises an obvious difficulty. When the Mishnah listed the simanim of the nega'im of a person, it never listed the colors, even though the first perek of the masechta went to great lengths to define them. Why are the shades of white not counted among the simanei tum'ah?
His answer goes to the heart of the matter. The whites catalogued in the opening perek (baheres azah k'sheleg, the shade of sid haheichal, the whiteness of tzemer lavan, and at the weakest point of the scale krum habeitzah, the thin skin found on an egg, together with the shades mixed with red that Rebbe Yishmael and Rebbe Akiva discuss, adamdam and patuach) are in no sense simanei tum'ah. What they establish is eligibility: a liability to tum'ah, a state of exposure, a prerequisite. A man may live out all his years with a gris-sized patch of one of those whites, or with a far larger one, and never be a metzora, so long as it does not expand, no dark hair within it turns white, and no michyah, a square of sound flesh, opens in its center. He stays tahor throughout. Colors such as these call for observation and nothing beyond that; they open the door to tzara'as without themselves being tzara'as. With garments the arrangement is different: yerakrak and adamdam are themselves enumerated by the Mishnah as simanim of tzara'as.
What "bit'chilah" means here
The Tosfos Yom Tov calls attention to something further. Elsewhere in this perek, when a siman such as se'ar lavan (hair that had been dark and went white) was present already at the first sighting, the immediate result was that the man was ruled a metzora muchlat. The same word carries less force here. In his formulation, "Ein zeh k'mo bit'chilah" of the other cases, "d'chulhan nega'im", since in those "d'chulu l'hachlit", the first look can produce hechlet, whereas "v'hacha l'hasgir", here it produces no more than hesger, shutting the garment away as a case still under suspicion. He adds that the Mishnah nonetheless bothers to mention that stage, "Umikol makom tani lah", "mishum pisyon", in order to set the colors off against spreading, which has no force whatever at the outset. Should the Kohen literally watch the stain widening during his very first examination, the garment is still not muchlat. That opening visit turns on color alone, and all that color accomplishes there is a hesger.
When the First Hesger Runs Out
The Tiferes Yisroel spells out what the Kohen finds when he returns after the first week of hesger. Bear in mind that here too the nega must be the size of a gris.
- Two developments for the worse (shnayim l'rei'usa): the mark has held its original shade, or a fortiori has grown darker, and in addition it has expanded. The Kohen rules it muchlat there and then, on the seventh day of the first hesger.
- Two developments for the better (shnayim l'tivusa): the shade has weakened, a yerakrak having become plain yarok and an adamdam plain adom, and all the more so if it turned into a shade that is kasheir or vanished outright, and along with that there has been no expansion. In each of these situations mechabso, matbilo, v'tahar: he launders the garment, immerses it, and it is clean.
- Only one development for the better (chada l'tivusa): the shade held, or even intensified, while the mark kept its size; or the mark did expand, but its shade weakened, a yerakrak becoming yarok or an adamdam becoming adom. The ruling is then mechabso umazgiro shavua sheinis: he launders it and shuts it away for a further seven days.
And it should be said plainly: when the garment is declared tamei, it is not merely ruined. It must be burned.
When the Second Hesger Runs Out
Once two periods of hesger have gone by, a single favorable outcome is left to the Kohen. The Tiferes Yisroel writes that it must be "dafka shenishtaneh l'mar'eh", precisely a change of shade, one "she'ein bo klal", containing nothing at all of "yerakros o adamdamiyus", of greenness or of redness. Where that is the case, "af shenish'ar hakesem b'godlo", though the stain is exactly the size it was, "o gam pasa", and even if it has grown larger, the growth being neither yerakrak nor adamdam, then "mechabso umatbilo v'tahar": the garment is laundered, immersed this time in a mikveh, and tahor.
Every other outcome is ruinous. "V'im amad b'einav", if the shade is unchanged, "v'chol shekein k'shehosif mimar'iso", and certainly if it has deepened, this holds even where nothing has expanded at all; and likewise "o shepasa af shehuka mimar'iso", where it expanded while the shade weakened, a yerakrak having faded to yarok or an adamdam to adom. All of these end in "soreif kol habeged": the garment is burned in its entirety. By this later stage the one saving development is that green and red have disappeared from the mark completely. As long as some green or red lingers, however pale, the garment cannot be rescued.
One additional possibility remains. "Aval k'shenishtaneh l'mar'eh acheires p'sulah": the shade switched over to the other invalid color, "shena'aseh miyerakrak adamdam, o ipcha", a deep green having turned deep red or a deep red having turned deep green. In that event, and it makes no difference at all whether the mark expanded, "bein shepasa o lo", the ruling is "korei'a mekom hanega v'sorfo": he cuts the site of the nega out of the garment and burns that piece by itself. As for what is left, "Vish'ar habeged mechabso o matbilo v'tahar": he launders it, immerses it in a mikveh, and it is tahor.
Two weeks of thirteen days
The Mishnah adds one more clause: "Ule'achar haptur", after the release. Even after the Kohen has pronounced the garment clean, if the simanei tum'ah return, it is tamei.
The Mishnah signs off with an accounting of the days: "Umitam'in bishnei shavu'os", the tumah of garments plays itself out over two weeks, "shehein sheloshah asar yom", which come to thirteen days rather than fourteen. The seventh day does double duty: it is the day the Kohen looks, and it is at the same time the opening day of the second period, so that beyond the initial seven only six more days are added.
All of this is highly detailed, and the Rav himself refers the reader to the later perakim of the masechta, where the tzara'as of begadim is taken up in full. Our Mishnah is giving us only the framework: three simanim, two weeks, thirteen days.