Ohalos, Chapter 15, Mishnah 6. Our chapter has been dealing with partitions inside a house and what they do (or do not do) for keilim when tumah is present. This mishnah takes that discussion in a striking direction: instead of a built wall dividing the house, the divider is the merchandise itself, a houseful of straw.
Picturing the House
The mishnah speaks of a "bayis shemallei teven", a house filled with straw. Note carefully: not a house made of straw, but an ordinary house that is being used as a storehouse for straw. Naturally, a person needs access to what he stores, so one strip of floor is left clear: the strip directly in line with the doorway. Stand in the entrance and look straight ahead and you see the far wall, with nothing in between. Turn to the left and you see the wall of the house. Turn to the right and you see straw, from the floor all the way up. That open lane is where a person walks in to deposit straw or to pull some out; everything else is packed solid.
The mishnah adds a crucial detail about the height of the pile: "v'ein beino l'vein hakoros posei'ach tefach", the gap left above the straw, underneath the ceiling beams, is less than a tefach. Because the pile climbs that close to the beams, it is treated as a mechitzah, a partition standing inside the house. With that established, the mishnah proceeds to its rulings.
Case One: Tumah in the Straw
"Tumah bifnim", the tumah is buried inside the straw itself. And there are keilim sitting in the cleared lane by the entrance. The mishnah rules that the keilim "shek'neged hayetziah", those lying opposite the exit, are t'meiyin.
One might have expected the straw, being a mechitzah, to seal the tumah in place. But a rule already familiar to us governs here: tumah looks for its way out, and it moves along whichever path is open to it. In our case the tumah sits within the body of the partition, and a doorway is the building's only opening. So it works its way out of the straw, into the cleared strip, and onward through the entrance, contaminating whichever keilim stand along that route. It is the same logic behind the earlier halachah: when tumah is on the inner side of a partition, keilim elsewhere in the building are not protected, since derech hatumah latzeis, tumah has a path by which it must leave.
Case Two: Tumah in the Lane, Keilim in the Straw
Now flip the two around. "Tumah bachutz": this time the tumah rests on the open strip of floor by the entrance, while the keilim are sunk into the pile. The ruling here is conditional: "im yeish bimkomam tefach al tefach al rum tefach", should the place occupied by those keilim contain an empty pocket measuring a tefach in each of the three dimensions, they are tehorin, since that cube of air serves as an ohel around them. "V'im lav", lacking such a pocket, they are t'meiyin, and the tumah lying on the open strip reaches them.
This ruling calls for scrutiny. The straw, we were just told, qualifies as a mechitzah once it stops less than a tefach below the beams. And Mishnah 4 taught that if tumah is on the entrance side of a partition, keilim on the other side remain tahor, with no further requirement attached. Why, then, should the straw be treated more stringently, insisting on a cubic tefach around each kli?
The Rishonim explain the distinction. Keilim behind a built mechitzah are effectively outside the house. Take a plain house with tumah inside it and keilim resting outside its outer wall: those keilim obviously remain tahor. So too, once a partition runs down the middle of a house, the far side is a separate ohel; the tumah is simply not in the same tent as those keilim. Our case is different. Keilim sunk into the straw are not on the far side of the mechitzah, they are inside the mechitzah, since the straw fills the entire house and the straw is the partition.
This fits neatly with something the Tosafos Yom Tov brought in connection with the previous mishnah: he records an opinion that even with a regular wall splitting a house, keilim wedged inside the wall's thickness, as opposed to keilim beyond it, are rescued only by a hollow cavity measuring a tefach in every direction. Our mishnah illustrates precisely that halachah. These keilim are embedded in the partition, so nothing short of a cubic tefach of empty air, serving as a miniature ohel, can keep them tahor.
Case Three: The Straw Does Not Reach the Ceiling
The tumah remains on the cleared strip and the keilim remain buried in the pile, only now "im yeish bein teven l'koros posei'ach tefach": a whole tefach of air separates the surface of the pile from the beams overhead. The verdict is "bein kach uvein kach t'meiyin", tamei in either event. Whether or not a cubic tefach happens to surround the keilim is now beside the point.
The reason is straightforward. Straw that stops short of the ceiling by a tefach never acquired the status of a mechitzah at all. With no partition in the picture, the keilim are simply keilim lying in a house that contains tumah, whatever pocket of air happens to surround them. Nothing divides them from the tumah, and nothing blocks it.
Reviewing the Mishnah
To gather it all together: a house filled with straw, with one clear lane running in from the doorway. Straight ahead of the entrance, open floor; to one side, the wall; to the other, straw from floor to ceiling.
- Should the pile climb to less than a tefach below the beams, with the tumah embedded inside it, keilim standing on the cleared strip become tamei. The straw is indeed a mechitzah, yet the tumah has to leave, and its sole route runs out of the pile, across the open strip and through the door.
- Should the tumah instead be lying on the cleared strip while the keilim are buried in the pile, everything hinges on whether a full cubic tefach of empty air surrounds those keilim. With it they are tahor, like keilim positioned past a partition, which stand as though outside the building altogether. Without it they count as keilim wedged inside the partition, and the partition offers them no rescue.
- All of the above presumes that the pile comes up close enough to the beams. If a full tefach of air intervenes, no mechitzah exists at all, and keilim buried in the pile are tamei in every case, for they and the tumah occupy a single ohel with nothing interposed.