Ohalos, Chapter 1, Mishnah 8. The first perek of Maseches Ohalos lays the groundwork for the laws of tumas meis, and one of its central points is that a single limb separated from a meis conveys tumah even though it does not contain a kezayis of flesh. For that to be true, though, the limb must be a genuine eiver: it must consist of three components together, namely an etzem (bone), basar (flesh) and gidin (sinews). Our Mishnah now takes the next step and tells us how many such limbs a person has, exactly where they are found, in which ways each one transmits tumah, and under what condition a limb still counts as a limb for these purposes.
Two hundred and forty eight
Our Mishnah begins with a total: "Masaim ve'arbaim ushmonah eivarim be'adam." A human being is built of 248 eivarim. But the Mishnah does not leave us holding only a bottom line; it goes on to break that figure down, region of the body by region of the body, until the entire accounting is laid out before us.
The count begins from below: "Shloshim bepisas hareggel," the foot carries thirty. How so? "Shishah bechol etzba": each individual toe holds six eivarim of its own, and five toes at six apiece bring us to thirty. Straightforward.
Moving upward: "Asarah bakursol," the ankle contributes ten. "Shenayim bashok": the shok, that stretch of leg lying above the ankle and below the knee, has two. "Chamishah ba'arkuvah": the knee itself holds five. "Echad bayarech": the yarech, running from the knee up toward the hip, is a single eiver. "Shloshah bakatlis": the hip region adds three.
"Achas esrei tzla'os," eleven tzla'os, meaning eleven ribs.
"Shloshim bepisas hayad," thirty in the hand, once again six limbs in each of the five fingers. "Ushenayim bakaneh," two in the kaneh, the segment of the arm running from the hand to the elbow. The Bartenura takes the opportunity to remind us of something worth knowing: this stretch of arm, from the hand to the elbow, is what gives us the measurement we call an amah. Just as a tefach corresponds to a fist, an amah corresponds to the forearm of an average person. Exactly how long that is in our terms depends on the various shitos, whether one holds eighteen inches or twenty four inches or somewhere in between, but the source of the measurement is the average human forearm.
The list continues: "Ushenayim bamarteik," the elbow accounts for two; "echad bazroya," the zeroa, that is, from the elbow up to the shoulder, is one; "ve'arba'ah bakaseif," and the shoulder adds four.
One hundred and one on each side
"Mei'ah ve'echad mizeh," one hundred and one from here, "umei'ah ve'echad mizeh," and one hundred and one from there. Everything counted until now belongs to one side of the guf. When the Mishnah spoke of the foot, it meant one foot; when it spoke of the hand and the fingers, it meant one hand. The thirty limbs of the toes were five toes times six, and that is a single foot. So the tally of one hundred and one is doubled: one hundred and one on the right side and one hundred and one on the left, for a total of two hundred and two. We are still short of the full count, and the Mishnah supplies the remaining forty six from the parts of the body that are not paired.
"Ushmonah asar chulyos bashidrah," eighteen vertebrae in the shidrah, the spine. This is worth remembering: the Gemara in Berachos gives these eighteen vertebrae as one of the reasons that the Shemoneh Esrei was established with eighteen berachos. Later a nineteenth beracha was added, Velamalshinim, and here too there is a parallel: there is in fact a small nineteenth vertebra, not of the same size as the others.
"Tish'ah barosh": the head is credited with nine. "Shemonah batzavar": the neck, eight. "Shishah bemaftei'ach shel leiv": six in the maftei'ach shel leiv. What is that? The Bartenura identifies it simply: "hu hachazeh," it is the chest. Literally the words mean the opening of the heart, and the Bartenura explains why the chest deserves such a name. Breathing works by way of the chest expanding, and it is that expansion which draws air into the lungs, from where the oxygen makes its way onward to the heart. Should pressure, chas veshalom, be applied to a person's chest, he cannot breathe at all. The chest is thus the doorway through which the heart is supplied with its air. The list closes with "vechamishah benekavav," five in the body's lower openings.
All three forms of tumah
The Mishnah now states: "Kol echad ve'echad," each one of these eivarim, "metamei bemaga uvemasa uve'ohel." The previous Mishnah had already taught that a limb of this sort carries tumah; what our Mishnah adds is the breadth of that tumah. Contact is not the only channel. A limb of a meis transmits tumah through every one of the three avenues by which tumas meis is contracted, and each of them will be treated at greater length further on be'ezras Hashem. "Maga" means physical touching. "Masa" means carrying, even where the meis itself was never touched, as with one who carries a bed on which a meis lies. "Ohel" means sharing a roof or a tent with it. Consequently, a person standing beneath a single ohel together with one limb of a meis becomes tamei, notwithstanding that no kezayis is present.
When is a limb still a limb?The Mishnah then poses the question that has to be asked: "eimasai," under what circumstances does all of this hold true? "Bizman sheyeish aleihen basar karoy": the limb must still bear a fitting quantity of flesh. And what counts as fitting? The Bartenura defines it functionally: "kedei sheya'aleh aruchah," enough that the wound could close over and mend, "vehavrah im hayah mechubar be'adam chai," with the flesh growing back, had this limb been joined to a living person. Put differently: imagine the limb were still part of a live body. Would the flesh remaining on it have been sufficient for the healing to take place and for the tissue to build itself back to what it was? If so, the limb is regarded as possessing all the flesh it needs, and it is metamei in all three ways, assuming of course that its bone and its sinews are present as well.
"Aval," continues the Mishnah, "im ein aleihem basar karoy": where the limb no longer holds the flesh needed for such recovery, then "mitam'in bemaga uvemasa." Tumah by way of touching and of carrying remains in force: whoever touches such a limb becomes tamei, and whoever carries it becomes tamei. But "ve'einam mitam'in be'ohel." With no kezayis present and the flesh deficient, sharing a roof with it leaves a person tahor.
Why the distinction? The Bartenura supplies the logic. When the Torah presents tumas ohel, it speaks of a full human being: "Adam ki yamus," says the pasuk, "be'ohel," and the wording is mashma that a whole adam is under discussion. Tumas ohel therefore operates either with a complete adam or with a limb that has the character of an adam, and the Torah hints at this in the words "be'etzem adam." From these pesukim Chazal darshen: "mah adam yeish bo basar," just as a human being possesses flesh, "vegidin va'atzamos," together with sinews and bones, and in that state he is metamei be'ohel, so too a limb, to be metamei be'ohel, must contain all three, flesh along with sinews and bone.
Reviewing the Mishnah
Let us chazer the Mishnah. Chazal teach that the human body consists of rema"ch, 248, eivarim, each of them a combination of flesh, sinews and bone. Once such an eiver has been separated from a meis, it is metamei bemaga, bemasa and be'ohel, even where no kezayis is present. The single qualification concerns the flesh: how much of it must remain, or, from the other direction, how much may be lacking before the flesh no longer counts as flesh at all? The yardstick is whether the flesh left on it would have sufficed for a wound to close and the tissue to regenerate, had the eiver been part of a living body. Only then does the eiver convey tumah in all three modes. Without that amount, maga and masa still apply, while ohel does not.
A story worth hearing
A story here is worth retelling. Rav Belsky zt"l once gave a shiur dealing with the rema"ch eivarim and the shesa gidin, the 248 limbs and the 365 sinews, and with the familiar idea that the teivos of Krias Shema come to rema"ch when one adds Keil Melech Ne'eman, or when "Hashem Elokeichem Emes" is repeated, since through saying Krias Shema a person crowns Hakadosh Baruch Hu as king over his entire body.
Sitting in the room was a man with a background in science or medicine, and he was certain the whole count could not work. He had researched the subject, he had come along with photographs of skeletons, and he felt confident that he could demonstrate that human anatomy does not add up to 248. Emunas Chachamim was, nebich, missing from his approach, and he planned to walk over to Rav Belsky once the shiur was finished, vi men zogt, and present his evidence.
And what came of it? The man had not yet gotten a word out when Rav Belsky closed the shiur along these lines: some of you are surely wondering that a modern anatomical chart produces a different total, and the reason is that you are counting by one method rather than another, and that a certain point has been overlooked. Follow what Chazal are in fact telling us, and the figure comes out to 248 in precisely this manner. The fellow sat there speechless. His question had not merely been answered; it had been raised for him. The message was clear: Chazal are fully aware of what is bothering you, and here is the cheshbon.
That is the lesson to carry away. The words of Chazal, whether or not we happen to understand them, are Toras emes. And there is no such thing as being a little bit emes. Emes must be entirely emes, as the Kotzker Rebbe once put it: ninety nine percent emes is one hundred percent sheker. Our task is to be ma'amin, even when the understanding has not yet caught up to the emunah.
The Mishnah then poses the question that has to be asked: "eimasai," under what circumstances does all of this hold true? "Bizman sheyeish aleihen basar karoy": the limb must still bear a fitting quantity of flesh. And what counts as fitting? The Bartenura defines it functionally: "kedei sheya'aleh aruchah," enough that the wound could close over and mend, "vehavrah im hayah mechubar be'adam chai," with the flesh growing back, had this limb been joined to a living person. Put differently: imagine the limb were still part of a live body. Would the flesh remaining on it have been sufficient for the healing to take place and for the tissue to build itself back to what it was? If so, the limb is regarded as possessing all the flesh it needs, and it is metamei in all three ways, assuming of course that its bone and its sinews are present as well.
"Aval," continues the Mishnah, "im ein aleihem basar karoy": where the limb no longer holds the flesh needed for such recovery, then "mitam'in bemaga uvemasa." Tumah by way of touching and of carrying remains in force: whoever touches such a limb becomes tamei, and whoever carries it becomes tamei. But "ve'einam mitam'in be'ohel." With no kezayis present and the flesh deficient, sharing a roof with it leaves a person tahor.
Why the distinction? The Bartenura supplies the logic. When the Torah presents tumas ohel, it speaks of a full human being: "Adam ki yamus," says the pasuk, "be'ohel," and the wording is mashma that a whole adam is under discussion. Tumas ohel therefore operates either with a complete adam or with a limb that has the character of an adam, and the Torah hints at this in the words "be'etzem adam." From these pesukim Chazal darshen: "mah adam yeish bo basar," just as a human being possesses flesh, "vegidin va'atzamos," together with sinews and bones, and in that state he is metamei be'ohel, so too a limb, to be metamei be'ohel, must contain all three, flesh along with sinews and bone.
Reviewing the Mishnah
Let us chazer the Mishnah. Chazal teach that the human body consists of rema"ch, 248, eivarim, each of them a combination of flesh, sinews and bone. Once such an eiver has been separated from a meis, it is metamei bemaga, bemasa and be'ohel, even where no kezayis is present. The single qualification concerns the flesh: how much of it must remain, or, from the other direction, how much may be lacking before the flesh no longer counts as flesh at all? The yardstick is whether the flesh left on it would have sufficed for a wound to close and the tissue to regenerate, had the eiver been part of a living body. Only then does the eiver convey tumah in all three modes. Without that amount, maga and masa still apply, while ohel does not.
A story worth hearing
A story here is worth retelling. Rav Belsky zt"l once gave a shiur dealing with the rema"ch eivarim and the shesa gidin, the 248 limbs and the 365 sinews, and with the familiar idea that the teivos of Krias Shema come to rema"ch when one adds Keil Melech Ne'eman, or when "Hashem Elokeichem Emes" is repeated, since through saying Krias Shema a person crowns Hakadosh Baruch Hu as king over his entire body.
Sitting in the room was a man with a background in science or medicine, and he was certain the whole count could not work. He had researched the subject, he had come along with photographs of skeletons, and he felt confident that he could demonstrate that human anatomy does not add up to 248. Emunas Chachamim was, nebich, missing from his approach, and he planned to walk over to Rav Belsky once the shiur was finished, vi men zogt, and present his evidence.
And what came of it? The man had not yet gotten a word out when Rav Belsky closed the shiur along these lines: some of you are surely wondering that a modern anatomical chart produces a different total, and the reason is that you are counting by one method rather than another, and that a certain point has been overlooked. Follow what Chazal are in fact telling us, and the figure comes out to 248 in precisely this manner. The fellow sat there speechless. His question had not merely been answered; it had been raised for him. The message was clear: Chazal are fully aware of what is bothering you, and here is the cheshbon.
That is the lesson to carry away. The words of Chazal, whether or not we happen to understand them, are Toras emes. And there is no such thing as being a little bit emes. Emes must be entirely emes, as the Kotzker Rebbe once put it: ninety nine percent emes is one hundred percent sheker. Our task is to be ma'amin, even when the understanding has not yet caught up to the emunah.