Taharos, Chapter 10, Mishnah 1. With this mishnah we open the tenth and final chapter of Taharos, and it brings us back to a setting we have visited before in this masechta: the olive press. The workers there, the badadim, generally come from among the amei ha'aretz, people who are not careful about the laws of tumah and taharah in their own homes. But since the owner wants his oil produced in taharah, these workers immerse and purify themselves for the sake of the job. That creates the tension that runs through this chapter: how far can we rely on a man whose taharah is a professional requirement rather than a personal way of life?
Our mishnah opens with a case designed to seal off every outside source of tumah: "Hanoel beis habad mipnei habadadim", one who locks up the olive press on account of the pressers. The doors are shut, and the workers are shut in. No one new can walk in from the street carrying tumah with him, and the workers inside cannot step out and pick up tumah somewhere else. On paper, the produce should be perfectly secure.
Except for one detail: "vehayu sham kelim shehein midras", inside the locked press there were vessels carrying midras tumah, the tumah of something that a zav or a niddah had sat or lain upon. So the workers cannot acquire any fresh tumah from outside, yet there is a genuine source of tumah standing right there with them in the room. What, then, is the status of the olives?
"Rabbi Meir omer, beis habad tamei." Rabbi Meir sees no reason for optimism. Over the course of the work these men will inevitably come into contact with those vessels, and from the vessels their hands will go to the olives, and that is the end of the story. The press and its contents are tamei.
"Rabbi Yehudah omer, beis habad tahor." Rabbi Yehudah holds the opposite. A man who went to the trouble of purifying himself in order to hold this job takes the job seriously. He is not about to handle something tamei and ruin his own work, and his standing as a worker who can be hired for produce that must stay tahor. We may therefore assume he kept his distance from the vessels.
Rabbi Shimon draws a distinction: "im tehorin lahen, beis habad tamei; im temei'in lahen, beis habad tahor." Everything hinges on how these particular workers understand the vessels in front of them. If in their own minds the vessels are tamei, they will instinctively avoid them, and the press remains tahor. But if in their own minds the vessels are tahor, if they simply do not know any better, they will handle them freely, and the press is tamei. In other words, we measure their hesitation, not their halachic knowledge.
Rabbi Yosei then challenges the entire assumption of tumah: "vechi mipnei mah temei'os?" On what grounds would we declare the olives tamei in the first place? And he supplies the answer himself: "ela she'ein amei ha'aretz beki'in beheses." The amei ha'aretz are not versed in the laws of heses, the tumah contracted by shifting and moving a vessel rather than by touching it. A worker may sincerely intend to keep his hands off the tamei vessels, and still slide them out of his way, shift them aside, move them from where they are standing, without any idea that doing so renders him tamei. Since we cannot count on him to avoid what he does not know exists, we are forced to assume that he did become tamei, and consequently that everything in the olive press is now tamei.
The mishnah thus leaves us with a sober picture. Locking the doors solved the problem of tumah coming in from the outside, but it did nothing about the tumah already inside, and about the gap in knowledge of the men working beside it.