Taharos, Chapter 7, Mishnah 4. Our chapter is devoted to the amei ha'aretz, and to the question of how someone who is scrupulous about taharah must relate to someone who is not. Earlier mishnayos already fixed the dividing line between the chaver, who is believed when he speaks about these halachos, and the am ha'aretz, whose word about tahor food and utensils carries no weight whatsoever. That leads straight to an obvious follow-up question: how are we to treat their wives?
The settled conclusion is that a married woman's status tracks that of her husband. A woman married to an am ha'aretz is judged accordingly, and a woman married to a chaver is judged as he is. The reasoning is straightforward: a home operates by one standard, and each woman conducts herself according to the practice followed in the house where she lives. Our mishnah applies this principle to a concrete situation, and in the process it carries forward the debate between Rebbi Meir and the Chachamim that has shaped every mishnah in this chapter so far.
The case
"Eishes chaver shehinicha l'eishes am ha'aretz tochenes b'soch beisah." A woman married to a chaver left her neighbor, an am ha'aretz's wife, grinding grain inside her home. Picture it: the neighbor has come by and is working at the mill, while the lady of the house has momentarily left the room.
"Paskah harechayim, habayis tamei." If the millstones stopped, the entire house is tamei. The mill is a device that is worked continuously, and its sound is a kind of report on where the woman is. As long as the grinding is heard, she is fixed in one spot. Once the sound stops, she is free to get up and move anywhere she likes, and Rebbi Meir assumes that this is exactly what she did. An am ha'aretz has no hesitation about handling whatever she comes across, so we must reckon with the possibility that she wandered and touched.
"Lo paskah harechayim": but if the grinding never let up, meaning that she stayed at her work without a break, then "ein tamei," nothing in the house has become tamei, "ela ad makom," except within that area "shehi yecholah lifshot es yadah v'liga," as far as she could have extended her arm and made contact from where she was seated.
When there are two of them
"Hayu shtayim," if there were two am ha'aretz women in the house, "bein kach uvein kach habayis tamei." Whether the sound of the mill continued or stopped, the whole house is tamei. "She'achas tochenes v'achas memashmeshes": one of them can keep grinding, producing exactly the sound that would have reassured us, while the other one gets up and pokes around the house. The steady noise of the mill no longer proves anything at all.
"Divrei Rebbi Meir." The mishnah now credits this teaching to Rebbi Meir, and the attribution reaches back over more than the closing clause: every ruling presented in the mishnah up to here has been his.
The view of the Chachamim
"Vachachamim omrim": the Chachamim disagree, holding to the same approach they took earlier in the chapter. In their view nothing is tamei beyond "ad makom shehen yecholin," the area within which the women were able "lifshot es yadan v'liga," to reach out and touch. We do not construct a stringency on the presumption that they rose and circulated through the house; only what we have grounds to say they actually handled is declared tamei.
So the same case yields two very different results. For Rebbi Meir, silence at the millstones is enough to render an entire house tamei, and a second woman in the room makes the noise itself worthless as evidence. For the Chachamim, tumah extends no further than the span of an outstretched arm.