Taharos, Chapter 10, Mishnah 8. This is the closing mishnah of Maseches Taharos, and it brings together two threads. The chapter has been dealing with grapes and olives, with the presses and vats in which wine and oil are produced. Our mishnah first returns to a question raised earlier in the mesechta, the difference between a reshus harabim and a reshus hayachid for purposes of tumah and taharah, and then closes with the practical question of what a person does with his press vessels once they have been soaked with tamei liquid.
Public and private in the working vineyard
Recall the definition of reshus harabim in the world of tumah and taharah. It is not a technical, legal category the way it is elsewhere; it is a plain question of how many people are actually found in that spot. A place where the public circulates is a reshus harabim, and a place where a person is essentially alone is a reshus hayachid. The practical difference is well known: a doubt about tumah that arises in a public place is ruled tahor, while a doubt in a private place is ruled tamei.
"Bein ha'igulim lezagim": the area lying amid the pressing weights and the crushed grape mash has the status of a reshus harabim. Once the fruit had already been trodden, massive circular stones resembling millstones were set down upon the leftover pulp so as to force out the last of the juice and let nothing of the crop go to waste. Maneuvering equipment of that size calls for several men laboring together, and since a group of people is occupied there, the spot is reckoned a public domain.
"Kerem shelifnei habotzrim": the section of the vineyard that still lies ahead of the harvesters, whose grapes have not yet been picked, is a reshus hayachid. Outsiders will not wander in there, because anyone found among the standing grapes looks like a thief.
"Shel'achar habotzrim": the section behind the harvesters, which has already been picked, is a reshus harabim. Once the owner's harvest has passed through, people stream in, especially the poor, who come in numbers to collect the peret and the olelos and the other gifts that the Torah leaves for them there.
"Eimasai?" Under what conditions does the already picked stretch of vineyard carry the status of a public domain? "Bizman sheharabim nichnasim bazo veyotzim bazo": only where people come in at one end and leave by the other. What makes the ground public is genuine traffic passing straight through it.
Restoring the press vessels
The second half of the mishnah turns to the issue that fittingly rounds off the whole subject. Once tumah has spread through everything in the press, what becomes of a man's equipment? A keli that has soaked up liquid which is tamei: how is it restored to taharah?
"Klei beis habad veshel gas, ha'ekel": the utensils of the olive press, which are used with oil, and those of the winepress vat, which are used with wine, and the ekel, the basket press applied to the olives after the first extraction in order to draw out still more oil. The answer depends on the material.
"Bizman shehen shel eitz, menagvan vehen tehorin": wooden implements are rubbed dry, and with that they are tahor. There is a machlokes here: some hold that drying is the entire requirement, while others hold that one must go on to scrub them with ash and water, and only after that scouring are they pure. Much also depends on what the item actually is: a flat board, which holds nothing and is no receptacle at all, needs nothing beyond wiping, whereas a true keli may call for tevilah in a mikveh.
"Bizman shehen shel gemi, meyashan kol sheneim asar chodesh, o chaltan bechamin": implements woven of gemi, a reed-like grass that drinks in liquid and holds onto it, have two available remedies. He may set them aside unused for twelve full months, over the course of which whatever they took in rots away within them; or he may pour scalding water over them, which pulls the absorbed tamei liquid back out. Either route achieves the same end.
"Rabbi Yosei omeir: im nesanan beshiboles hanahar, dayo." Rabbi Yosei is not disagreeing so much as adding a third possibility. If he places them in the strong current of a river for twelve hours, that is sufficient. The heavy, fast moving water is powerful enough to flush out whatever the reed vessel has absorbed.
Tam venishlam
And with that, Maseches Taharos is complete. Congratulate yourselves: from the fine gradations of tumah at the beginning of the mesechta through the doubts of the marketplace and the labor of the vineyard and the olive press, we have come all the way to the end. It has been a genuine pleasure to learn it together.