Taharos, Chapter 2, Mishnah 8. This is the closing mishnah of the chapter, and it brings us two separate matters: a piece of practical advice that turns out to be a halachah, and a dispute about the status of chullin that a person chose to handle with the stringencies of kodesh.
Ha'ochel ochel sheni lo ya'aseh b'veis habad
The mishnah opens: "Ha'ochel ochel sheni lo ya'aseh b'veis habad" - one who eats food that carries second-level tumah should not work in an olive press.
First, let us be clear about what is being said and what is not. Eating sheni food is entirely permitted. There is no prohibition whatsoever on a person eating food that has second-level tumah, and there are people who simply eat that way as a matter of course. The problem is not the eating; the problem is what the eater becomes. Earlier in this chapter we learned that a person who consumes sheni food himself takes on the status of a sheni. So now we are dealing with a man walking around town who is himself a second-level tumah.
Such a person, says the mishnah, should keep away from the olive press. Why specifically there? One might guess that the concern involves the olives themselves, perhaps they are terumah, or that it has to do with the oil, the liquid being produced. In truth it is neither. The point is that in the olive press the produce is still in the middle of being processed. We are speaking, in the world of the mishnah, of Eretz Yisrael, and the terumos and maasros have not yet been separated out of this crop. Those portions are sensitive to tumah, and they are still sitting inside the mass of olives and oil in the press. A person walking around with the status of a sheni who handles that produce ends up rendering pasul the very terumah that will eventually be taken from it, before it has even been separated. So he should not take a job in the press.
Chullin Prepared with the Care of Kodesh
Now the mishnah turns to a new subject: "Vechullin shena'asu al gav hakodesh", ordinary food that a person went to the trouble of preparing under the strict guidelines that belong to kodesh, and the ruling is "harei eilu kechullin", it keeps the standing of plain chullin. We have already encountered this category once, in the mishnah just before ours, which likewise discussed chullin that was watched over with kodesh-level care, and the Tannaim do not agree on how such food ought to be classified.
The Tanna Kamma here takes the simple line: chullin is chullin. It makes no difference whether a person guarded it like terumah, like kodesh, or like anything else; its intrinsic status has not changed.
Rabbi Elazar bar Rabbi Tzadok disagrees: "Harei eilu kiterumah". In his view such chullin occupies a middle position, not kodesh but no longer plain chullin either. Practically, it functions like terumah: "letamei shenayim ulefasel echad" - it conveys tumah to two further levels and renders a third pasul, exactly as terumah does when it comes into contact with a liquid.
A Three-Way Machlokes
What appears to be a debate between two opinions is really a debate among three. The mishnah before ours, Mishnah 7, is Rabbi Elazar's from beginning to end, and there he made a remarkable statement: three items sharing one and the same degree of tumah are all alike in their power to transmit it, and it makes no difference which of the three categories they belong to, ordinary food, terumah, or kodesh. That sounds unremarkable until his concluding words, in which he rules that the third of them still passes tumah on to mashkeh kodesh and disqualifies ochel kodesh. Meaning: on his view, even chullin of this sort holds onto a certain force where kodesh is concerned.
So we have three ways of understanding chullin that was prepared with the care of kodesh:
- The Tanna Kamma of our mishnah: it stays ordinary chullin.
- Rabbi Elazar bar Rabbi Tzadok, in our mishnah: it is given the din of terumah.
- Rabbi Elazar, whose words fill the mishnah before ours: it is given the din of kodesh.
As far as the halachah goes, the Rambam decides in accordance with the first opinion in our mishnah: no amount of careful handling changes chullin into something else, and it stays chullin. Still, when learning these mishnayos, all three views deserve to be kept in view, since each of them expresses a different estimate of how much a person's care and intent are able to accomplish within the realm of taharah.
With this mishnah we complete the second perek of Maseches Taharos.