Chullin, Chapter 9, Mishnah 8. Our chapter has been working through the laws of tum'ah, and the last several mishnayot have dealt with a limb or a piece of flesh that has been torn loose from a body but still hangs attached to it. The previous mishnah discussed such a case in an animal. Now the Mishnah turns to the same situation in a human being, where the stakes are different, because a human corpse carries tum'at meit.
"Ha'eiver vehabasar hameduldalin ba'adam tehorin." A limb, or a piece of flesh, that dangles from a living person is tahor. Even though it is torn and no longer functioning as part of the body, it conveys no tum'ah at all, and certainly not the tum'ah of a corpse, since the person is alive.
"Meit ha'adam, habasar tahor." If that person then dies, the dangling flesh remains tahor. One might have expected it to become tamei together with the rest of the body, as part of the corpse. The Mishnah teaches otherwise: this flesh is treated as flesh that separated from a living person, and such flesh is tahor.
How the Mishnah Views the Moment of Death
The reasoning here is the same principle that stood quietly behind the previous mishnah, where we did not spell it out. We regard the dangling limb as though it had come away from the body an instant before death, a fraction of a second earlier. Once we look at it that way, it never belonged to the corpse at all. It is a piece that left a living body, and a piece that leaves a living body does not carry the tum'ah of a corpse. Exactly the same reading applies to the animal in the previous mishnah: when the animal dies with a limb dangling from it, we view the limb as having separated a moment before the death.
Which Tum'ah Does the Limb Carry?
The Mishnah continues: "Ha'eiver mitamei" - the limb does convey tum'ah - "mishum eiver min hachai," on the grounds that it is a limb taken from a living person, "ve'eino mitamei" - and it does not convey tum'ah - "mishum eiver min hameit," on the grounds of being a limb belonging to a corpse. So while the hanging piece of flesh stays wholly tahor, a hanging limb stands in a category of its own: it is tamei, but not with the tum'ah of the dead. The label is not cosmetic, because it governs how long the tum'ah endures. A limb from someone alive defiles only while it remains whole. Strip a bone off it, or a bit of flesh, and that fragment is tahor, since it is no longer the limb.
Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Shimon
"Divrei Rabbi Meir." Everything stated until here reflects the opinion of Rabbi Meir, and he holds the two cases apart. Take a limb belonging to a corpse: if a piece of bone or flesh falls away from it, that piece retains its tum'ah. Take a limb that came off a living person: a piece falling away from it is tahor.
"VeRabbi Shimon metaher." Rabbi Shimon rules that it is tahor in both situations. Whether the limb came from a corpse or from a living person, once flesh or bone has separated from that limb, the separated piece no longer carries tum'ah.