Ohalos, Chapter 9, Mishnah 9. This entire chapter has been occupied with one recurring case: a kaveres, a beehive, sitting in the doorway of a house, partly inside and partly outside. The eight mishnayos until now turned that beehive in every direction. Sometimes its mouth faced outward and its base faced inward, sometimes its mouth faced inward and its base faced outward, sometimes it rested directly on the ground and sometimes it was raised a tefach off the floor. In every one of those cases, though, the kaveres was in the doorway. Our mishnah changes the picture entirely.
A Beehive That Fills the House
Our mishnah begins with a hive that takes up the entire dwelling: "hoysa memaleh es kol habayis". The kaveres has moved off the threshold and now sits wholly within the room. Nor is it lying down; it rests on its base, upright, and reaches all the way up to the roof. "V'ein beina u'vein hakoros posei'ach tefach": the clearance left above it, underneath the roof beams, does not amount to a tefach.
Since no opening of a tefach separates the kaveres from the ceiling, the kaveres is treated as an ohel of its own, an ohel standing inside another ohel. It is not simply a vessel sitting in a room; it is its own tent, with its own airspace.
The Halachah: Out but Not In
The ruling follows accordingly: "tumah b'sochah, habayis tamei". Should a source of tumah, a k'zayis from a meis for instance, be found within the hive, everything in the dwelling contracts tumah. "Tumah babayis, mah sheb'sochah tahor": if instead that k'zayis lies somewhere in the room and not in the hive, whatever the hive holds stays tahor.
The mishnah supplies its reasoning: "she'derech hatumah latzeis, v'ein darkah l'hikanes". Tumah travels outward; moving inward is not its way. We have encountered this rule more than once already in this chapter. The idea underlying it is that tumah does not settle in permanently: it is on its way out. Accordingly, a k'zayis of a meis lodged within the hive is not treated as sealed away there. We view it as heading for the exit, and the only route open to it takes it first out of the hive and then out of the building by way of the entrance. Since that route crosses the room, the room is caught along the way, and all that is in it becomes tamei.
Now reverse the arrangement and the result flips. The k'zayis is resting on the floor of the room, while the hive, whose top comes up to under a tefach beneath the beams, counts as an ohel in its own right. Nothing forces us to say that the tumah pushes its way inward. Its nature is to exit, not to come in, so anything stored within the hive remains tahor.
Two More Cases, the Same Halachah
The mishnah now tells us that this very same ruling holds even when we change the picture in two ways. The halachah remains: tumah in the kaveres renders the house tamei, while tumah in the house leaves the contents of the kaveres tahor.
- "Bein omedes bein mutal al tzidah": the ruling holds whether the hive is upright on its base, as pictured until now, or has been laid over onto its side. The Bartenura notes that with a hive on its side, we are assuming its mouth stands under a tefach from the wall, so that here too no posei'ach tefach is present. Earlier the clearance being measured was the one above the hive, beneath the beams; here, with the hive tipped over, the measurement runs from its opening to the wall. For this mishnah's purposes nothing changes: with a gap smaller than a tefach, tumah lying in the room stays outside.
- "Bein achas bein shtayim": it is likewise irrelevant whether we are dealing with a single hive whose top falls short of the beams by under a tefach, or with a pair of hives set one above the other, the mouth of the upper one falling short of the ceiling by under a tefach. The halachah stands. Tumah inside either of the two kaveros, even with a gap of under a tefach, is obliged to work its way out into the room; that is how we assess it, since tumah refuses to stay in place. Yet tumah resting in the room will not penetrate the hives.
One point requires care in the case of two stacked beehives. When we say that the upper one rests on the lower one, we must be sure that there is no posei'ach tefach between the lower kaveres and the upper one. If there were a full tefach of space between them, tumah would enter the lower one. Our case is either that the upper one sits directly upon the lower one, or that whatever gap exists between them is less than a tefach.
The Common Thread
Three pictures, then: a hive within the room, upright, its top falling short of the beams by under a tefach; a hive tipped over, its mouth coming to within under a tefach of the wall; and two hives piled one atop the other, the highest point falling short of the beams by under a tefach. All three share one decisive feature: nowhere is there a clearance of a tefach. Consequently, even with tumah present in the room, that tumah does not make its way inside.
Notice how far this has moved from the earlier mishnayos of the chapter, where the kaveres stood in the entranceway; here it sits within the room itself. Even so, tumah found in the room fails to penetrate it, while tumah within the hive does emerge, since the path of tumah runs outward. Once we recognize that it cannot remain and must exit through the entranceway, its journey carries it across the room, and the room and its contents are not spared.
A Thought to Carry
There is a yesod in hashkafah worth holding onto here. Tumah is temporary. However firmly it seems to be settled in place, it is destined to leave. If that is so, is it not better that we take the initiative and purify ourselves on our own? One way or another, we are going to end up tahor.