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Text Excerpt
״בחלל חרב״. חרב הרי הוא כחלל. והויא ליה אב הטומאה, וקסבר שלישי מותר לעשותו ראשון.
“And whoever touches one who is slain with a sword in the open field, or one who dies on his own, or a bone of a man, or a grave, should be unclean 7 days” (Numbers 19:16). The rabbis derived from the phrase: One who is slain with a sword, that the legal status of a metal sword in terms of its degree of impurity is like that of one who is slain. Any metal vessel that becomes impure through contact with a corpse assumes the impurity status of a corpse, the ultimate primary source of ritual impurity. The same is true with regard to a metal vessel that came into contact with a person or vessel that became impure with impurity imparted by a corpse. In that case the metal vessel assumes the impurity status of that person or vessel, and therefore, this metal lamp is a primary source of impurity. And yet R' Akiva maintains that it is permitted to render this oil, which is impure with 3rd-degree impurity, impure with 1st-degree impurity through contact with the metal lamp.
ומאי דוחקיה דרב יהודה לאוקמיה בנר של מתכת, נוקמיה בנר של חרס,
The Talmud asks: And what impelled Rav Yehuda to establish the Mishnah as referring specifically to the case of a metal lamp? Let him establish it as referring specifically to the case of an earthenware lamp.
And if so, what does R' Akiva’s statement add? The Talmud answers: Whereas there, in R' Ḥanina’s testimony, he is referring to a case where one piece of ritually impure meat came into contact with another piece of impure meat, here, in R' Akiva’s testimony, he is referring to a case where oil that is disqualified came into contact with a lamp with 1st-degree impurity status, rendering the oil impure. Oil with 2nd-degree ritual impurity status disqualifies teruma, as teruma with 3rd-degree ritual impurity status does not transmit ritual impurity to other teruma. In that case, the novelty in R' Akiva’s statement is that a disqualified item is burned together with an impure item even though it is thereby rendered impure.