daf bit: Nazir 49

[cellio]

If a nazarite becomes ritually impure, he must shave, wait to become ritually pure, and start over. What are the things that can make him ritually impure? The mishna says contact with a corpse or parts (or derivatives) thereof. What is contact? Touching, being under the same roof as, or being above or below a corpse (without an intervening roof). (49b)

This list has a lot in common with contact forbidden to kohanim. I don't know if that's just a similarity or if there is some causal link; I could imagine seeing priests as being akin to nazarites in that they are dedicated to ritual service, though most are not actual nazarites. (The bit about being above a body without a roof intervening is why some kohanim will not fly over graveyards. I have no idea if floors on multi-story buildings count as roofs; does a kohein have to worry about the apartment below his?)

Comments

[magid.livejournal.com]

The major source of ritual impurity in Judaism is dead bodies, which affects a lot of things, but in modern days, without a Temple and so forth, it's an eara of halacha that's not dealt with much beyond women's monthly ritual impuurity (for which I've heard one explanation that the reason there's impurity at all is that there was a potential life that didn't happen... relating back to the major reason for ritual impurity).

[cellio]

Yeah, this isn't an area that gets a lot of practical use. But some kohanim still pay attention to it -- everyone's tamei, but maybe they don't want to make it even worse (or maybe they want to stay in practice).

[magid.livejournal.com]

I know that a dead body is the worst kind of tum'ah source there is; I suspect that even with today's general tum'ah, the idea is to avoid the source of it as much as possible.

[zevabe.livejournal.com]

In reality, no one is concerned with the tumah of a woman on a monthly basis. If we actually worried about tumat niddah, we would make sure she didn't sit on any couchs or beds we wanted to use the rest of the month, nor sit on them at the same time as anyone else.

However, the other part of niddah is the prohibition of having relations with the niddah. This is a different effect with the same cause (Niddah implies both this prohibition and the state of tumah. Everything we do today re: niddah is a result of the prohibition and not the tumah). Then, to prevent any possibility of having relations, a variety of other things become prohibited.