Sukkah, Daf Vav, Section One
Introduction
At the end of yesterday’s daf we learned that the minimum measures found in the Torah are "halakhah to Moses from Sinai." Today’s Talmud brings a contradictory tradition.
שיעורין דאורייתא נינהו! דכתיב +דברים ח+ ארץ חטה ושערה וגפן ותאנה ורמון ארץ זית שמן ודבש, ואמר רב חנין: כל הפסוק הזה לשיעורין נאמר.
But are not the laws relating to minimum measures from the Torah, since it is written, "A land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig-trees and pomegranates, a land of olive-trees and honey, (Deuteronomy 8:8)
And R. Hanin stated that all this verse was said in allusion to the prescribed minimum measures.
The seven species mentioned in the famous verse in Deuteronomy are all related by R. Hanin to various minimum measures used in a wide array of halakhot. This implies, as we shall see, that the minimum measures were given by the Torah.
חטה לבית המנוגע, דתנן: הנכנס לבית המנוגע, וכליו על כתפיו, וסנדליו וטבעותיו בידו – הוא והן טמאין מיד.
היה לבוש כליו וסנדליו ברגליו, וטבעותיו באצבעותיו – הוא טמא מיד, והן טהורים עד שישהה בכדי אכילת פרס, פת חטין ולא פת שעורין, מיסב ואוכל בליפתן.
Wheat is an allusion to the house afflicted with scale disease as we have learned: If a person entered a house afflicted with a nega, carrying his clothes upon his shoulders, and his sandals and rings in his hands, both he and they become unclean immediately.
If, however, he was wearing his clothes and had his sandals on his feet and his rings on his hands, he becomes unclean immediately, but they remain clean, unless he stayed as much time as is required for the eating of half a loaf of wheat bread and not of barley bread, while in a reclining posture and eating with some condiment.
Wheat is in reference to a house that has some type of scale affliction (see Leviticus 14). The Talmud quotes Mishnah Negaim 13:9. This mishnah teaches that with regard to the time for clothes brought into an afflicted house to become defiled there is a distinction between clothes carried into a house afflicted with scale disease and clothes worn into such a house.
In the first case, since he wasn’t wearing the clothes, shoes or jewelry, they are considered to be vessels which are brought into a house. They become impure immediately upon entrance to the house.
However, if he is wearing his clothes, shoes or jewelry, they must be in the house for as long as it would take to eat half a loaf of wheat bread with some sort of condiment/dip, and while reclining (concerning this amount see Eruvin 8:2). This is derived from Leviticus 14:47 which states: "Whoever sleeps in the house must wash his clothes, and whoever eats in the house must wash his clothes." For his clothes to be impure he need not actually eat or sleep in the house. Rather he must be there long enough so that he could eat a minimum measure of a meal, which is considered to be half a loaf of wheat bread.