Jewish law differentiates between rules that were explicitly stated in or derived from the Torah (d’oraita) and those that were added by the rabbis (d’rabbanan). The rabbinic layer is often more restrictive than its biblical predecessor, as the rabbis are prone to build a so-called fence around the biblical laws to help ensure they are not violated. On today’s daf, we encounter a situation in which the rabbinic attempt to safeguard a particular law creates a challenge to observing another.
As we’ve seen already, when the blood of an offering spills onto a garment, the garment must be laundered on Temple grounds. A mishnah on today’s daf provides some additional instructions:
When a garment (upon which the blood of a sin offering was sprayed) went outside the curtains (i.e., the Temple courtyard) before being laundered, it reenters and one launders it in a sacred place. If it became ritually impure outside the curtains, one tears it, enters and launders it in a sacred place.
Given that the garment must be laundered on the Temple grounds, it makes sense that if it is removed before it is laundered, one must bring it back. But if the garment becomes impure while outside the temple grounds, we have a problem. Impure items are forbidden from entering the Temple premises. So the mishnah offers us a fix: Tearing the garment renders it pure again and allows it to be returned to the Temple grounds to be laundered.
Ravina has a problem with this mishnah:
One tears it? The Merciful One states “a garment” (Leviticus 6:20), and this is not a garment.
Tearing a garment allows for its return to the Temple, but in doing so a new problem is created: The Torah commands us to launder a garment, and once it is torn, it is but a scrap of cloth. There is no longer a garment to launder. So the mishnah’s solution appears to have a flaw.
Not so, says the Gemara. When the mishnah tells us to tear the garment, it means to leave a piece of it, the size of a small cloth, intact. Tearing purifies the material, but leaving a small section untorn ensures that it is still considered a garment. So the laundering can proceed.
This solution seems promising — that is, until Rav Huna reminds us:
The sages taught: Only when one did not leave of it enough for a small cloth, but if he left enough of it untorn for a small cloth, it is joined (i.e. an intact garment).
Rav Huna reminds us that the rabbis instituted a rule that an impure garment loses its impurity by tearing only when one didn’t leave a small piece of it intact. But if one did leave a section the size of a small cloth intact, it’s considered to be a complete garment and the tearing does cause it to lose its ritual impurity.
Rashi explains that the rabbis issued this decree because they were concerned people would not know what constituted a small cloth and would end up leaving intact a larger section of the garment. Having done so, people would consider the garment to be pure when it was not. Applying this stringency protected people from error, but in doing so they made it impossible to fulfill the biblical requirement to wash out sacrificial blood that spilled on a garment that was removed from the Temple.
This description of the problem already hints at the solution. A garment that is torn but has a small-cloth worth intact is indeed impure on rabbinic grounds. But the Torah still considers it pure and would have no problem with it being brought into the Temple grounds to be laundered. So in this particular situation, the rabbinic decree does not apply.
Much of the time, putting Jewish law into practice is not dependent upon knowing which rules are d’oraita and which are d’rabbanan. This case is an exception. In order to understand the mishnah’s instructions for rendering a ritually impure garment pure and allowing it to be washed in the proper place, it helps to be aware of the differences in what biblical and rabbinic law require. Having the full picture allows us to resolve the challenges brought forth by Ravina and Rav Huna and to get our laundry done.
Read all of Zevachim 94 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on December 17, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
