Kelim כלים

Wood, leather, bone, metal, clay, glass: each material has its own law. An earthen vessel contracts impurity from within and is not purified by immersion—it is broken. A flat board contracts nothing, but make a hollow in it and it does. A thing becomes a "vessel" when its making is finished and it has a purpose.

Along the way the tractate lists everything used in a house and a workshop—from the loom to a child's toy—and so remains one of the chief sources for the daily life of the age. At its very beginning stands the famous ladder of holiness: ten degrees, from the Land of Israel to the Holy of Holies.

Order: Tohorot. There is no Gemara in either Talmud—the tractate remained mishnah.