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Negaim נגעים
a tractate of the order of Tohorot
The Torah describes marks the priest watches: their colour, their depth, the hair within them, their spreading over a week. Not a physician, not the person himself, but the priest declares clean or unclean—and until the priest speaks, nothing has happened.
The tractate works through every kind and shade, the order of the two weeks of confinement, the purification with two birds, cedar wood and crimson thread, and the affliction of a house, which in the last resort is taken apart stone by stone. The Mishnah notes: a man may examine any affliction except his own.
Order: Tohorot. There is no Gemara in either Talmud—the tractate remained mishnah.
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Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Mishnah Negaim 2:5 — a man examines all afflictions except his own
- Leviticus 13–14 — the law of the afflictions
Basis: Talmud and midrash.