Book
Oholot אהלות
a tractate of the order of Tohorot
Everything under one covering with a corpse becomes impure without touching it. Hence a most exact analysis of space: what counts as a "tent", how impurity passes through an opening, what stops it, what happens when a roof overhangs two houses at once.
The tractate matters beyond its subject: a priest may still not come under one roof with a corpse, and the rules about cemeteries, hospitals and excavations rest on the laws of Oholot. There is no Gemara, but the commentators treat it as geometry.
Order: Tohorot. There is no Gemara in either Talmud—the tractate remained mishnah.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Numbers 19:14 — «this is the teaching: if a man dies in a tent»
- Mishnah Oholot 1:1 — the degrees of corpse impurity
Basis: Talmud and midrash.