A Dilemma In Frankfurt
‘All That Are Metam’ei B’ohel…’
(Chullin 124b)
Our sugya mentions the halachos of tum’as meis b’ohel. Let us explore one of them. To become impure from a corpse via tum’as ohel, a person must lean over it, be under it, or be under the same roof as it.
“Under the same roof” doesn’t necessarily mean being in the same room. If two rooms in the same building have an opening between them, a kohen standing in one room becomes impure if a corpse is lying in the other room. Tum’as meis can even pass between floors.
When the Pnei Yehoshua served as rabbi of Frankfurt, Germany, he once confronted an unusual situation. As he writes (Responsa Pnei Yehoshua 10, also cited at the end of Pnei Yehoshua on Kesubos, Tnuas Bnei Torah edition), Frankfurt’s Jews at the time lived in two rows of houses along “Jews’ Street.” Once, when he was walking down that street, several kohanim greeted him and told him they always had to leave their homes whenever someone on the street passed away.
The Pipe Connecting the Houses
The Pnei Yehoshua wondered why the kohanim had to leave considering that there was no visible connection between the two rows of houses. He was told drainage pipes connect all the homes and impurity passes through them. he was further told that a family of kohanim were once preparing a wedding meal, which they almost had to move outside because an infant passed away in a nearby house. They were able to hold it indoors only because they were able to eventually convince the family of the infant to move the body outdoors.
The Pnei Yehoshua was the first halachic authority to discuss this topic, which arose only due to the development of municipal sewage. He was followed by the author of Yeshuos Yaakov (Orach Chayim 343) and the Chasam Sofer (Responsa, Yoreh De’ah 340).
According to halacha, impurity can pass from one room to another if a hole the width of a handbreadth connects them (see Rambam, Hilchos Tum’as Hameis 4:1). But the Pnei Yehoshua ruled that to become impure, a person must be in the same structure (ohel) as the corpse. If he is in a different house entirely, he does not become impure via a connecting pipe.
The Impurity Spreads Elsewhere
The Chasam Sofer disagreed. He maintains that impurity spreads through every possible opening till it reaches a place without a roof. (See Chiddushei Rabbi Shmuel on Bava Basra 16, os 4, and Ta’am V’da’as on Rambam, Hilchos Tum’as Hameis 14:1 and 20:3). Most Acharonim pasken like the Chasam Sofer (see ibid, s.k. 65).