Celui qui vit dans la même cour qu'un am ha'aretz [un non-savant, supposé impur], s'il [le premier] laisse des vaisseaux dans la cour, même s'il s'agit de barils avec un joint étanche, ou un four avec un joint étanche, ce sont tous impurs. Le rabbin Yehuda déclare le four pur lorsqu'il a un joint étanche. Rabbi Yose dit: même le four est impur, jusqu'à ce qu'il fasse un mur autour de lui de dix largeurs de main.
Bartenura on Mishnah Tahorot
הדר עם עם הארץ. מוקפות צמיד פתיל – they are ritually impure because his wife is a menstruating woman, lest she shook it and sat and defiled everything.
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English Explanation of Mishnah Tahorot
Introduction
Chapter eight continues to deal with a person cautious about matters of purity who lives in close proximity to an am haaretz, one who does not observe the laws of purity.
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Bartenura on Mishnah Tahorot
ר' יהודה מטהר בתנור – because it is impossible to shake it, for it is merely attached a bit, and they make it secondary to attach it to the ground. But the one who defiles it (i.e., Rabbi Yossi) holds that we make the degree that something attached is because of that which is not attached. But the Halakha is not according to Rabbi Yehuda.
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English Explanation of Mishnah Tahorot
One who dwells in a courtyard with an am haaretz and forgot some vessels in the courtyard, even though they were jars with tightly fitting lids, or an oven with a tightly fitting cover, they are unclean. All of the vessels that he leaves in the courtyard are impure lest they were defiled by the am haaretz. Earthenware jars with tightly fitting lids cannot be defiled by touch, but if a niddah (a menstruating woman) shifts them, they are impure. Since this might have occurred, the mishnah says these too must be regarded as impure. The first opinion does not differentiate between ovens and other vessels with tightly fitting covers.
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English Explanation of Mishnah Tahorot
Rabbi Judah says that an oven is clean if it has a tightly fitting lid. Rabbi Judah says that the oven can be regarded as clean because it is impossible to shift it, since it is attached to the ground.
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English Explanation of Mishnah Tahorot
Rabbi Yose says: even an oven is unclean unless he made for it a partition ten handbreadths high. Rabbi Yose rules that even the oven is unclean for we are concerned that the am haaretz may have opened the lid to use the oven. Therefore, to preserve the purity of the oven he must keep the am haaretz away by making a partition at least ten handbreadths high. As a side note, it is again interesting that the mishnah assumes such a high degree of contact between the "haver" (the opposite of the am haaretz) and the "am haaretz." People of complete opposite religious inclinations and observances may end up living even in the same courtyard, and if so, the haver will simply have to be more cautious about the purity of his vessels.
