[Avodah] K.P. vs P.A.

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 11:54:47AM -0400, cantorwolberg at cox.net wrote:
: Remarkably, there is a halacha which states that if the whole community
: is tamei, and if a Para Aduma can't be found, the people are permitted
: nevertheless to participate in the KP, symbolizing to the nation that
: our national achdut and well being transcends individual purity.

Tum'ah huterah betzibur isn't limited to KP.

I thought of it in terms of my Electrical Engineering education. You
can't speak of the voltage of a single wire, voltage is the difference
in potential between two wires. Or, very often, between a wire and ground.

Similarly, the height of a mountain. An object is higher than another;
height is a distance between two points in one particular (radial)
direction. That other point is often left to implicitly be sea level.
The melting of the polar icecaps is lowering the height of Everest,
since its peak is now so many feet and inches above a higher sea level.

Similarly, tum'ah may be only defined in relation to a baseline. If the
whole tzibur is tamei, it's like sea level shifted.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Rescue me from the desire to win every
micha at aishdas.org        argument and to always be right.
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