Yesterday, we discussed a tangent in the Gemara — a law about the appropriate punishment for witnesses who conspire to lie about when a loan is due led to a discussion of whether a person can make a loan that extends past the sabbatical year (which ordinarily causes the automatic forgiveness of all debts). Today, we’re going to focus on an even more tangential remark — about immersion in a natural mikveh. Sometimes, the Gemara is like that.
And Rav Yehuda says that Rav says: In the case of a barrel full of drawn water that fell into the Mediterranean Sea, concerning one who immerses there in the spot where the water fell, the immersion did not purify him, because we are concerned that three log of drawn water should not be collected in the place where he immerses.
For a mikveh to effectively purify, it must contain primarily “living” waters, such as rain water or sea water, rather than water that has been cooped up in a barrel or cistern. The presence of just three logs worth (about a liter) of drawn water invalidates a regular sized mikveh.
Of course, this is not so for the Mediterranean Sea, which is exponentially larger. So the addition of three logs worth of drawn water does not affect its status as a mikveh. But when three logs of drawn water are introduced into the sea from a fallen barrel, there is concern that they will remain concentrated in the area into which it fell, and so immersions in that area are invalid.
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The Tosafot, a medieval commentary on the Talmud, notes a significant problem with Rav’s teaching: “This does not seem correct because when a vessel containing water is dipped into a mikveh, when the water in the vessel touches the water of the mikveh the waters are considered to be connected and if the water in the vessel is impure it becomes purified. This is how it works for immersion as well.”
In other words, Rav’s statement, as explained above, can’t be right. As soon as the three logs of drawn water in the barrel come into contact with the water of the Mediterranean they become part of the sea — they are now also living waters. So they cannot invalidate an immersion, even if they remain concentrated in a single area.
So how can we explain Rav’s statement? The Tosafot point out that the Gemara on today’s daf brings the following beraita (early rabbinic teaching) which may hold the key to understanding what Rav really meant:
In the case of a barrel full of wine that fell into the Mediterranean Sea, concerning one who immerses there, the immersion did not purify him, because we are concerned that three logs of drawn wine that is unfit for immersion should not be collected in one place.
This is just like Rav’s statement, but it’s about a barrel of wine, not a barrel of water. While water poured from a barrel becomes sea water as soon as it flows into the Mediterranean, wine does not. If the barrel has three logs of wine, and the wine remains concentrated in a particular area, there is a justifiable concern about the validity of immersion in that spot.
It’s worth noting that Rav’s statement is introduced by the phrase ”this is also taught in a beraita.” This phrase usually introduces a beraita that is identical to the amoraic statement that precedes it. This is further support of the Tosafot’s notion that the statement in the name of Rav is corrupt and that he was actually talking about wine, not water.
The Tosafot make a solid argument that Rav’s original statement was about wine, though we’ll never know for sure. What we can be certain of is that the quest to uncover the original version of the talmudic text is not the purview of modern scholarship alone; rather, it has been a part of the Jewish conversation for quite a long time.
So if you are planning to immerse in a natural mikveh, and you happen to tip a barrel of water in first, today’s conversation suggests that you can probably rest easy. If you are cautious by nature, you may want to swim a little ways away. We recommend you keep your wine for drinking.
Read all of Makkot 4 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on April 10, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
