Tohoros 5:7-8

Tohoros 5:7

Let’s say that someone was sitting in the public domain and a person came along and walked on his clothes, or the passerby spit and the person touched his saliva. Trumah must be burned because of the saliva but when it comes to the clothes, we follow the majority (i.e., if most people in the city are affected by zav impurity, we presume the passerby to be a zav). If a person slept in the public domain, Rabbi Meir says that his clothes have midras impurity when he gets up, though the Sages rule them clean. If one person touched another in the night and we don’t know whether the latter was living or dead and in the morning he was found to be dead, Rabbi Meir rules the former clean. The Sages rule him unclean because all doubtful cases of impurity are judged based on the status quo as of their time of discovery.

Tohoros 5:8

If a town has one resident who is a woman lacking mental competence, a non-Jewish woman or a Samaritan woman, all saliva found in the town is ruled unclean. If a woman walked on a man’s clothes or sat in a boat with him, then if she knows that he eats trumah, his clothes remain clean; if not, he must ask her (about her ritual purity).