Basics of tum’ah, part 1: what it means

As the current few dappim of Daf Yomi deal with issues of ritual impurity, I thought I would help myself out by organizing the basics of the topic.

The Encyclopedia Talmudit was helpful in putting this together—thank God all the relevant articles start with ט, since the encyclopedia only goes midway through כ. Also helpful was, well, you know.

I'll go through mahshavah in part 1, and then in part 2 I'll outline the halakhot.