Keilim 25:4 - 25:5

הרובע וחצי רוצע – as for example, a piece of wood that is thick and long, and it has two measurements engraved one next to the other, one holds a quarter and the other holds half-a quarter, and there is a wall that separates between this one and that one.

כלי שנטמא תוכו – in astonishment! For if a vessel whose inside was defiled, its outsides were not defiled., but why does it teach in the Mishnah that one-half of the quarter was not defiled? For isn’t its outside the quarter?

[שלות] קודמין היא (is this the class of those that takes precedence?) – each one of them, takes precedence over its partner, meaning to say, that none has precedence over the other. And just as you say that one-half of a quarter of its backsides to a quarter, so you should say that the quarter is backsides to one-half of quarter. And when the quarter is defiled, its backside of the one-half quarter is defiled but not its insides. But the reading of my teachers/Rabbis is that each group/band takes precedence, because the groups of the students would sit before him (i.e., the teacher) in rows, he asked to them this question already which was asked of me by the group of students that sits in the first row, and such is how I responded them, or perhaps [the quarter’s backside to the half-quarter], etc.

הרובע ואחוריו טמאים – the quarter – that is the inside. And the backsides are the walls that surround the quarter from outside. But the wall that forms a partition between both of them, is included in the inside of the half-quarter, and it is pure to the side that is towards the one-half quarter. And similarly, when the one-half quarter is defiled, the half-quarter and its outsides are impure. The half-quarter is the insides, and the outsides are the walls that surround that half-quarter from the outside, but the wall that forms a partition, the side that is towards the quarter is included with the inside of the quarter.

נטמאו אחורי הרובע – that is, the walls that surround from the outside.

אין חולקין את הגביים (they do not divide the hind parts/outside parts [of the utensil] – that is the outside parts, for all the outside parts are impure when one of the outside parts became impure.

מטביל את כולו – the quarter and one-half of the quarter. But the Halakha is not according to Rabbi Meir. And the law of the middle wall is explained above at the end of Chapter Two (Tractate Kelim, Chapter 2, Mishnah 7) for “Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri says: They divide its thickness. The [half that] serves the unclean [portion] is unclean; the [half that] serves the clean [part] is clean.”