In his now-classic poem, Robert Frost wrote of two roads that diverged in a yellow wood: “And sorry I could not travel both… I took the one less traveled by,/ And that has made all the difference.”
The rabbis on today’s daf have a particularly rabbinic take on this proverbial dilemma. The diverging roads, in their scenario, may or may not pass through a burial site.
The sages taught: Two paths, one impure, and one pure — and someone walked on the first path and did not enter (the Temple) and then walked on the second and entered — he is liable.
If you know that one of two roads passes through a burial site, but you don’t know which, and you must take one of them, then you necessarily emerge uncertain whether you have contracted corpse impurity. But if you’ve walked on both roads, then one of them definitely made you impure, and so if you then enter into the Temple, you are liable for entering the Temple in a state of impurity.
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The rabbis continue with a slightly more complicated scenario:
If he walked on the first and entered, was sprinkled, and again, and he immersed, and afterward he walked on the second path and entered — he is liable.
In this case, our hiker takes the first path and then, believing he’s become impure, takes all the necessary ritual steps to purify himself. After that, he walks on the second road and enters the Temple without doing any purification rituals. Since the actual status of each path is uncertain, there is still a 50/50 chance he entered the Temple while impure. Therefore, the rabbis deem him liable.
But not everyone agrees. The text continues:
Rabbi Shimon deems him exempt. And Rabbi Shimon ben Yehuda, in the name of Rabbi Shimon, deems him exempt in all of these.
According to Rashi, the rabbis who opened our beraita insist that this person is liable because he knew there was a chance he was impure, and yet he entered the Temple. Rabbi Shimon argues that since there was a chance that the man was actually pure, he’s not liable for intentionally entering the Temple in a state of impurity. The second named opinion goes even further. According to this version of Rabbi Shimon’s teaching, Rabbi Shimon actually thinks the man is always pure, even if he’s walked on both roads without purifying himself after the first one. This opinion is difficult to reconcile, since we know for sure that someone who has walked both roads (sorry, Robert Frost) has contracted impurity. The later Rabbi Rava then moderates this view.
Rava said: What are we dealing with here? Where he walked on the first path, and when he was walking on the second path he forgot that he had already walked on the first path, so that it was partial awareness.
Rava explains that, according to Rabbi Shimon, one is liable only for entering the Temple in a state of impurity if one is fully aware that they are impure. Rava imagines that our hiker didn’t realize they had walked both roads, and that’s why he entered the Temple. In this case, he is exempt from punishment because partial awareness is not considered full awareness.
Today’s daf presents a world in which all roads lead to the Temple, but those paths are fraught, the sites of hidden impurities that can lead to desecration of this most sacred of spaces. Navigating these roads takes a great deal of intention and some careful calculations. It’s clear that impurity and its attendant consequences aren’t simply a function of what contact a person has had with impurity, but also of one’s state of mind — whether one is aware of that contact. In a case where even awareness is difficult to judge, given the partial information about these two paths, Rabbi Shimon ben Yehuda makes navigating these divergent roads just a little bit easier for those trying to reach Jerusalem.
Read all of Shevuot 19 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on May 20, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
