Introduction Mishnah three contains the final two testimonies of Rabbi Hananyah, chief of priests.
He also testified concerning a small village in the vicinity of Jerusalem in which there was an old man who used to lend to all the people of the village and write out [the bond] in his own handwriting and others signed it. And when the fact was brought before the Sages they pronounced it legal. Hence, incidentally, you may infer that a wife may write her own bill of divorcement, and a husband may write his own receipt; for the legality of a document depends only on those who sign it. The third thing about which Rabbi Hananyah testified is about the manner in which documents may be written. He testified that he saw an elder in a town near Jerusalem who used to write out his own loan documents and have others sign them and the Sages pronounced it legal, even though the witnesses did not write out the entire document themselves. Without Rabbi Hananyah’s testimony we might have thought that the lender is not allowed to write out the document himself, for fear that he would forget a document and thereby falsely claim that someone owed him money. From Rabbi Hananyah’s testimony we learn that a woman is allowed to write out her own divorce document and a man might write out his own receipt for having paid the woman’s ketubah (marriage payment). Even though the divorce document is given by the man to the woman and the receipt is given by the woman to the man, since the legality of a document depends solely upon the witnesses, it does not matter who writes it out. As long as these documents are witnessed properly, they are valid.
And [he testified] concerning a needle which was found in flesh of a [sacrifice], that the knife and the hands [which had been employed on the flesh] are clean, but the flesh itself is defiled; and if it was found in the excrement, all are clean. The final issue upon which Rabbi Hananyah testified is with regards to a needle which was found in the body of a sacrifice after it had been slaughtered. The needle was known to have been made impure by a dead body and the question is being asked, are the knife that had been used to slaughter the animal and the person who slaughtered the animal impure from having had contact with the impure needle. Rabbi Hananyah testifies that the knife and slaughterer are not impure but the flesh of the sacrifice is impure, for the needle surely came into contact with it. The reason that the knife and slaughterer are still pure is that doubtful cases of impurity in the public domain are considered pure. The flesh does not make the knife impure because food does not impart impurity to vessels. If, however, the needle was found in the feces of the animal, the knife, slaughterer and even the flesh are pure, because we cannot be sure that the animal’s flesh touched the needle. Although we could assume that the animal swallowed the needle and therefore it touched the flesh, this is not certain and therefore, since this happened in the public domain, the rules are lenient.