Makhshirin is the eighth tractate, in the Mishnah and Tosefta, of the sixth Talmudic order Tohorot ("Purifications"). This tractate contains six chapters, divided respectively into 6, 11, 8, 10, 11, and 8 sections, while the Tosefta has only three chapters and 31 sections. It treats of the effects of liquids in rendering foods with which they may come into contact susceptible, under certain conditions, of Levitical uncleanness. There is no Gemara, Yerushalmi or Bavli, to this treatise. Background The laws is based on the Scriptural provision, "If any water be put upon the seed, and any part of their carcass fall thereon, it shall be unclean" (Lev. 11:38; see 34 et seq.). From this the Rabbis deduce (1) that foods are not susceptible of uncleanness by contact with the carcass of a reptile unless the foods have first been moistened (see Hullin 36a); and (2) that as Scripture, in the passage just cited, uses the expression כי יתן, which, when vowelless, may be read either "ki yuttan" (= "if it be put") or "ki yitten" (= "if one will put"), and as "putting" is necessarily the result of intention, "being put" also must be accompanied by intention (see Bava Metzia 22b). Where this condition is absent the contact of liquid with foods will have no effect. Hence the general rule elaborated in the first chapter following. Mishnah Chapter 1: All liquids (mashkin; see 6:4 et seq.), when originally desired (expected to be beneficial), though ultimately unwelcome, or when the reverse is the case (not desired originally, but ultimately acceptable), predispose loose fruit moistened by them to Levitical uncleanness. Thus if one shakes a tree to bring down some fruit, or a dead reptile, and at the same time some drops of water fall from the tree on fruit lying near by, the water does not come under the law of ki yuttan, or the fruit under liability to uncleanness by contact with a defiling object; but when one's intention is to shake off the rain-water or the dewdrops, the loose fruit moistened thereby becomes susceptible to uncleanness. Where water is used for other than its ordinary purposes, as where one submerges fruit or vegetables to secrete them from thieves, the effect is not to render the fruit liable to defilement. A precedent under this rule is cited from the history of the last days of Judea's struggle against the Romans,