Commentary for Avodah Zarah 82:7

Shmuel’s statement, that fragments of idols are permitted, seems to contradict the second clause of the mishnah, which states that a fragment that contains a hand or foot is prohibited. These fragments should always be permitted according to Shmuel.
Shmuel answers by limiting the mishnah to a case where the hand or foot is on a base. If it is on a base, we can see that this is not really a fragment but a full idol. This mishnah always reminds me of the giant foot in the television series Lost. Never really understood what that was, but it made an impression.

R. Yohanan says that since no idolater actively annulled the idol, the fragments are still considered idolatrous and they are prohibited. R. Shimon b. Lakish tries to get into the head of the idolater. If the idolater sees that his idol broke, he will divest it of its power, thinking to himself that if the idol could not save itself from being broken, then how can it save me? Thus we can assume that it was annulled and its fragments are permitted.

In I Samuel 5, after the Philistines seize the ark and leave it overnight in their Temple, God takes vengeance on the Dagon idol, and knocks it over, breaking its head and hands. But the priests still refuse to enter into Dagon’s house. This proves to R. Yohanan that they still accord power to the broken pieces of the Dagon idol.
But Resh Lakish responds that the priests do not enter the sanctuary not because of the broken pieces of idol, but because they believe that the divinity of the idol has gone into the threshold itself. The broken pieces of idols are not divine in the idolater’s eyes. But the “spirit” of the idol has moved elsewhere.

The mishnah allowed Jews to use fragments of images. From here, R. Yohanan deduced that fragments of idols are prohibited.
But Resh Lakish would say that you could read the mishnah in another way. Fragments of images are prohibited. But whole images are prohibited, in accordance with R. Meir of the first mishnah of the chapter. Thus the mishnah would not imply that fragments of idols are prohibited.

This section is a difficulty on R. Yohanan. R. Meir holds that images are prohibited, but fragments therefrom are permitted. If we apply the same logic to the opinion of the rabbis we would have to say that idols are prohibited, but fragments therefrom are permitted.

R. Yohanan says that the analogy is not correct. Images may not have been worshipped, and when they broke, they may have been annulled. Thus there are two doubts and in cases of a double doubt, we can rule leniently. But in the case of a broken piece of an idol, it may not have been annulled. There is only one doubt, and one doubt is not sufficient to remove from the certainty that the idol was worshipped.

A haver is someone known to tithe his food. This haver dies leaving a store room full of produce, and we do not know whether it has been tithed or not. The produce was certainly untithed at one point (this would be true of all produce). But now the “doubt” about whether it was tithed seems to be significant enough to presume that the produce is tithed. Thus a doubt sets aside a certainty.

The Talmud rejects the proof in two ways. First of all, there is an assumption that the haver always tithes right away. So this might not be a case of “doubt” at all.
Second, if one brings his produce into the store room with its chaff, animals may eat it without tithing. So the produce might not have been liable for tithing at all. This is not “doubt setting aside a certainty” but “doubt setting aside another doubt.

Yes, I know that this source is a bit gross and quite strange as well. Why does the priest need to know if it is male or female? While it is true that there are different periods of purity and impurity for male or female births (see Leviticus 12), is this slave Jewish such that she would observe these laws? Why doesn’t the priest know that he should not look into the pit to see because that would make him impure? In any case, there seems to have definitely been a source of impurity placed into the pit. The doubt is over whether it is still there. And again, a doubt does seem to set aside a certainty.