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Happy Thanksgiving friends,
Perek 9 primarily pithily organizes material that we've come across earlier. The main concepts to remember as we navigate the perek are:
(1) The category of "chalal" / "chalalah". A "chalal" is a man whose kohen father married a woman who is forbidden to him by the laws of kohanim. The marriage is a halachikly recognized marriage despite the prohibition, but the male offspring are not considered kohanim in any respect. (Significantly in our perek, this includes his being able to marry and woman, without any regard for the priestly marriage restrictions.) A "chalalah" is this man's sister. A "chalalah" is forbidden in marriage to a kohen. Please keep in mind that when the first coupe of Mishnayot refer to a man who is a "chalal" who has a brother who is a kohen, that the premise there is that these two brothers share the same father but not the same mother.
(2) (Mishna 3) The category of "secondary" forbidden marriages. These are marriages, such as a man and his granddaughter or a man and his grandmother, which were not included on the Torah's incest list, but which the rabbis (quite wisely) added as rabbinically forbidden marriages. As the Mishna makes very clear, the rabbis gave very sharp teeth to their additional prohibitions by imposing very harsh penalties on the people - actually upon the woman - who violates them.
(3) The status of women relative to eating terumah (the scared portion given to kohanim) or ma'aser (the tithe given to levi'im). Broadly speaking, a woman effectively possesses the status of kohen or levi with regard to eating these special tithes either through being the daughter and household member of her father who is a kohen or levi, OR through being the wife of a kohen or levi, OR through being the mother of a living kohen or levi. However, as the Mishnayot here discuss, there are some in-between moments, such as when a woman who is the daughter of an Israelite is betrothed to, but not yet married to a kohen or levi.
As a practical tip, I find that reading these Mishnayot slowly helps make everything clear :)
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