Study Chagigah folio 23B with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
as they treated the tube with severity as though it had been rendered impure by contact with a dead creeping animal. Therefore, in not requiring the setting of the sun they made it noticeable that they were opposed to the Sadducees.
The Talmud raises a difficulty. However, if that is so, that the tube is treated as if defiled by a creeping animal, it should not render a person impure, as something defiled by a creeping animal is impure to the first degree of ritual impurity, which cannot impart ritual impurity to people. Why,
Why, then, is it taught in a baraita: The one who cuts and immerses it requires immersion, which indicates that immersion for the tube, yes, this is required, but sprinkling of the third and the 7th day, no. Rather, you must say that they treated it as something made impure by contact with a cor
The Talmud asks: But isn’t it taught in a baraita: The rabbis never made any innovations in the halakhot of impurity with regard to the red heifer procedure. In other words, although the rabbis added stringencies to the red heifer procedure, they never created new halakhot for it that do not exist e
The Talmud answers: Abaye said: When they said that the rabbis did not make innovations, they were not referring to something of this nature, but meant that they did not say that a spade upon which a zav sits can become impure as a seat. They thereby preserved the basic halakhot of impurity, as it