When
people or things contact ritual impurity from a human corpse, they may
be purified by sprinkling of a mixture of water and the ashes of a red heifer.
The
red heifer was slaughtered in a designated place on the Mount of
Olives, which faces the portals of the Temple. Rabbi Shimon maintains
that even after the red heifer was slaughtered on its pyre, it may be
redeemed if a nicer heifer is found.
Similarly, if the thief
slaughtered a stolen blemished offering outside the Temple, he is
liable to the fourfold or fivefold payment – since that animal could be
redeemed and eaten.
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