to demonstrate in public that their view had won recognition. They actually defiled the priest who was to burn the Heifer. ובית מבילה היתה שם—A pool was there in which he could immerse his whole body, after which he might burn the Heifer, without waiting for the sun to set—all this the Pharisees did, שמש היתה נעשית מפני הצדוקים שלא יהו אומרים במעורבי[1] 'so that the Sadducees should not have occasion to say that it had to be done at sunset'.
This is the reason underlying the difference between the Pharisees and the Sadducees in the matter of the burning of the Red Heifer, namely, the principle of טבול יום, and not, as is generally believed, that the Sadducees were more exacting in the matter of the purity of the priest who burned the Heifer, and the Pharisees less exacting, less scrupulous.
The fifth taḳḳanah is 'to eat garlic on the eve of the Sabbath'. The Talmud's explanation, that garlic is a מכניס אהבח, induces love, and that Friday night is the זמן עונה, makes thereof a strange, grotesque taḳḳanah, and long ago many expressed surprise that a Baralta should ascribe it to Ezra, particularly as the making Sabbath eve the זמן עונה is one of the most recent things in the Talmud.[2] This taḳḳanah has, in my opinion, no connexion with עונה but was really a great and significant reform in the development of the laws of clean and unclean. Originally, they did not permit the eating of garlic, because before plucking it from the ground they moistened it with water,[3] and by this pouring of water upon it they rendered it susceptible
