If one accidentally dropped grain of the Kohen's portion (terumah) into regular grain, all of the grain becomes forbidden for anyone but a Kohen to eat. However, if the amount of the kohen's portion grain was less than 1% of the regular grain, the terumah is nullified, and the complete mixture is permitted. What happens when the terumah was not nullified, and some of the mixture fell into another pile of grain? We calculate the percentage of the initial terumah portion in comparison to the total, and this gives us a leniency. Rabbi Eliezer disagrees. According to the him, the complete forbidden mixture acquires the status of terumah, with the full power to prohibit the grain it falls into.
Tangentially, when one prepares waters mixed with the ashes of a red heifer, to purify people and vessels after contact with a dead body, one has to put the ashes on the water, not the other way around. Rabbi Shimon says that either order is acceptable, because the Torah compares it to water with earth used to remove suspicion of adultery. Just as there any order is acceptable, so too here. And the first teacher? He says that the last words in the phrase, “put ashes on the water” determine the order: the ash is what makes the water purifying, and we find the same rule in many other places.
Art: Rudolf August Wilhelm Lehmann - Sifting The Grain
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