Chukat 5773

By Rabbi Rami Pavolotzky

B´nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica

When Understanding is Impossible

This week’s parashah, Chukat, starts with a story about what is traditionally known as parah adumah, literally, “the red heifer”.  Since it is a very obscure text, I’ll quote it in its entirety, instead of giving you just a summary.

The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: “This is the ritual law that the Lord has commanded: Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid.  You shall give it to Eleazar the priest.  It shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence.  Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting.  The cow shall be burned in his sight—its hide, flesh, and blood shall be burned, its dung included— and the priest shall take cedar wood, hyssop, and crimson stuff, and throw them into the fire consuming the cow.  The priest shall wash his garments and bathe his body in water; after that the priest may reenter the camp, but he shall be unclean until evening.  He who performed the burning shall also wash his garments in water, bathe his body in water, and be unclean until evening.  A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the cow and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, to be kept for water of lustration for the Israelite community.  It is for cleansing.  He who gathers up the ashes of the cow shall also wash his clothes and be unclean until evening.  This shall be a permanent law for the Israelites and for the strangers who reside among you.” (Bemidvar 19:1-10)

You don’t have to be an expert on the subject to realize that it is not easy to understand this passage.  To begin with, it is odd that the entire ritual is based on the use of a red heifer.  After all, how many red cows have you seen walking around?  Even the Mishnah sages (Parah 3:5) commented on the peculiarity of this demand, by establishing that only nine red heifers have been offered throughout history (some say that only seven).  Many stories in the Talmud maintain that the price of a red heifer was extremely high (Kidushin 31a and parallels), which was undoubtedly a result of their scarcity.  Some explained that actually, the Torah was referring here to the brown color, for which no other name exists in the Pentateuch (see, for example, the commentary of the Chumash Etz Chaim).

Another curious detail is that the ashes of the red heifer had the property of purifying the impure (the one who had been in contact with a corpse) and, at the same time, defiling the pure, as can clearly be seen in the passage of the Torah quoted above.  Different possible interpretations have been tried in order to explain this obvious paradox, but none of them seem conclusive.

Let us also say that the idea of the ritual seems to be really strange and difficult to understand, beyond its details and particularities.   Although there have been different and original attempts to explain it, both rational and allegorical, the truth is that we are still as perplexed as before when faced with this text.  Our sages, blessed be their memory, expressed this feeling in a beautiful midrash that describes King Solomon, the wisest man on the face of the earth, saying, “I have struggled to understand God’s word and I have understood it entirely, with the exception of the ritual of the red heifer” (Bemidvar Rabbah 19:3).

In this same line, the sages have classified this law as a chok (pl., chukim), literally, a “divine decree”.  Unlike the mishpatim (judgments), which are those laws of the Torah which have a rational explanation, the chukim defy rational sense.  They constitute demands that have to be obeyed as if they were decreed by a king, even when they lack common sense or if we’re unable to understand them.  The midrash even explains that we have no right to question these laws (Bemidvar Rabbah 19:8).

In view of these irrational laws, among which that of the red heifer seems to be the archetype, a question arises concerning the nature itself of the mitzvot: do we really have to fulfill those laws which have no sense?  Some philosophers tried to explain this by saying that actually, the chukim are not senseless but in any case, its meaning is kept hidden before our eyes, due to our intellectual inability to see them or simply because we fail to recognize the context in which these laws were promulgated.  Maimonides, for instance, devotes a good effort to identify the original objective of the chukim with the Torah’s intention to abolish idolatry.

A religious current sees, in this type of laws, the summit of religious observance, since it allows pious people to obey God’s precepts just because He ordered them to do so, without the involvement of any individual or social benefit.  Other more modern scholars have considered these regulations with a more critical spirit, even rejecting them altogether, for their lack of meaning or out-of-date nature.

As you can see, the law of the red heifer and other similar ones impact fully on our religious awareness: having to observe a law with no obvious meaning can exacerbate the curiosity in some people, infuse a religious rapture in others, and stir up an intellectual rejection in other others.  Most of us, however, simply feel baffled.  The fact that the red heifer precept is not observed today frees us from greater concerns, but the keeping of many other chukim is still in force in our times, such as the prohibition of simultaneously wearing clothes made of wool and linen, and perhaps the laws of kashrut.  Thus, the reflection over the condition of the chukim continues to be relevant.

I’d like to end this commentary quoting a fantastic midrash (Bemidvar Rabbah 19:8), which generously depicts the situation I tried to describe here.  According to the story, a heathen challenged the great rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, by telling him that the entire ritual of the red heifer was very similar to the magical practices so condemned by the Torah itself in other passages.  Rabbi Yochanan then compared the ritual of the red heifer with the “medicines” used at the time to heal those who were possessed by an evil spirit (extreme melancholia/madness).   The heathen was satisfied with this explanation and went away, but Rabbi Yochanan’s students were very disappointed. They said to him, “you thrust off this man with a mere rod (that is, an elemental reasoning), but what reply will you give us?”  To which Rabbi Yochanan answered: “As you live, the corpse does not defile, nor does the [mixture of ashes and] water cleanse.  The truth is that the rite of the red heifer is a decree of the King who is King of Kings.  The Holy One said: ‘I have set down a statute, I have issued a decree.  You are not permitted to transgress my decree.  This is a statute of the Torah.’”

What is the meaning of this midrash?  Because it seems to mean that impurity is not found in the environment, or in the nature of corpses; it is not a result of the essence of death, nor is there an essential purifying power in the composition of the red heifer’s ashes.  The only element that causes this to defile and that to purify is God’s decree and the acceptance of the divine yoke by men and women, nothing else.

Even those with more rational spirits (among which I humbly include myself) must recognize that the existence of chukim grant Judaism a different status, making it more interesting and fascinating at the same time.  If there were no chukim, the halakhah, the Jewish law, would only be a logical (and marvelous) fabrication that helps humanity to live in society, to respect themselves and fellow human beings, to be more merciful, to be thankful towards their Creator, etc.  By the way, this analysis was upheld, with different nuances, by countless Jewish scholars throughout time.

Nonetheless, the existence itself of mitzvot with no rational explanation, such as that of the red heifer, continuously challenges us to travel to the limits of our understanding and accept laws that we cannot fully understand.  This rumination brings us closer to the mystery that surrounds our lives, inviting us at the same time to acknowledge our human condition, limited and fragile…  Who knows?  Perhaps therein lies the greatness of these mitzvot.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Rami Pavolotzky

B´nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica