klahr@csd2.UUCP (06/26/85)
DVAR TORAH: PARSHAS CHUKAS
or
HOW NOW, RED COW?
_______________________________________________________________________________
This week's portion of the Torah begins with the law of Parah Adumah,
the Red Cow. The very first words in this section tell us that we're dealing
with some rather unusual teachings. The law of the Red Cow is heralded by the
words "This is the statute of the Torah", upon which Rashi, in the name of the
Midrash, comments:
Because Satan and the nations of the world taunt Israel, saying
"What is this commandment? And what reason can there be in it?". Therefore,
the Torah proclaims this to be a statute- "It is a decree from Me, you have
no authority to criticize it".
Before we begin to examine some of the questions and issues raised
by this mysterious law, let us briefly review some of the features that seem
to make the law of the Red Cow so apparently inscrutable.
The Torah here discusses the concept of Toomas Mes, spiritual and ritual
defilement conferred upon a person who comes into contact with a dead body.
Ordinarily, ab initio, a person is regarded as being Tahor, in a state of
spiritual and ritual purity. In practical terms, this would allow him/her
to enter the Bais haMikdosh, the Holy Temple, and to partake of various types
of sacrificial offerings, as well as certain other foods, that had to be eaten
in a state of purity. One way a person can become Tahmay-"defiled",so to
speak, in a state of impurity, is by coming into contact with a dead body.
How can this impurity be removed? By a week-long process in which, on the
third and seventh day, specially prepared ashes from a Red Cow are sprinkled
on the person, at the end of which he/she immerses self in a Mikva, a
specially constructed ritual bath.
The ashes of the Red Cow are prepared by taking a cow that is completely
red and more than two years of age, when it has reached the ability to bear
children. The cow is taken outside the Temple, outside Jerusalem, and is
slaughtered there. It's blood is sprinkled in the direction of the Temple,
and the cow is burned to ashes, along with some cedarwood, grasses, and
some wool dyed red with extracts taken from a worm. The ashes are gathered
and stored for whenever someone "defiled" by contact with the dead needs to
go through the purification procedure. The sprinkling of the blood must be
performed by the Kohain, the priest, as with any other sacrificial offering.
All the people involved in preparing the ashes-the Kohain who sprinkles
the blood, the one who burns the cow, and the one who gathers the ashes-
become Tahmay, impure, and must immerse themselves in a Mikva and wait till
nightfall to once again become Tahor,"pure".
Parah Adumah is considered the classic example of the "not understood
commandment", the mitzvo that we have a very hard time trying to rationalize.
What are we to make of the concept of the commandment as "statute", decreed
by imperial fiat? What is meant by Toomah, the spiritual impurity conveyed
to a person by contact with the dead? What of the intricate procedure and
requirements ofthe preparation of the ashes of the Red Cow, as well as the
purification process? Why is the Red Cow an exception to the rule that
no sacrifice is to be brought outside of the Temple? What is the intent of the
Midrash that says that the sacrifice of the Red Cow acts as an atonement for
the sin of Israel worshipping the golden calf? And finally, the puzzling
facet of this law that, according to the Midrash, led Solomon, the wisest of
men, to exclaim in Koheles(Ecclesiastes 7:23) "I said, I will be wise, but it
was far from me" : How is it that the very same ashes which confer purity
upon the impure individual also confer impurity upon the Tahor "pure" people
who prepare these ashes?
On the one hand, when we encounter this plethora of questions that
surrounds just one of the commandments, we ought to be reminded of what is in
one sense the infinitude of distance that separates mortals from the
unknowable G-d, Who is classically defined in Judaism by what He is not,
rather than by what He is. At Mount Sinai, the Jewish People experienced an
intimate communion with G-d and said "we shall do, and we shall listen".
They realized the futility of expecting to comprehend the manifold aspects of
G-d's Torah "from the outside", and that only through the a priori acceptance
and attachment to G-d's Torah could they begin to truly understand the Torah...
up to a point.
Ultimately, our acceptance of the Torah is not predicated upon
our absolute understanding of the Creator and the laws He gave us. Nor would
it be reasonable to expect that to be the case. We obey the Torah, in the
final analysis, because G-d commanded us to follow His laws, which in ways we
may or may not consciously feel, make us into better people, and bring us
closer to G-d. "The commandments were only given to refine the character of
people", the Midrash says. Perhaps one of the purposes of a "statute" like
Parah Adumah is to make us conscious of this fact, and equally so, to
remind us that this holds as much for the "rational" mitzvos that we think
we understand as for those "super-rational" ones which we don't. When Solomon
said "I said, I will be wise, but it was far from me", one way of taking the
Midrash's reference to it is that, while he had thought that he had achieved
an understanding of all the rest of the Torah, his puzzlement at the mitzvo
of Parah Adumah showed him that he had only scratched the surface of all the
other commandments as well.
On the other hand, the fact that we may not plumb the very depths of a
command's significance does not mean that it is not worthwhile to understand a
command's meaning as best as we can. The fact that Solomon was only hung up
on Parah Adumah implies that he did delve for an understanding of other mitzvos
that are usually considered "chukim"-statutes that are not intuitively
rational, such as the laws of kashrus(dietary laws). In fact, a distinction I
once heard between "chukim" and "mishpatim",the so-called rational mitzvos,
is not the difference between laws that have reasons we can understand vs.
those that don't. It is the difference between a mitzvo for which you can
understand a reason, as well as why the mitzvo was concretely implemented
in a specific manner, vs. a mitzvo whose significance you can comprehend,
while not knowing why this significance had to be "packaged" in this mode of
practice, as opposed to some other symbolic representation of the concept.
The performance or study of a commandment, without an attempt at seeking
its meaning, can seem, as the Ohr haChayim(Rav Chayim Ibn Atar) says in a
slightly different context, "as a body without a soul". Therefore, let us
briefly look at one interpretation of Parah Adumah.
In his commentary on the Torah, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch's explanation
of Parah Adumah, as well as the nature of Toomah, spiritual impurity, is
one of the highlights of his symbolic analysis of the mitzvos. In Rabbi
Hirsch's view, the concept of Toomas Mes, impurity associated with coming into
contact with the dead, comes to support the idea that Man has freedom of will,
and is not a deterministic automaton. In his own words:
Every dead human body does represent the mortality of human beings,
and the danger is very near to lead to thinking of this physical lack of
freedom which death demonstrates as extending also to the psychical nature
of Man in its connection with the physical during life. Coming into contact
with a dead human body is coming into contact with the living human being who
cannot escape the fate of death which hangs over him, a force to which he has
to submit, a fact which every dead human body brings home to him...
Against this, the laws of Toomah and Tahara come and place the fact,
guaranteed by G-d, of freedom in moral matters in opposition to the
demoralizing illusion of physical lack of freedom. Throughout life, whenever
the energy which the consciousness of moral freedom gives, threatens to be
disturbed by reminders of physical lack of freedom, these laws of Tahara
endeavor to awaken the reminder that in matters of moralityy there is no lack
of freedom...
The Torah refers to the Parah Adumah as a Chatos-an offering brought for
the expiation of a sin. Expiation, doing away with the sin and purging the
sinner from his sin is a concept which belongs entirely to the sphere of
morals. By referring to Parah Adumah as a Chatas, the Torah lays down, as the
basis of the whole life of the people, the fundamental truth that human
beings can be free from sin, can become so and remain so.
That is why this Chatos is performed outside the Temple. It is different
from a sin-offering inside the Sanctuary, the expiation of a certain person
from a certain sin by the symbolic act of promising faithful adherence to duty
for the future. It is rather the proclamation of the public conviction of
the possibility of freedom from sin, the ability of mastering all physical
temptations and allurements, proclaiming the fact of the moral power of the
human will in general. But it proclaims this freedom of man not forgetting
where he has no freedom, it shows his freedom in moral matters in connection
with his lack of freedom in physical ones. It does not teach to close one's
eyes to the lack of freedom to which the physical nature of man belongs. It
shows man with the whole contrast of his being, his mortality next to his
iimmortality, with his freedom and his subjection, with his physical nature
and his moral nature...it says ti him: Be not deceived by corpse and death,
become free, become immortal not in spite of, but together with all that is
physically unfree and mortal in you, remain immortal master of your mortal
body, protect yourself and prove the truth of Tahara in the midst of Toomah!
Rabbi Hirsch then goes on to give a detailed symbolic interpretation of
each of the detailed steps of the preparation of the Parah Adumah. Time,
space, and concentration span-mine and yours, do not allow me to present it
here, but the reader is referred to it for a full appreciation of Hirsch's
thesis.
The last major topic that I wish to touch upon is the riddle that plagued
Solomon. The ashes of the Red Cow and associated materials are to represent
that all of organic and animal vitality, including that aspect within
ourselves, inevitably returns to dust and ashes. Only the aspect of our will
and personality that can master the physical animal side of our nature, as
symbolized by the slaughter of the animal, and that can be raised to the service
of divine Law and Morality, as represented by the sprinkling of the cow's
blood in the direction of the Temple, remains inviolate. If somehow this
message is brought home to the "impure" person by sprinkling these ashes mixed
with spring water on him/her, why do these ashes "defile" previously
Tahor people who associate with it in its preparation?
The explanation given by Rabbi Hirsch is that, the consciousness of the
contrast between moral free will and physical determinism is important for the
person who is "defiled", whose confidence in this contrast has been disturbed
by contact with the dead body of a human being. Howver, "what is medicine for
the sick, troubled mind is the very opposite, poison, for the untroubled
healthy mind...the normal, pure, undisturbed beat of the pulse is entirely
that of life, normal existence is not lived thinking of this contrast, the
thought of death is not to lurk constantly next to the thought of life...".
It is perhaps for these reasons that the Midrashim on this Parsha see the
Parah Adumah as the eloquent articulation of freedom of will. On one level,
the admonition of entering the Temple in a state of impurity is seen as
referring to a person's defiling his/her own personal sanctuary, the heart
and mind of man in which G-d's presence is truly meant to be felt. On a
more social level, the purifying "powers" of Parah Adumah are viewed as the
ability of people to overcome the negative effects of their environments& past,
just as Abraham was able to recognize G-d after being brought up in the idol-
worshipping house of his father Terach. On a national level, Parah Adumah,
the"adult cow", is considered the expiation of the sin of Israel's worship
of the golden calf, the "callow baby cow". Our pursuit of the "golden calf",
in all its incarnations, is rooted in a deterministic, materialistic outlook
on life, and is countered by the statement of free will, morality, and
spirituality made by the Parah Adumah.
Finally, on a historical level, Parah Adumah is seen as depicting the
rise and fallf the empires that have ruled the world and oppressed Israel-
again, the ultimate decay of material might. It is also seen as the suffering
and exile of the Jewish people throughout history, as well as the eventual
unification and purification of the Jewish people in the land of Israel, when
G-d will complete our Redemption in the epoch of the Messiah, may it come soon
and in our times, Amen.
Good Shabbos.
Pinchus Klahr {allegra, ihnp4} cmcl2!csd2!klahr
klahr@nyu-csd2.ARPA
klahr@csd2.UUCP (06/27/85)
DVAR TORAH: PARSHAS CHUKAS
or
HOW NOW, RED COW?
_______________________________________________________________________________
This week's portion of the Torah begins with the law of Parah Adumah,
the Red Cow. The very first words in this section tell us that we're dealing
with some rather unusual teachings. The law of the Red Cow is heralded by the
words "This is the statute of the Torah", upon which Rashi, in the name of the
Midrash, comments:
Because Satan and the nations of the world taunt Israel, saying
"What is this commandment? And what reason can there be in it?". Therefore,
the Torah proclaims this to be a statute- "It is a decree from Me, you have
no authority to criticize it".
Before we begin to examine some of the questions and issues raised
by this mysterious law, let us briefly review some of the features that seem
to make the law of the Red Cow so apparently inscrutable.
The Torah here discusses the concept of Toomas Mes, spiritual and ritual
defilement conferred upon a person who comes into contact with a dead body.
Ordinarily, ab initio, a person is regarded as being Tahor, in a state of
spiritual and ritual purity. In practical terms, this would allow him/her
to enter the Bais haMikdosh, the Holy Temple, and to partake of various types
of sacrificial offerings, as well as certain other foods, that had to be eaten
in a state of purity. One way a person can become Tahmay-"defiled",so to
speak, in a state of impurity, is by coming into contact with a dead body.
How can this impurity be removed? By a week-long process in which, on the
third and seventh day, specially prepared ashes from a Red Cow are sprinkled
on the person, at the end of which he/she immerses self in a Mikva, a
specially constructed ritual bath.
The ashes of the Red Cow are prepared by taking a cow that is completely
red and more than two years of age, when it has reached the ability to bear
children. The cow is taken outside the Temple, outside Jerusalem, and is
slaughtered there. It's blood is sprinkled in the direction of the Temple,
and the cow is burned to ashes, along with some cedarwood, grasses, and
some wool dyed red with extracts taken from a worm. The ashes are gathered
and stored for whenever someone "defiled" by contact with the dead needs to
go through the purification procedure. The sprinkling of the blood must be
performed by the Kohain, the priest, as with any other sacrificial offering.
All the people involved in preparing the ashes-the Kohain who sprinkles
the blood, the one who burns the cow, and the one who gathers the ashes-
become Tahmay, impure, and must immerse themselves in a Mikva and wait till
nightfall to once again become Tahor,"pure".
Parah Adumah is considered the classic example of the "not understood
commandment", the mitzvo that we have a very hard time trying to rationalize.
What are we to make of the concept of the commandment as "statute", decreed
by imperial fiat? What is meant by Toomah, the spiritual impurity conveyed
to a person by contact with the dead? What of the intricate procedure and
requirements ofthe preparation of the ashes of the Red Cow, as well as the
purification process? Why is the Red Cow an exception to the rule that
no sacrifice is to be brought outside of the Temple? What is the intent of the
Midrash that says that the sacrifice of the Red Cow acts as an atonement for
the sin of Israel worshipping the golden calf? And finally, the puzzling
facet of this law that, according to the Midrash, led Solomon, the wisest of
men, to exclaim in Koheles(Ecclesiastes 7:23) "I said, I will be wise, but it
was far from me" : How is it that the very same ashes which confer purity
upon the impure individual also confer impurity upon the Tahor "pure" people
who prepare these ashes?
On the one hand, when we encounter this plethora of questions that
surrounds just one of the commandments, we ought to be reminded of what is in
one sense the infinitude of distance that separates mortals from the
unknowable G-d, Who is classically defined in Judaism by what He is not,
rather than by what He is. At Mount Sinai, the Jewish People experienced an
intimate communion with G-d and said "we shall do, and we shall listen".
They realized the futility of expecting to comprehend the manifold aspects of
G-d's Torah "from the outside", and that only through the a priori acceptance
and attachment to G-d's Torah could they begin to truly understand the Torah...
up to a point.
Ultimately, our acceptance of the Torah is not predicated upon
our absolute understanding of the Creator and the laws He gave us. Nor would
it be reasonable to expect that to be the case. We obey the Torah, in the
final analysis, because G-d commanded us to follow His laws, which in ways we
may or may not consciously feel, make us into better people, and bring us
closer to G-d. "The commandments were only given to refine the character of
people", the Midrash says. Perhaps one of the purposes of a "statute" like
Parah Adumah is to make us conscious of this fact, and equally so, to
remind us that this holds as much for the "rational" mitzvos that we think
we understand as for those "super-rational" ones which we don't. When Solomon
said "I said, I will be wise, but it was far from me", one way of taking the
Midrash's reference to it is that, while he had thought that he had achieved
an understanding of all the rest of the Torah, his puzzlement at the mitzvo
of Parah Adumah showed him that he had only scratched the surface of all the
other commandments as well.
On the other hand, the fact that we may not plumb the very depths of a
command's significance does not mean that it is not worthwhile to understand a
command's meaning as best as we can. The fact that Solomon was only hung up
on Parah Adumah implies that he did delve for an understanding of other mitzvos
that are usually considered "chukim"-statutes that are not intuitively
rational, such as the laws of kashrus(dietary laws). In fact, a distinction I
once heard between "chukim" and "mishpatim",the so-called rational mitzvos,
is not the difference between laws that have reasons we can understand vs.
those that don't. It is the difference between a mitzvo for which you can
understand a reason, as well as why the mitzvo was concretely implemented
in a specific manner, vs. a mitzvo whose significance you can comprehend,
while not knowing why this significance had to be "packaged" in this mode of
practice, as opposed to some other symbolic representation of the concept.
The performance or study of a commandment, without an attempt at seeking
its meaning, can seem, as the Ohr haChayim(Rav Chayim Ibn Atar) says in a
slightly different context, "as a body without a soul". Therefore, let us
briefly look at one interpretation of Parah Adumah.
In his commentary on the Torah, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch's explanation
of Parah Adumah, as well as the nature of Toomah, spiritual impurity, is
one of the highlights of his symbolic analysis of the mitzvos. In Rabbi
Hirsch's view, the concept of Toomas Mes, impurity associated with coming into
contact with the dead, comes to support the idea that Man has freedom of will,
and is not a deterministic automaton. In his own words:
Every dead human body does represent the mortality of human beings,
and the danger is very near to lead to thinking of this physical lack of
freedom which death demonstrates as extending also to the psychical nature
of Man in its connection with the physical during life. Coming into contact
with a dead human body is coming into contact with the living human being who
cannot escape the fate of death which hangs over him, a force to which he has
to submit, a fact which every dead human body brings home to him...
Against this, the laws of Toomah and Tahara come and place the fact,
guaranteed by G-d, of freedom in moral matters in opposition to the
demoralizing illusion of physical lack of freedom. Throughout life, whenever
the energy which the consciousness of moral freedom gives, threatens to be
disturbed by reminders of physical lack of freedom, these laws of Tahara
endeavor to awaken the reminder that in matters of morality there is no lack
of freedom...
The Torah refers to the Parah Adumah as a Chatos-an offering brought for
the expiation of a sin. Expiation, doing away with the sin and purging the
sinner from his sin is a concept which belongs entirely to the sphere of
morals. By referring to Parah Adumah as a Chatas, the Torah lays down, as the
basis of the whole life of the people, the fundamental truth that human
beings can be free from sin, can become so and remain so.
That is why this Chatos is performed outside the Temple. It is different
from a sin-offering inside the Sanctuary, the expiation of a certain person
from a certain sin by the symbolic act of promising faithful adherence to duty
for the future. It is rather the proclamation of the public conviction of
the possibility of freedom from sin, the ability of mastering all physical
temptations and allurements, proclaiming the fact of the moral power of the
human will in general. But it proclaims this freedom of man not forgetting
where he has no freedom, it shows his freedom in moral matters in connection
with his lack of freedom in physical ones. It does not teach to close one's
eyes to the lack of freedom to which the physical nature of man belongs. It
shows man with the whole contrast of his being, his mortality next to his
iimmortality, with his freedom and his subjection, with his physical nature
and his moral nature...it says ti him: Be not deceived by corpse and death,
become free, become immortal not in spite of, but together with all that is
physically unfree and mortal in you, remain immortal master of your mortal
body, protect yourself and prove the truth of Tahara in the midst of Toomah!
Rabbi Hirsch then goes on to give a detailed symbolic interpretation of
each of the detailed steps of the preparation of the Parah Adumah. Time,
space, and concentration span-mine and yours, do not allow me to present it
here, but the reader is referred to it for a full appreciation of Hirsch's
thesis.
The last major topic that I wish to touch upon is the riddle that plagued
Solomon. The ashes of the Red Cow and associated materials are to represent
that all of organic and animal vitality, including that aspect within
ourselves, inevitably returns to dust and ashes. Only the aspect of our will
and personality that can master the physical animal side of our nature, as
symbolized by the slaughter of the animal, and that can be raised to the service
of divine Law and Morality, as represented by the sprinkling of the cow's
blood in the direction of the Temple, remains inviolate. If somehow this
message is brought home to the "impure" person by sprinkling these ashes mixed
with spring water on him/her, why do these ashes "defile" previously
Tahor people who associate with it in its preparation?
The explanation given by Rabbi Hirsch is that, the consciousness of the
contrast between moral free will and physical determinism is important for the
person who is "defiled", whose confidence in this contrast has been disturbed
by contact with the dead body of a human being. Howver, "what is medicine for
the sick, troubled mind is the very opposite, poison, for the untroubled
healthy mind...the normal, pure, undisturbed beat of the pulse is entirely
that of life, normal existence is not lived thinking of this contrast, the
thought of death is not to lurk constantly next to the thought of life...".
It is perhaps for these reasons that the Midrashim on this Parsha see the
Parah Adumah as the eloquent articulation of freedom of will. On one level,
the admonition of entering the Temple in a state of impurity is seen as
referring to a person's defiling his/her own personal sanctuary, the heart
and mind of man in which G-d's presence is truly meant to be felt. On a
more social level, the purifying "powers" of Parah Adumah are viewed as the
ability of people to overcome the negative effects of their environments& past,
just as Abraham was able to recognize G-d after being brought up in the idol-
worshipping house of his father Terach. On a national level, Parah Adumah,
the"adult cow", is considered the expiation of the sin of Israel's worship
of the golden calf, the "callow baby cow". Our pursuit of the "golden calf",
in all its incarnations, is rooted in a deterministic, materialistic outlook
on life, and is countered by the statement of free will, morality, and
spirituality made by the Parah Adumah.
Finally, on a historical level, Parah Adumah is seen as depicting the
rise and fallf the empires that have ruled the world and oppressed Israel-
again, the ultimate decay of material might. It is also seen as the suffering
and exile of the Jewish people throughout history, as well as the eventual
unification and purification of the Jewish people in the land of Israel, when
G-d will complete our Redemption in the epoch of the Messiah, may it come soon
and in our times, Amen.
Good Shabbos.
Pinchus Klahr {allegra, ihnp4} cmcl2!csd2!klahr
klahr@nyu-csd2.ARPA