Guest Sermon/D’var Torah for BSKI Synagogue
Parshat Chukat/Balak, July 12, 2003
“ The Meaning of the Law of the Red Heifer”;
Jordan B. Cherrick

Shabbat Shalom. Thank you, Gary, for your kind introduction and thank you, Rabbi Miller, for the invitation to share devrei Torah, words of Torah, with you today.

Today’s Torah reading, Parshat Chukat, describes one of the most difficult and enigmatic laws in Judaism: the law of the “Parah Adumah,” the “Red Heifer.” We are instructed in the opening verses of BaMidbar, Numbers, Chapter 19, that an extraordinary ritual is required to remove the spiritual impurity caused by one’s contact with a dead person. The Priest is commanded to oversee a mysterious ceremony in which a young, red cow is slaughtered and then wholly burned. The ashes of the red heifer are mixed with water and sprinkled on the impure person twice within a seven-day period. Without undergoing this purification process, the spiritually unclean person may not enter the holy grounds of the Temple or Tabernacle.

To understand the meaning of this law, I would like to share with you the deep insights of my beloved and revered teacher, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, of blessed memory. Rabbi Soloveitchik was born in Poland in 1903 and died in Boston in 1993. He enjoyed a remarkable career as a scholar and teacher of Judaism. Although he was a devout Orthodox Rabbi, his teaching has influenced many Jews of all denominations and non-Jews as well. He was a brilliant scholar of Jewish law, philosopher, and theologian and for many years was the leading intellectual and religious figure at Yeshiva University. He is known affectionately as “the Rav,” the quintessential Rabbi.

In the words of the prominent Reform theologian, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, the Rav’s writings are so important that they will still be read in a thousand years. I hope you will understand why Rabbi Wolf was not exaggerating when you hear Rabbi Soloveitchik’s profound message about today’s Torah portion.

Rabbi Soloveitchik’s explication of the law of the red heifer requires us to appreciate first his understanding of “Taamei Ha-Mitzvot,” the search for the reasons underlying the divine commandments. The commandments are generally divided between “mishpatim,” laws that have a moral purpose that is self-evident or reasonable, and “chukim,” laws that have a moral purpose that is not easily rationally understood. The law against murder is perhaps the best example of one of the mishpatim and the law of the red heifer is a classic example of one of the chukim. In Vayikra, Leviticus, 18:4, the Torah commands us that a Jew must obey the mishpatim and chukim as well: “Ushmartem et chukotai v’et mishpatai asher ya’aseh o’tam ha’adam, v’chai bahem, ani Hashem.” “And you shall keep my statutes and my ordinances, which if a man will do, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.”

Rabbi Soloveitchik teaches that while we may search for the spiritual meaning of all the commandments, the source of our obligation for what appears to be the most rational of the commandments is not our human reason but rather our submission to the Divine Will. Thus, the prohibition against murder may be the most rational of the commandments but yet, if the basis of our obligation is not our submission to the Divine Will, how could we decide, with our limited faculties of human reason, the Jewish position on current ethical dilemmas such as euthanasia, vegetarianism, and a host of other modern issues. Judaism teaches that our views on these ethical issues must be informed by Jewish law and tradition, not by current social or political thought. We may differ on the interpretation of some of the laws, but traditional Orthodox and Conservative Jews accept the law as revealed from God whether or not one can rationally appreciate all of the law’s nuances.

Today’s Parsha, Chukat, is named after the one of the most apparently irrational of the chukim: the Parah Adumah, the law of the red heifer. The Midrash states that the famously wise King Solomon once said, “I have mastered everything but the exposition of the Parah Adumah [the law of the red heifer] has escaped my investigation.” If you have any doubt, trust the words of the Torah. This law is introduced in the second verse of the Parsha with special emphasis that it is a chok, a law with no apparent rational purpose: “Zot chukat Hatorah“; “This is the chok-law of the Torah.” In verse ten, we are told that the Parah Adumah will be a “chok-law forever;” “L’chukat Olam.”

Rabbi Soloveitchik maintains that one will never understand why the law of the red heifer was commanded to us and that it is futile to try to unravel all of the nuances of this mysterious ritual. Nevertheless, he believes this extraordinary rite provides great meaning to Jews from ancient times to the modern era.

The Rav teaches that the chok or mystery underlying the parah adumah is death itself. He finds an illusion in the Biblical text to his equating this chok with death. As mentioned earlier, in verse two, the Torah introduces the theme of Parshat Chukat with the words, “Zot chukat HaTorah” and, later the reference to the “chukat HaTorah” is clarified in verse 14, “Zot HaTorah, Adam Ki Yamut B’Ohel….” “This is the law: when a man dies in a tent….”

For Rabbi Soloveitchik, the law of the red heifer is designed to provide meaning and comfort to the greatest mystery of human existence – human death. Listen to the Rav’s words: “We propose that the singular chukah here is not merely in the performance of the ritual but rather in the mind-defying mystery of death itself, whose defiling effects the watery ashes seek to counter. Death, the Torah tells us, has a contaminating effect; contact with it disqualifies us from entering from Temple and from participating in other matters of holiness. Death is a mocking fate which awaits us all, a trauma of human helplessness which disturbs our existential serenity. It is an absurdity which undoes all of man’s rational planning, his dreams and hopes. We wonder, why should the foremost of God’s creations have an awareness of his mortality and, therefore, live in constant dread and distress in face of its inevitability?”

How does the mysterious ritual of the sprinkling of the ashes of the red heifer provide us solace in the face of death? Rabbi Soloveitchik suggests that, ironically, the answer is found in the very irrationality of the ritual. The ultimate answer to the mystery of death can only be found in one’s faith and trust in God. God’s promise of a life after death for deserving souls, His promise of the arrival of the Messiah who will usher in a period of peace, and His promise of the Resurrection of the Dead – all of these promises, if we take them seriously and believe in them, provide a spiritual solace to us for the mystery of suffering and death in this world.

Rabbi Soloveitchik observes that unlike many rituals in Judaism, including the spiritual purification gained from the waters of the mikveh, the purification of the ashes of the Parah Adumah requires the action of another person who sprinkles the ashes. The Midrash suggests that God Himself symbolically stands in the role of the Metaher, the Purifier, who sprinkles the ashes on the person who has been made spiritually unclean by a dead person. Thus, the powerful ritual is designed to teach us that only by our faith and reliance on God may we achieve salvation from the snares of death.

Listen, again, to the words of the Rav. “The totally irrational ritual of the Parah Adumah suggests that human efforts to comprehend death and to lessen its dread are futile without an acceptance of a providential God. The inexorability of death as a human condition comes from Him [God], and only He can cleanse us….” “We have faith that He [God] compassionately cares about us and that we will not be abandoned. We accept, both intellectually and emotionally, a sense of surety that the human soul, the real “I” in the human personality, is immortal, and that death is a transition, not a termination. These considerations assuage the terrors of death; it is no longer nihilistically destructive. Eschatologically (b’achrit ha-yamim, in the end of days), we are assured by the prophet [Isaiah] that God will conquer and undo death, nullifying its power to inflict anguish….”

The lesson of the law of the red heifer is as old as faith itself and is as meaningful today as it was thousands of years ago when it was revealed to the Jews at Sinai.

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