It’s a very important parsha that we’re learning about this week: the famous Red Heifer, the red cow that is the difference between purity and impurity; the red cow which is the open sesame to the Temple; the Red Heifer cow, which is the difference between someone who’s allowed to enter the Beit HaMikdash and someone who’s not allowed to enter the Beit HaMikdash.
I would say it’s one of the most misunderstood, but important portions of the Torah. Everybody that I talk to, the first question they ask is: What is with the Red Heifer?
So this week’s parsha, we’re talking about the Parah Adumah, the Red Heifer. One of the biggest mysteries of the Torah is the Red Heifer.
The parsha starts out:
“זאת חוקת התורה”
This is the law of the Torah.
And all of Chazal, the Jewish sages, say that a חוק — there are different types of laws. There are mitzvot where we understand them. Honor your father and your mother. We understand that. Thou shall not murder. We understand that. But then there are other laws which don’t make any logical sense.
For example, eating kosher. What is the big deal if I have a cheeseburger? Does God care about what I eat?
Besides these laws, we also have things like keeping Shabbat. What, I can’t turn on and off a light? I can’t light a fire on the stove? What’s the big deal?
Those are called חוקים in Hebrew. A חוק is known as a law that we don’t understand, and yet we follow anyway.
And what’s interesting is that when it comes to the Red Heifer, the Torah says:
“זאת חוקת התורה”
This is the law of the Torah.
And the question is: Really? This? A cow?
Now, I just want to explain what we do with the Red Heifer for those of you who don’t know.
The cow has to be all red. It can’t have any black blotches on it or any white blotches. It has to be completely red. They kill the cow and they burn the cow, and then they take the ashes and sprinkle them on people who want to become pure.
Now, if that’s not weird enough, first of all, the color of the cow — a red cow? What is that?
Second, after you kill it, you burn it and use the ashes. Sounds crazy.
But not only does the person who gets the ashes become pure, the person who is making the concoction, who is making the special water, becomes impure.
So again, the person who receives this special concoction of cow ashes and water becomes pure, but the person who made the concoction becomes impure.
Makes no sense at all.
The antidote cannot really be the cause of the disease. If you’re getting medicine for something, it can’t be the cause of you dying. So the cause of someone becoming pure becoming the cause of someone else becoming impure doesn’t make any sense.
Now the other question that has to be asked here is: What is the deal with God giving us these laws?
Why can’t You just make us understand?
Why can’t You just give us laws that we do understand?
What is the whole point of having these laws?
Look, let’s say I understood why I have to eat kosher. I’m keeping it anyway, so I’m still listening to God. So why these laws that make belief and being religious more difficult?
Why these contradictions in rules?
The same stuff that makes someone pure makes the person who made it impure. It doesn’t make any logical sense.
And this is what the Torah says:
“זאת חוקת התורה”
This Red Heifer — this is the law of the Torah.
That’s the law of the Torah?
Wouldn’t you think that maybe Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, is the law of the Torah?
Shabbat, where we remember the redemption from Egypt and the creation of the world by God — Shabbat is a testimony to God.
What is a Red Heifer?
Why is that considered the law?
There are many laws we don’t understand in the Torah. Shemittah, every seven years you stop working the land in Israel. That’s weird. How do you make money?
That has something to do with me. If I don’t work the land, I’m nervous. There I show my testimony to God, because even though it hurts me, I won’t work the land.
But burning up a Red Heifer and putting ashes on someone’s head — why does that prove that I believe in God at all?
Why is that considered:
“זאת חוקת התורה”
So the question is: How do we look at the Torah? How do we look at God’s laws?
Is it about me?
That’s the question.
When I’m following God’s laws, is it about me? Is it about my understanding?
Well, what is human understanding?
Human understanding is that if I’m brought up in a certain culture, there are certain things I accept and understand.
If you’re brought up in Israel, there are certain things you understand. You’re brought up in Israel, you know driving is a little dangerous here. You know people are crazy on the road.
If you’re brought up in America, there are certain cultural things you understand.
So my opinions and my ideology without the Torah are built around my social upbringing, my social brainwashing.
The clothing that I wear if I grew up in America is different than the clothing I would wear if I grew up in Mombasa, Kenya.
This is the issue when it comes to understanding.
The whole point of the חוק is exactly that point of not making sense.
The idea that our understanding dictates what we keep and what we don’t keep is a very, very dangerous predicament.
Why?
Let’s take kids for example.
In America, you have girls and boys — equal, everything’s wonderful.
There are countries that wanted more boys than girls, and until recently they actually killed the girls off to have more boys.
To you and me, that sounds insane.
If you were born in Afghanistan, you had certain cultural assumptions that to a Westernized culture sound ridiculous.
So the problem is that my opinions of the world — if the morals of the world are dependent upon my opinion — that’s very, very dangerous.
When I get into arguments or debates with atheists, I say, “Listen, what is your morality based on? Why is this wrong and that right?”
And he says to me, “Well, it’s the way I was brought up.”
I say, “Okay, if that’s the definition of morality, then why are you allowed to judge someone who was brought up in a different culture than you?”
If someone’s brought up in Nazi Germany and they were murdering people, is that okay because they were brought up that way?
Obviously not.
So when the basis of morality is based on my opinion, that’s very, very dangerous.
And when it comes to the Red Heifer, it’s completely blasting out what I believe and what’s logical.
We do it. נעשה.
In Hebrew, it means we just do it.
We don’t have to understand. We just do it.
But why?
What that’s showing is that we’re saying to God, we’re saying to Hashem:
“You know what? My understanding is not so important.”
In Judaism, unlike many other religions, we don’t have blind faith.
It says:
“וידעת היום”
To know God. To know God. Not to believe in God — to know God.
And so the idea here is that we put aside our own opinions, our own logic, and say:
“God commanded. We’re doing it.”
Now the Red Heifer itself is an interesting thing.
When not understanding something makes us understand everything.
The Red Heifer, the secret to making people pure, also makes other people impure.
The person making this concoction becomes impure, but the person who receives it becomes pure.
What is that doing?
That is showing us that we never give up hope.
We never give up hope.
Because at the end of the day, the same concoction that makes someone pure can make someone impure, and impurity can be made pure by that same concoction.
So whatever I did yesterday, whatever you did yesterday, whatever we did yesterday — we didn’t behave the way we were supposed to behave. We weren’t keeping up to the rules and laws of the Torah.
You don’t give up.
Everyone can become pure.
There’s no despair with someone who’s impure.
There’s no despair with someone who failed, who sinned, who did something wrong.
Because we see with the Red Heifer that the stage to get to purity actually goes through impurity.
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov says:
“You go down in order to go up.”
You don’t go down on purpose, but when you go down, it’s a chance for you to go up.
And this idea of going down in order to go up means there’s no despair.
There’s no despair.
And this is very important.
The challenge that each and every one of us has in this life — and we all have challenges. Everybody’s got challenges. Some of you have much more difficult challenges than others.
And the point of the challenge is the following:
If we are able to face those challenges and climb through them, several things happen.
Number one, our impurity, the challenge that we had, the downfall that we had, is the actual push for the next person.
Because the next person has that problem. We can relate. We can help them up.
We can be their Red Heifer.
My downfall is a strength to the next person, so that he will be able to climb out of the same predicament that I was in.
But even more than that, when we face our challenges and we win, we reach a level that we could have never reached before.
That new level of spirituality that we reach when we face the challenge and we win is a height we could never reach without that challenge.
And even if you fail and fall — not on purpose — you wanted to do the right thing and didn’t do it right, next time, if we get up over that place, we reach levels that we could never reach before.
And that is the point of the Red Heifer.
The Red Heifer teaches that someone who has been impure can actually help the person who is falling to climb to new heights of spirituality.
And the idea of this חוק is that we don’t understand everything.
The world does not revolve around myself.
The world revolves around God, Hashem, the Torah.
And if you’re not Jewish, it revolves around the Seven Commandments of Noah.
And that’s exactly the point of this week’s parsha.
Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend, Shabbat Shalom from the beautiful rolling hills of Judea, Israel.
Please do feel free to share this out and give some Torah to everyone else you know.
Take care, everyone.
God bless.