Study Texts for Parashat Chukkat, Num. 19ff.

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I will be offering remarks from the bimah this Friday night, June 18, on Parashat Chukkat, which begins with one of the strangest passages in all of Torah, the laws describing the ritual of the Red Heifer. I direct your attention to the Parasha itself which you can find in any chumash (Torah Commentary) or online by following the links to the right ---> of this post.

Once you've read Numbers Chapter 19 in its entirety, I want you to consider the following question: To what extent, if any, does Judaism -- or does Religion in general -- require its faithful practitioners to "check their rational faculties at the door?" Are there any religious experiences or practices for which Reason is not required?

To assist you in your study, I am now providing the study texts that we will examine during Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday night. I look forward to seeing you there, and at Torah Study on Saturday morning.

Happy studying!

RJEB

Midrash Yalkut Shimoni 759

“This is the statute of the Torah.” R. Isaac opened [his interpretation] with the text, “All this I have tried (to fathom) by wisdom; I said, I will get wisdom; but it was far from me” (Ecclesiastes 7:23). Thus spoke Solomon: I succeeded in understanding the whole Torah, but as soon as I reached this chapter about the Red Heifer, I searched, probed and questioned, “I said I will get wisdom, but it was far from me” (As cited in Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Bamidbar (Numbers), p. 233).

Midrash Bemidbar Rabbah 19:8

A certain idolator once challenged Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai: “The rituals that you perform with the Red Heifer resemble witchcraft! You bring a cow, burn it up, grind it, and extract its ashes. Then, when one of you is defiled by a corpse, you sprinkle two or three drops on him and say to him, ‘You are purified!’”

He responded to him, “Haven’t you ever been possessed by a demon spirit?”

To which he replied, “No.”

He said, “Have you ever seen a person possessed by a demon spirit?”

To which he replied, “Yes.”

“And what do you do for him?” he asked. “We bring herbs and turn them into smoke beneath him, and throw water on him, upon which it [the demon spirit] vanishes,” he said.

He retorted, “Can your ears hear what is coming out of your mouth?! The demon spirit is the same as the spirit of ritual defilement!… We sprinkle purifying water on him, and it vanishes.”

Afterwards, Rabbi Yochanan’s disciples said to him, “Rabbeinu, you pushed him aside with a reed, but what can you say to us?”

He told them, “By your very lives, it is not that the dead can defile nor that the water can purify. Rather, the Holy One of Blessing has said: ‘I have enacted a statute; I have decreed a decree. You are not authorized to transgress my statute, as it is written, “This is the statute of the Torah.”’”

(translation: J. Blake)

Midrash Sifra, Kedoshim

“It is more praiseworthy to do something solely because God commands it than because our own logic or sense of morality leads us to the same conclusion” (As cited in Etz Hayim, p. 880).

Nehama Leibowitz (1905-1997)

“Let us not be among those who seek for rational explanation for those things, to which the laws of reason do not apply. May we be like the disciples of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai who accept the yoke of the statutes (hukkim), just as they do the yoke of the other commandments of the Torah” (Studies in Bamidbar, p. 235).

From the Pittsburgh Platform (Kaufmann Kohler, et al., 1885)

3. We recognize in the Mosaic legislation a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine, and today we accept as binding only its moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization.

4. We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.

Joseph Bekhor Shor (Late 12th C., Orléans, Northern France), ad loc.

The rites pertaining to the Red Heifer were designed to discourage association with the dead, prompted by the bereaved’s love for the departed, and excessive grief…. Also on account of human respect, that people should not come to using human skin for coverings and human bones for articles of use just as we use the skin of animals; it is disrespectful of humanity…. The text likewise went to the strictest lengths in its requirements, demanding the ashes of a red heifer which are an expensive item (as cited in Leibowitz, Studies in Bamidbar, p. 234).

W. Gunther Plaut (b. 1912)

The need to be ritually purified after touching a corpse reflects an ancient and universal fear of the dead, whose spirits were believed capable of injuring the community. While the ritual of the red cow is doubtlessly based on pre-biblical practices--an old Canaanite epic tells of the death of the underworld god of fertility, who went to the underworld and there copulated with a heifer--the Torah here appears to reinterpret old practices in accordance with its own religious views. At the core of these stands the idea that Israel is a holy people and that holiness demands a state of physical and spiritual purity” (The Torah: A Modern Commentary (Revised Edition), p. 1035).