Thoughts on Chukkat 5780/2020
(Dvar Torah given Friday 6/26/20)
Our Torah Portion this week, Parashat Chukkat, begins with the description of a strange sacrificial ritual involving פָרָ֨ה אֲדֻמָּ֜ה תְּמִימָ֗ה אֲשֶׁ֤ר אֵֽין־בָּהּ֙ מ֔וּם אֲשֶׁ֛ר לֹא־עָלָ֥ה עָלֶ֖יהָ עֹֽל / “Parah adamah temimah asher eyn bah mum, asher lo alah aleyha ol”/ “a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid” (Num. 19:2). The ashes of said cow, after being mixed with other special ingredients, would be sprinkled on a person who had become ritually impure as a result of being in proximity with a corpse.
This treatment would serve to return a person back to a state of ritual purity so that they could be permitted to enter the holy precincts of the Tabernacle or Temple and so that they could be permitted to partake of sacrificial offerings.
You may recall that this passage is also read, as an additional maftir reading on a second Torah scroll, on “Shabbat Parah” --- the special Sabbath that arrives each year about three weeks before Passover. Its liturgical usage in that context reminds us to start getting ourselves and our houses ready for Passover.
For me this year, the passage has special resonance because that maftir reading of Numbers chapter 19, the law of the Red Heifer, was the last Torah passage we read in an in-person Shabbat morning service in our Temple Israel sanctuary before we suspended services on account of the Covid-19 pandemic.
How poignant it is now, when that reading comes around in the annual cycle of weekly Torah portions, to think about all of the precautions we are now taking – all the masks, the social distancing, the intensified sanitizing… We’re doing this to protect ourselves from the contamination of Covid-19. Our ancestors were trying to protect themselves from what they saw as the ritual impurity associated with coming in contact with death. As it says in Parashat Chukkat ---
זֹ֚את הַתּוֹרָ֔ה אָדָ֖ם כִּֽי־יָמ֣וּת בְּאֹ֑הֶל כָּל־הַבָּ֤א אֶל־הָאֹ֙הֶל֙ וְכָל־אֲשֶׁ֣ר בָּאֹ֔הֶל יִטְמָ֖א שִׁבְעַ֥ת יָמִֽים׃
וְכֹל֙ כְּלִ֣י פָת֔וּחַ אֲשֶׁ֛ר אֵין־צָמִ֥יד פָּתִ֖יל עָלָ֑יו טָמֵ֖א הֽוּא׃
וְכֹ֨ל אֲשֶׁר־יִגַּ֜ע עַל־פְּנֵ֣י הַשָּׂדֶ֗ה בַּֽחֲלַל־חֶ֙רֶב֙ א֣וֹ בְמֵ֔ת אֽוֹ־בְעֶ֥צֶם אָדָ֖ם א֣וֹ בְקָ֑בֶר יִטְמָ֖א שִׁבְעַ֥ת יָמִֽים׃
This is the ritual: When a person dies in a tent, whoever enters the tent and whoever is in the tent shall be impure seven days; and every open vessel, with no lid fastened down, shall be impure. And anyone who touches, in an open field, one slain by the sword, a corpse, a human bone, or a grave shall be impure seven days. (Num. 19: 14-16)
We have sound, easily understandable reasons for our contemporary precautions against the coronavirus.
As the Minnesota Department of Health reminds us:
· People can spread the COVID-19 disease to each other.
· The disease is thought to spread by nose and mouth droplets when someone who is infected coughs, sneezes or exhales.
· The droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people nearby. It may be possible for people to breathe the droplets into their lungs. It is important to stay 6 feet away from other people in public. At home, someone who is sick should stay alone, in one room, as much as possible.
· Droplets can land on surfaces and objects that other people then touch. It is important to wash your hands before you touch your mouth, nose, face or eyes. Clean surfaces that are touched often. Clean surfaces often if someone in the house is sick.
· Infected people may be able to spread the disease before they have symptoms or feel sick.[1]
And further, they remind us that
· Wear[ing] a cloth mask over your nose and mouth in grocery stores and all other public places where it is hard to stay 6 feet away from others.[…] can help to stop your germs from infecting others. This is extra important [since] people without symptoms can spread the virus that causes COVID-19 disease.[2]
None of this is puzzling if we “follow the science.”
By contrast, Jewish commentators over the centuries have been puzzled as to why sprinkling red cow ashes mixed with spring water would take away ritual impurity. They also were puzzled about how it could be that the same mixture that made the impure person pure simultaneously made the pure person who had administered the procedure impure.
No less a personage than King Solomon, praised for his wisdom, is described in a classic midrash as being stumped. As we learn from Midrash Tanchuma:
Solomon said, “About all these things I have knowledge; but in the case of the parashah on the red heifer, I have investigated it, inquired into it, and examined it. Still (at the end of the verse in Eccl. 7:23), ‘I thought I could fathom it, but it eludes me.’” [3]
But that’s the whole point – say the sages of the Talmud and later commentators like Rashi:
The ritual of the Parah Adamah/Red Heifer is introduced in our parasha as “chukat hatorah” --- “the chukah of the Torah.” The term “chukah” (חקה) (or its variant “chok”) is generally described in Jewish thought as referring to a law that has no obvious rational meaning. As the classic commentary asserts --- God simply declares “I have decreed it, and you are not permitted to question it.” (Rashi on Num. 19:2)
For those of us of a liberal religious bent, we certainly do question any claims of Biblical inerrancy. Our sacred texts were written by people. And even the religious traditionalists acknowledge that even if it is God’s word, it’s still transmitted through imperfect human language by imperfect humans. So, things get lost in translation --- or, to put it another way – some things just aren’t even capable of being expressed in human language.
This Torah portion --- the law of the Parah Adamah/ The Red Heifer – then invites us to sit with a basic existential question:
In the face of death, in the face of mysteries that are beyond our comprehension, what do we believe?
Do we believe that there is no meaning in life so that there is ultimately nothing to understand?
Or do we believe that there is infinite meaning in life -- so that ultimately we should cultivate a stance of religious awe, rather than a stance of cynical nihilism.
The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates is famously credited with declaring
“I know nothing but the fact of my own ignorance.”
Judaism seems to agree with that to a certain extent, at least with subjects like the law of the Red Heifer.
But what do we know?
Some wise words were penned on this subject by the early 20th-century British Jewish communal leader Lily Montague and I’ll conclude these parashah thoughts with her words:
I find by experience, not by reasoning,
but by my own discovery that God is near me,
and I can be near God at all times.
I cannot explain it, but I am as sure of my experience
As I am of the fact that I live and love.
I cannot explain how I have come to lie and love,
But I know I do.
In the same way, I know I am in contact with God.[4]
Shabbat shalom.
(c) Rabbi David Steinberg (June 2020/ Tammuz 5780)
[1] https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/basics.html
[2] https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/prevention.html
[3] https://www.sefaria.org/Midrash_Tanchuma%2C_Chukat.6.1?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en
[4] Quoted in Mishkan T’Filah: A Reform Siddur (Shabbat edition), p. 91.
