This week’s Parasha “Chukas” (The rule of) begins with a very strange commandment that applied only when we had the tabernacle and the Temple. G-d asks Moses to instruct Aharon to speak to the children of Yisrael to choose a red heifer that is not blemished and has never carried a burden on its back. Then they should give it to El’azar (Aharon’s son) the priest to slaughter it and burn it to ashes. This ashes were used to purify a person that had been in contact with a dead person by sprinkling them mixed with spring water. The priest, in this case El’azar would become impure by being in contact with the dead heifer.
Say what? This sounds nuts!!!! Some of us would say. This is why this commandment is the epitome of a Chok( commandments that are 100% irrational to our human intellect.)Others that would fall into this category would be Kosher food, not mixing milk and meat, not wearing a garment that has wool and linen in it and Brit Milah to name a few.
Our sages have many explanations of the benefits for this Chukim , but the why we do them is beyond our reasoning. As Tzvi Freeman puts it “we do them because we are Jewish and we want to do G-d’s will. When we connect to a higher will than our will we are able to transcend and connect to faith. When we need to have a reason for everything we do then we cannot connect to a higher conscience. We cannot package infinitude into finitude.
A nice commentary from our sages from the red heifer that could apply to our daily life is that sometimes we have to make ourselves impure to be able to help someone else become pure. What this means is that when we want to help someone else get out of their misery we need to get down to feel what they feel and see life from their perspective to be able to empathize with them and help pull them out. This process puts the helper in a painful and uncomfortable situation that lowers him down. But at the end there are always the ashes of that suffering that will bring him up again.
Live a little higher
