This week’s Torah portion, Chukat, contains instructions for the purification ritual for a person who has had contact with a dead body and is therefore rendered impure. According to the Torah, a red heifer “without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid” (Numbers 19:1) is slaughtered and burned outside of the camp. Cedarwood, hyssop, and wool dyed scarlett are then thrown into the fire. The ashes of the red heifer are then taken and placed into a vessel with pure water. Water from this vessel is taken and sprinkled on the impure person on the third and seventh days of their impurity (i.e the third and seventh days after they have had contact with the dead body). The person is then rendered pure on the seventh day, while the one who sprinkled the water for the ritual becomes impure and must wash themselves and their clothes to become pure again.
It is not only modern readers who find this ritual to be difficult to understand. For centuries, rabbinic commentators on the Torah have struggled to understand the significance of the red heifer, its connection to impurity through contact with a dead body, and what can be understood from the entire ritual. As Rabbeinu Bahya (1255-1340, Spain) wrote: “the red heifer which purifies the impure and defiles the ritually pure[:] the truth is that the red heifer is among the laws whose reason has not been revealed and is not known.” Indeed, rather than reaching some understanding of the red heifer ritual, commentators come to see its unknowability as the point.
Most pick up on the word “chukat,” “ritual law,” used to introduce the red heifer purification ritual; it is a word that is unusual enough in the context of the Torah that commentators determine that it constitutes a category of laws whose reasons are unknown. In this understanding, the entire point of the “chukat” category of laws is that there is no understandable underlying logic or reasoning; instead it serves to highlight the fundamental importance of commandedness, obedience to the law because God has commanded it. In fact, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai even admits to his students that there is no logical reason for the red heifer : “a dead person does not make things impure, and the water does not make things pure. Rather, God said ‘I have decreed a decree and you have no permission to transgress what I decreed.’”
The rabbis understood something important in highlighting the essential unknowability of this law of the red heifer ritual: it underscores the nature of death and its unknowability to the living. In many ways it makes sense that an unfathomable ritual would be the tool to respond to the ultimate unfathomability death.
But while the red heifer ritual may mirror the incomprehensibility of death, its own obscurity means that it does not attempt to explain death, or draw the living any closer to the realm of the dead. Instead, it serves to transition the person away from death and back to the world of the living, allowing the person to rejoin the people after the impurity from death is removed. There may not be any fundamental meaning to be found in the red heifer ritual, but there is meaning to be found in rejoining the world and living.
Proximity to death is not the objective, and not what offers meaning. And yet, we live in a world in which too many people choose to remain in proximity to death: people who destroy property, homes, lives, and who are ready to commit violence and murder. They remain ritually impure, in a state of being defined by proximity to death: its actuality, or the ever-present threat of it. And this ritual impurity is liable to spread. For all of its unknowability, the ritual of the red heifer makes clear that it is valuing life that gives us meaning, and that the ultimate aim is to exist in the world of the living, in which life remains paramount.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rabbi Rachel Druck is originally from New Jersey, but is now living in Israel. Her rabbinic journey began in Falls Church, Virginia, where she worked as a camp rabbi, and eventually brought her to the world of Jewish nonprofits and congregational work; she served as the rabbi of Kehilat Tiferet Shalom in Tel Aviv for a number of years, and currently works at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. She graduated from Barnard College with a BA in Yiddish Literature, which has proven to be useful in writing and teaching about Jewish history, and was ordained from Hebrew Union College's Israel Rabbinical Program.
It is not only modern readers who find this ritual to be difficult to understand. For centuries, rabbinic commentators on the Torah have struggled to understand the significance of the red heifer, its connection to impurity through contact with a dead body, and what can be understood from the entire ritual. As Rabbeinu Bahya (1255-1340, Spain) wrote: “the red heifer which purifies the impure and defiles the ritually pure[:] the truth is that the red heifer is among the laws whose reason has not been revealed and is not known.” Indeed, rather than reaching some understanding of the red heifer ritual, commentators come to see its unknowability as the point.
Most pick up on the word “chukat,” “ritual law,” used to introduce the red heifer purification ritual; it is a word that is unusual enough in the context of the Torah that commentators determine that it constitutes a category of laws whose reasons are unknown. In this understanding, the entire point of the “chukat” category of laws is that there is no understandable underlying logic or reasoning; instead it serves to highlight the fundamental importance of commandedness, obedience to the law because God has commanded it. In fact, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai even admits to his students that there is no logical reason for the red heifer : “a dead person does not make things impure, and the water does not make things pure. Rather, God said ‘I have decreed a decree and you have no permission to transgress what I decreed.’”
The rabbis understood something important in highlighting the essential unknowability of this law of the red heifer ritual: it underscores the nature of death and its unknowability to the living. In many ways it makes sense that an unfathomable ritual would be the tool to respond to the ultimate unfathomability death.
But while the red heifer ritual may mirror the incomprehensibility of death, its own obscurity means that it does not attempt to explain death, or draw the living any closer to the realm of the dead. Instead, it serves to transition the person away from death and back to the world of the living, allowing the person to rejoin the people after the impurity from death is removed. There may not be any fundamental meaning to be found in the red heifer ritual, but there is meaning to be found in rejoining the world and living.
Proximity to death is not the objective, and not what offers meaning. And yet, we live in a world in which too many people choose to remain in proximity to death: people who destroy property, homes, lives, and who are ready to commit violence and murder. They remain ritually impure, in a state of being defined by proximity to death: its actuality, or the ever-present threat of it. And this ritual impurity is liable to spread. For all of its unknowability, the ritual of the red heifer makes clear that it is valuing life that gives us meaning, and that the ultimate aim is to exist in the world of the living, in which life remains paramount.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rabbi Rachel Druck is originally from New Jersey, but is now living in Israel. Her rabbinic journey began in Falls Church, Virginia, where she worked as a camp rabbi, and eventually brought her to the world of Jewish nonprofits and congregational work; she served as the rabbi of Kehilat Tiferet Shalom in Tel Aviv for a number of years, and currently works at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. She graduated from Barnard College with a BA in Yiddish Literature, which has proven to be useful in writing and teaching about Jewish history, and was ordained from Hebrew Union College's Israel Rabbinical Program.