| To Life! An unpleasant topic we all must deal with is death. Two years ago, I lost my mother and father within three months of one another. No amount of logic soothed my emotions. They were both in their nineties and had led full, active, and productive lives. They were generous and we had a wonderful and loving relationship but none of that helped dealing with their loss. Yet, others who aren’t as fortunate, lose a parent at a young age and are left with lingering questions, why? Why did this have to happen now? Why to this family? One of the most notable, yet esoteric, places the Torah deals with death in this week’s Parsha.The laws of the Parah Adumah, the red heifer whose ashes were combined with water and sprinkled on someone who had come in contact with a corpse, have confused people since the day it was instituted thousands of years ago. No reason or rationale is given for it and the nations of the world have mocked our observance of it. Even King Solomon, the wisest of men, said he couldn’t understand its rationale; Moses was the only mortal who understood its essence and every nuance relating to it. It has symbolic and complex laws but inexplicable logic. Here’s one example: The red heifer’s ashes purify those who have become tamei (impure due to coming in contact with a corpse), yet the administering Kohen becomes tamei (impure) in the process. There is no logic behind that but it’s the law. The first Red Heifer was brought by Moses and Aaron, and its ashes were saved from generation to generation so that each additional Red-Heifer offering was added to the remnants of the previous, so that the new ashes would mix with the old ashes of Moshe’s original heifer. Hundreds of generations and thousands of Kohanim and Israelites who performed this mitzvah believed with unquestioning faith in the law’s ritual divinity and power—just because it’s beyond our comprehension doesn’t mean it has no purpose; it’s just that we mortals don’t understand it. Here’s a great example of someone not understanding a situation even though its logic was flawless. Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee was chairman of the Senate appropriations committee during World War II. $2,000,000,000 was requested for research towards certain unusual scientific research and he couldn’t understand why, so he called the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson. “Do you expect me to sanction this tremendous appropriation without any idea as to where it is going?” Stimson hesitated but then told him it was top secret—and here was the secret. “We are about to split the atom.” McKellar exploded. “Are you crazy? This is a war! We have men out there! We need guns! We need planes! We need ammunition! And you guys are fooling around with splitting atoms!” But months later both Senator McKellar as well as the rest of the world understood how important splitting atoms was.Just because something doesn’t make sense to one’s limited understanding doesn’t mean it should be ridiculed. The subject of the ritual of the Red Heifer relates to one of the most fundamental principles in Judaism—how we view death. Death defiles and when we come in contact with it, we need a procedure for how to process it. For most religions throughout history, life-after-death has proved more real than life itself. That is where the gods live, thought the Egyptians. That is where our ancestors are alive, believed the Greeks and Romans and many primitive tribes. That is where you find justice, thought many Christians. That is where you find paradise, thought many Muslims.Although we Jews believe in life after death and the resurrection of the dead, but the Tanach (the Hebrew Bible) is almost silent on the subject of life after death! “The dead do not praise G-d,” says the Psalm. G-d is to be found in life, this life, with all its hazards and dangers, bereavements and grief. We may be no more than “dust and ashes,” as Abraham said, but life itself is a never-ending stream of living water, and it is this that the rite of the Red Heifer symbolizes. In this week’s Parsha, the Torah mixes law and narrative together with great subtlety – the law before the narrative because G-d provides the cure before the disease. Miriam dies. Moses and Aaron are overwhelmed with grief. Moses, who loses control for a moment and hits the rock, and Aaron are reminded that they too are mortal and will die before entering the Land of Israel. We grow old. We lose those we love. Outwardly we struggle to maintain our composure but inwardly we weep. Yet life goes on, and what we began, others will continue. Judaism is about life, not death and when we talk about death, we realize that death is about life. Those we loved and lost live on in us, as we will live on in those we love. Love is as strong as death, said King Solomon (Song of Songs 8:6) and the good we do never dies. Jews are about life and the people in it, as well as those who are no longer with us but helped to bring us to where we are today. We have rituals for how to deal with loss but in the end, our lives are what we make of them and what we pass on to others. Good Shabbos |
