July 4th: Chukat and The Fourth of July
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
Our Torah portion this week brings us into the stuff of legends—not of greatness told in legendary fashion, but of something simple spun into a rarified version and grand vision. The simple situation is the Biblical Red Heifer Ritual (Numbers 19), a curious mitzvah in which unholy things become holy. Note both the logic and the illogic:
“Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a perfect red cow, in which there is no defect/blemish and on which no yoke has been laid. You shall give it to Eleazar the priest. It shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence. Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting. The cow shall be burned in his sight—its hide, flesh, and blood shall be burned, its dung included—and the priest shall take cedar wood, hyssop, and crimson stuff, and throw them into the fire consuming the cow.
The priest shall wash his garments and bathe his body in water; after that, the priest may reenter the camp, but he shall be impure until evening. The one who performed the burning shall also wash his garments in water, bathe in water, and be impure until evening. A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the cow and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, to be kept for water of lustration for the Israelite community. It is for ritual cleansing. (Numbers 19.2-9):
In this pre-ritual ritual, the ancients prepare heifer ashes that will be used in future rituals of purification. The curious/illogical thing about it is that something repeatedly declared tame’/ unclean (the remains of the cow) becomes the agent for cleansing. How can something unclean make something else clean? The simple answer is that God decrees it. If God says it, it is so! Remember that the most important thing in rituals is how they connect us to God, and this means that following God’s instructions may be more important than any logical framework our mortal minds try to impose. The essential component of any ritual is how (and whether) it connects us with the Divine.
In Temple times, this Red Heifer Ritual was not done on any regular schedule; it would only become necessary when the supply of cow ashes was used up. Of course, as with the other sacrifices, this preparatory ritual has not been performed since the Temple was destroyed.
In modern times, however, some Messianic hopers—both Jewish and Christian— believe that breeding a red heifer will hasten the coming of the Messiah. If they can prepare for the rebuilding of the Temple and the reinstitutions of the sacrificial system, then they believe that God will send the Messiah. Toward this goal, a number of farmers have been working to breed a red heifer that can ritually be turned into ashes. Over the last several decades, a number of calves have been born completely red, but they have all developed some non-red hairs over the course of their first year—and thus have they been ruled “lo temimah/not perfect” and possessing a “mum/blemish.” I suspect that this is very different from Biblical times where the term “red heifer” probably meant a cow that was mostly red—or almost all red. After the Temple was destroyed, however, the Rabbis took a simple agricultural situation and elevated it to a Messianic (i.e., impractical) level. They interpreted “perfect” and “without blemish” to mean that every single hair on the cow’s body had to be totally and purely red. No black hairs. No blond hairs. All red! Inasmuch as they looked to a miracle as the only way the Temple would ever be rebuilt, they elevated a simple rule and rarified it beyond both reasonability and actual ancient practice. Claiming that there were totally red heifers in Biblical times, the Sages of the Talmud entered the realm of legends and took part of our religion out of practicality and into myth. Like Gilgamesh the King or the Golem of Prague or Paul Bunyan, such stories reflect our ideals and hopes but not our practical realities.
Myths are significant in the human psyche, and they can be both helpful and a snare. They are helpful in expressing our paideia, our cultural ideals, and in fostering hopeful expectations. They can become snares, however, when we take them too seriously and forget that they are symbolic and aspirational—and not real goals that we should reach or have reached. In the case of the Red Heifer, the rarefication of insisting that every single hair be red means that preparing for the Temple ritual becomes impossible. And, if someone were to be serious about rebuilding the Temple, then perhaps a retreat from the myth would be necessary and helpful. There are times for myths, and there are times for practicality.
I believe that this distinction is worth some thought this week of July 4th. Our United States of America has some wonderful mythic visions—that we are an exceptional nation with great and holy potential. Such mythic visions are powerful, inspiring, and spiritually innervating. They are at the center of our national spirit, and those who attack them often face vigorous and defensive responses—as though their criticism attacks what is good and pure in our potential. Thoughtful American realize that we are not and have never been perfect—that our sainted past was populated by imperfect people dealing with complex and controversial issues, and that the issues were not always resolved judiciously or well. However, we remain convinced that our nation’s promise—“conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”—is exceptional and that we have potential for good. Within every misstep and tragedy, every sin and foible, lies the lessons of our national experience, the areas where noble ideals should spur us on to expand our understanding of what it means to be fully human and truly free. The genius of our Founding Fathers is that they established a democratic opportunity for national-formation and self-improvement. With every step along the way of offering the blessings of liberty to an ever-increasing set of individuals, we grow into the American dream. Ours is a mythic vision that our nation can partner with The Creator in blessing our inhabitants with “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” and thus our national mission is to bring these blessings to fruition. What is exceptional are our possibilities and the governmental mechanisms with which we craft our republic. We have made many steps toward our aspirations—and Independence Day calls on us to muster our moral strengths and continue on this holy path.