Weekly D'var Torah

How can a substance that purifies those who are impure at the same time pollute those who are pure? 

This is the riddle of the Mitzvah of the Red Heifer, the most mysterious commandment in the Torah.  The ashes of this sacrifice- a blood red year-old female calf- mixed with water, hyssop flower, cedar wood and scarlet-dyed thread make a mixture that restores purity to someone who has been in contact with death, enabling them to enter the grounds of the Holy Temple.

But there is a price to be paid for purification.  The one who sprinkles the purifying water becomes impure and must go through their own purity ritual of quarantine and sprinkling, this time as the receiver of purification…which then causes the bestower of the sprinkling to become impure- and on and on. 

So in the very act of purification is being made impure ahemmend from this act of impurity comes purity…

The Midrash says that even King Solomon, wisest of all men, was stumped by this Mitzvah.

The Midrash reveals something profound:

A non-Jew came to Rabbi Yochanon Ben Zakai and said: What kind of commandment is this?  The one on whom it is sprinkled becomes pure but  the one who sprinkles it becomes impure?

Rabbi Yochanon said: have you never heard of a medicine that when given in a tiny amount heals but if taken in too great an amount it poisons?  This is the same.  One tiny drop removes impurity, but a whole handful, like that needed to sprinkle it, causes impurity.

After the non-Jew had left, Rabbi Yochanon’s students clustered around.  “You pushed that man away with a weak explanation: a reed.  But how about us?  What answer would you give us?”

Rabbi Yochanon said, “By your lives, the dead do not bestow impurity nor does the water bestow purity- but rather it is G-d’s hidden law to perform this Mitzvah.” 

Some mysteries lead not to solutions, but to higher mysteries.

In our lives, we sometimes feel hemmed in, stunted and stuck.  We seek to be liberated, to re-experience life’s excitement, mystery and promise.  That is what impurity is like- the feeling that nothing will ever change, that this is all there is.  The Torah compares this stagnation to death.

And so we reach out for a touch of transcendence.  We turn to prayer, meditation, solitude, immersing ourselves in actions of meaning, like helping others- the Torah compares this to giving birth- launching possibilities whose final consequences are beyond us, like a mother giving birth to a child, an artist creating a great work, a farmer planting a tree whose fruit will feed future generations.  This feeling of liberation gives us a moment where we touch eternity and we attain to the freshness and excitement where everything is new again. 

But even in that moment of renewal, we realize that there are possibilities and worlds that we can never see, mountains that we can never even glimpse, seas whose waves are forever over the horizon.  And we come back to the nostalgia and sense of longing from which we started- but at a higher level.

The Red Heifer is the opposite of the Golden Calf.  The Golden Calf was the false god meant to lead us back to slavery.  The Red Heifer ceremony leads to the spiral staircase of longing, wonder, an encounter with eternity and again longing and wonder.

The Torah calls the Red Heifer the “Hidden Law of the Torah.”  So many of us give up on encountering G-d, on achieving even a moment of transport and higher awareness.  And yet, we can each achieve those moments if we dare long for them, if we dare open our eyes to wonder. 

Pesach is the holiday of liberation.  Let us now be satisfied with the familiar rituals and practices- let us push ourselves further in some way- whether by taking on deeper observance, by adding new dimensions to our practice, by inviting new guests or experiences, by seeking more, demanding more of ourselves and of our traditions. 

Rabban Gamliel in the Haggadah demands that we each experience Passover as if we were personally freed from slavery. 

The poet of the Romantic period, William Blake, told about how even our ordinary experiences can launch us into higher worlds of wonder.  In his Augeries of Innocence, he proclaims

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

In the taste of Matzah, can we experience both the destitution and misery of slavery and the thrill of freedom?  Can we be every slave and dream the eternal dream of freedom and renewal?  Our Torah challenges us to say that we can… and in that way, walk the same spiral staircase to higher consciousness and liberation from even the darkest places.

With Prayers for a Passover of True Freedom, Joy and Blessing!