Chukat – June 19, 2021

PARASHA SUMMARY FROM WWW. REFORMJUDAISM.ORG • The laws of the to purify a person who has had contact with a corpse are given. (19:1-22) • The people arrive at the wilderness of Zin. dies and is buried there. (20:1) • The people complain that they have no water. strikes the rock to get water for them. God tells Moses and they will not enter the Land of . (20:2- 13) • The king of Edom refuses to let the Children of Israel pass through his land. After Aaron's priestly garments are given to his son Eleazer, Aaron dies. (20:14-29) • After they are punished for complaining about the lack of bread and water, the repent and are victorious in battle against the Amorites and the people of Bashan, whose lands they capture. (21:4-22:1)

Chukat – Numbers Chapter 19 1 The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: 2 This is the ritual law that the Lord has commanded: Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid. 3 You shall give it to the priest. It shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence. 4 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. 5 The cow shall be burned in his sight—its hide, flesh, and blood shall be burned, its dung included—6 and the priest shall take cedar wood, hyssop, and crimson stuff, and throw them into the fire consuming the cow. 7 The priest shall wash his garments and bathe his body in water; after that the priest may reenter the camp, but he shall be unclean until evening. 8 He who performed the burning shall also wash his garments in water, bathe his body in water, and be unclean until evening. 9 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 for the

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10 Israelite community. It is for cleansing. He Bemidbar Rabbah 19:8 who gathers up the ashes of the cow shall also wash his clothes and be unclean until evening. (8) A gentile asked Yochanan ben Zakkai, "These rituals you do, they seem This shall be a permanent law for the Israelites like witchcraft! You bring a heifer, burn it, crush it up, and take its ashes. [If] one of and for the strangers who reside among you. you is impure by the dead [the highest type impurity], 2 or 3 drops are sprinkled 11 He who touches the corpse of any human on him, and you declare him pure?!" He being shall be unclean for seven days. 12 He said to him, "Has a restless spirit ever entered you?" He said to him, "No!" "Have shall cleanse himself with it on the third day you ever seen a man where a restless and on the seventh day, and then be clean; if spirit entered him?" He said to him, "Yes!" he fails to cleanse himself on the third and [Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai] said to him, 13 "And what did you do for him?" He said to seventh days, he shall not be clean. Whoever him, "We brought roots and made them touches a corpse, the body of a person who has smoke beneath him, and poured water died, and does not cleanse himself, defiles the and it fled." He said to him, "Your ears should hear what leaves your mouth! The Lord's ; that person shall be cut off same thing is true for this spirit, the spirit from Israel. Since the water of lustration was of impurity, as it is written, (Zachariah 13:2) "Even the prophets and the spirit of not dashed on him, he remains unclean; his impurity will I remove from the land." They uncleanness is still upon him. sprinkle upon him purifying waters, and it [the spirit of impurity] flees." After he left, 14 This is the ritual: When a person dies in a our rabbi's students said, "You pushed him off with a reed. What will you say to tent, whoever enters the tent and whoever is in us?" He said to them, "By your lives, a 15 the tent shall be unclean seven days; and dead person doesn't make things impure, every open vessel, with no lid fastened down, and the water doesn't make things pure. 16 Rather, God said, 'I have engraved a rule, shall be unclean. And in the open, anyone I have decreed a decree (chukah who touches a person who was killed or who chakakti, gezeira gazarti), and you have died naturally, or human bone, or a grave, no permission to transgress what I 17 decreed, as it says "This is a chok (rule) shall be unclean seven days. Some of the of the ." ashes from the fire of cleansing shall be taken for the unclean person, and fresh water shall be added to them in a vessel. 18 A person who is clean shall take hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle on the tent and on all the vessels and people who were there, or on him who touched the bones or the person who was killed or died naturally or the grave. 19 The clean person shall sprinkle it upon the unclean person on the third day and on the seventh day, thus cleansing him by the seventh day. He shall then wash his clothes and bathe in water, and at nightfall he shall be clean. 20 If anyone who has become unclean fails to cleanse himself, that person shall be cut off from the congregation, for he has defiled the Lord's sanctuary. The water of lustration was not dashed on him: he is unclean. 2

21 That shall be for them a law for all time. Further, he who sprinkled the water of lustration shall wash his clothes; and whoever touches the water of lustration shall be unclean until evening. 22 Whatever that unclean person touches shall be unclean; and the person who touches him shall be unclean until evening.

Sefer HaChinukh 397:1-2

(1) The commandment of the red heifer: That Israel was commanded to burn the red heifer so that its ashes will be ready for anyone who needs it to be purified from the impurity of the dead, as it is stated (Numbers 19:2), "Speak to the Children of Israel and they shall take to you a red heifer," and it is written below this (Numbers 19:9), "It will be a safeguard for the Children of Israel." Even though my heart has given me the gumption to write hints of the simple reasons for the previous commandments, with the excuse that [this] work is to instruct my son and his young friends, may God protect them; on this commandment my hands are weak and I am afraid to open my mouth about it at all, since I have seen that our , may their memory be blessed, spoke at length regarding the depth of its secret and greatness of its content; to the point that they said (Bemidbar Rabbah 19, Tanchuma 4:6:6) that King was able through his great wisdom to understand all the reasons of the Torah, except for this - as he stated about it (Ecclesiastes 7:23), "I have said that I will understand, but it is far from me." They also said in the Midrash Tanchuma 4:6:8, "Rabbi Yose BeRebbi Chanina says, 'The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moshe, "To you I will reveal the reason for the red heifer, but not to others."'" And there are many other similar statements. And now, the listener should not think that the matter of its secret and the matter of its being an arational commandment (chok) is that the ashes affect purification, as one will find a similar [process] with other sacrifices for the person with a discharge or a new mother, whose purification is completed by the offering of their sacrifices.

(2) The real wonder, so far as I have heard, is in its purifying the impure, yet rendering impure those involved in its burning. And even though the same is true for all burnt-offerings from cows and goats - that the one who burns them makes his clothes impure at the time that he burns them until they become ashes - nonetheless, their ashes do not purify. Also [part of] its great wonder is that the [process] is done outside of the camp, unlike the way of other offerings. And about this point the [other] nations [have a claim against] Israel, as they will think that it is offered to the demons in the open field, as is their practice today. And yet many medicinal herbs of the field and [medicinal] trees - from the cedars that are in Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall - are full of mysteries [that operate] in opposite [ways]. They heat the cold and cool the hot. And if we understood the nature of the spirit, its root, its illness and its health, we would also understand [perhaps] (about the sickness), since the mystery of the heifer is also to sicken the soul and render impure those who are involved in the burning, while its ashes heal from the sickness of impurity. Yet it is not clear that this would yield any result, but the love of the sacred and the desire to understand the hidden moves the quill to write.

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Pesikta D'Rav Kahanna 4:7

When Moshe went up to the heights of heaven, he heard the voice of the Holy One, blessed be He, as He sat engaged in the study of the passage on the Red Heifer, citing a law in the name of the sage who stated it: “Rabbi Eliezer said: The heifer whose neck is to be broken must be [not more than] one year old; and the red heifer [not more than] two years old.”

Moshe said before the Holy One, blessed be He: “Master of the Universe, worlds above and worlds below are in Your domain, yet You sit and cite a law ascribed to flesh and blood!”

The Holy One, blessed be He, replied: “Moshe, there will arise in My world a righteous man who, [in his concern for the purification of Israel], will begin his instruction of the Oral Law with the passage on the red heifer, and so I, [also concerned for the purification of Israel],

Rabbeinu Bahya, Bamidbar 19:2:4-5

:a statute of the Torah.” The various commentators understand the word as meaning“ ,חקת התורה ‘statute; royal decree.’ In other words, a law which defies understanding by the subject to whom it is applied. People asked to obey it constantly wonder why they have to obey such a law. The details of the red heifer legislation are not only devoid of logic but appear to defy logic in that contact with that cow defiles the ritually pure while purifying the ritually impure. The truth is that the red heifer is one of the statutes which defies our understanding. Still, the something that is “indelibly ,חקיקה is derived from the word חק principal meaning of the word engraved in a rock.” like a picture. G’d hinted to the Children of Israel that their image is indelibly engraved in the celestial regions. In other words, seeing there are no rocks to inscribe things on in is a simile for immutable concepts, as basic to G’d’s חקיקה the celestial regions, the word This is why ץlegislation as if their counterpart had been engraved in rock in our terrestrial universe It is significant that the .חקים a certain group of the commandments is known under the heading of appears in connection with our legislation here, whereas in connection with חקת התורה expression whereas in connection ,חקת עולם the legislation involving the scape-goat the Torah defines this as with kilayim, the prohibition to mix species which G’d wanted to keep separate, the Torah simply observe My statutes.” Whenever the Torah refers to a commandment as“ ,את חקותי תשמורו writes this is its way of reminding us of the immutability of such a ,חוק having an aspect of commandment.

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