The Torah is a complicated book. Its origins are obscure, its contradictions are many, its stories range from heartwarming to confounding; some of its principles transcend generations while others are clearly of a different place and time. This week’s Torah portion provides an excellent opportunity for an exploration of the complex nature of our Torah text. The portion is called Chukat and you can find it here.
Together with a grief counselor, I’m facilitating a Melton class on grief and loss. It’s both a support group and a chance to study Jewish practices and ideas associated with death. The very nature of the topic and the raw emotions of those participants who are still grieving makes for a powerful and enriching experience. The subject of death evokes a range of complex and powerful reactions. Though framed through the lens of antiquity, the Torah portion for this week explores the timeless discomfiture around this ultimate human destination.
Here, we encounter the strange ritual of the Red Cow (or heifer). Centuries of scholars have been confounded by the ritual that calls for the complete burning of a rare species of cow. In this ritual the cow’s ashes, when mixed with other select substances, assume the power to purify one who has become contaminated through contact with a corpse. Strangely, the priest and anyone else involved in preparing the mixture is made temporarily impure while preparing a purificatory substance.
Even the ancient rabbis were confounded by the process and declared that it simply must be followed despite its apparent illogic of making the previously pure impure and the impure pure. Despite their confusion they decreed that it be read twice a year. Once, as it appears in the weekly reading and a second time the week before Passover—they called it Shabbat Parah (lit. the Cow Sabbath). The cow ash-imbued waters’ purificatory powers ensured preparedness for the ancient Passover rituals.
Some modern scholars have analyzed the list of ingredients and suggested that it might have been an ancient form of soap (see this essay). Some traditional Jews have studied the ritual in depth so that they might restore its place in Jewish life. There are even attempts in the Jewish and non-Jewish world to breed a cow that could be the true red cow described here.
How can we explain the enduring impact of this ancient practice? This brings me back to the class I’m teaching. Even discussion of the Jewish practices around death brings so many emotions to the surface for those who are still grieving. Our encounters with death are profound and transformative. Though impurity is a foreign concept for us moderns, the idea that when we touch death we go through a period of alienation – from our community, from our normal routines, from our families perhaps—is compelling. The ancient ritual allowed one to return to the community and to feel “cleansed.” In our discussions in the class, we touch upon the sense of estrangement that the mourners feel. Modern Jewish rituals around death allow a gradual and meaningful return to the community and oneself.
The beauty of the Torah lies as much in its context as in our continuing exploration of its meaning. Underneath so many of the rituals and stories lies a most basic and profound exploration of human experience and emotions. The ritual of the Red Cow, appearing at first as bizarre and archaic, can be seen as an attempt to respond to a universal aspect of human experience: the estrangement brought by death and loss, and the role of meaningful rituals in restoring a sense of wholeness.
-Rabbi Ron Stern