The Message of the Red Cow, Despite All

by Rav Chaim Navon, rabbi, philosopher, writer, and publicist, yeshiva.org.il, translated by Hillel Fendel.

Rabban Yochanan's explanation of an incomprehensible statute – and the students' response

Our Torah reading this week includes the section called Parashat Parah. It deals with the laws of the Red Heifer (Parah Adumah), via which one who has been defiled by contact with a corpse can be purified (when the Holy Temple in Jerusalem stood and functioned). The laws of the Red Heifer are the archetype of laws that cannot be explained with mortal logic.

A woman who was in the process of becoming religiously observant once approached our late saintly Rosh Yeshiva [of Yeshivat Har Etzion], Rabbi Yehuda Amital, with a question. She said she would like to be able to observe all the commandments, but it would be hard for her to accept all of them all at once. Her question was: "What mitzvot should I start with?"

Rabbi Amital opened a book and showed her the following Midrashic teaching of our Sages. In Marah, somewhere in the Sinai Desert, the newly-freed Children of Israel accepted upon themselves, even before receiving the Torah at Sinai, three individual mitzvot. Rashi to Sh'mot 15,25 says that the three were Shabbat, the Red Heifer, and monetary laws.

Rav Amital added that what makes this set of mitzvot unique is that one of the three, Shabbat, is "between man and G-d;" another one, monetary law, is "between man and man;" and the third, the Red Heifer, has no rational explanation. "And you, too," Rav Amital said to the woman, "should take upon yourself three mitzvot: one between man and G-d, one between man and man, and one that you don't understand and don't expect to understand – and in this way you will learn from the get-go that Judaism demands both understanding and obedience."

In the eyes of our Sages, the passage of the Parah Adumah is the classic representative of all mitzvot that we cannot comprehend. Even King Solomon, the wisest of man, gave up trying to understand it: "Shlomo said, I left no teaching in the world not-understood, but when I got to Parah Adumah – I said, 'I will become wise, but it was too far from me'" (Proverbs 7,23).

The Ramban [to D'varim 22,6] emphasizes, however, that this does not mean that the mitzvah of Parah Adumah has no justification or explanation at all, and that it is simply arbitrary and exists just for the sake of blind obedience. Heaven forbid to even say such a possibility. Rather, every mitzvah has both rhyme and reason – even if they are sometimes not accessible to us.

The Talmud tells of a gentile who once challenged Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai regarding the illogic in the mitzvah of Parah Adumah. He claimed that mixing the cow's ashes with hyssop and the like in order to purify people was mere superstition. Rabban Yochanan countered by asking him, "Have you ever seen a man possessed by an evil spirit?" The gentile said yes. "What do you do in such circumstances?" The gentile replied, "We perform an exorcism. We light a fire, bring roots, make smoke, sprinkle water on the affected person, and the spirit flees." "Let your ears hear what you are saying!" exclaimed Rabban Yochanan. "Our Red Heifer ceremony is also a form of exorcism for one possessed by an unclean spirit."

The gentile accepted the answer, but Rabban Yocḥanan’s students did not: "You drove him away with mere straw,” they said, “but what will you answer us?” That is, they knew that this was not the true answer. They wanted to know the logic of the ceremony in terms of Judaism itself!

R. Yocḥanan answered directly: “By your lives! A dead body does not defile, and the waters of the Red Heifer do not purify. Rather, G-d simply says: 'I have ordained a decree, I have issued a statute, and you have no permission to transgress it. As is written, This is the statute of the Torah.'" (Medrash Badmidbar Rabba 19,8)

Contrary to what some academic circles believe, this Medrash is not saying that there is actually no logic at all to the Torah's commands. Rather, when Rabban Yochanan says that a corpse does not defile, he means that impurity and purity do not reflect reality as we perceive it. These states are rather a halakhic abstraction. It could be, for example, that G-d wants us to stay away from the dead, and therefore decreed that one who touches a corpse becomes halakhically tamei, impure – just as on the Sabbath, certain items are muktzeh and may not be moved. Neither the tamei person nor the muktzeh item has changed in any real way; only their halakhic status has changed.

There are those who lean towards explaining the Torah's mitzvot in "realistic" terms: Unkosher meat is "not healthful," impurity is "transparent dirt," and the like. The danger in this approach is that the Torah becomes merely a tool to serve us, and then leads us to think in terms of black magic and the like. To counter this, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai states clearly: Parah Adumah is not a "real" phenomenon, but rather represents G-d's infinite and eternal wisdom.

This can be proven from the Torah's command regarding "leprosy of a house" (Vayikra 14,36). When the priest comes to possibly declare a house "impure," he first orders the house cleared of all items – just in case he will have to declare the house impure, which would then render everything in it impure as well. If we view impurity as some kind of metaphysical dirt in the real world, what good does it do to remove the items from the house after they were already "infected?"

Rather, as we said: Impurity is not physically real, but rather Halakhic; the Torah does not come to tell us the reality, but rather comes to shape it.

What primarily amazes me in this Medrash is the reaction of the students. They catch on right away that the "magic" answer has nothing to it; what satisfies them is rather the idea that we cannot understand G-d's ways. It appears to me, unfortunately, that today's students would respond the opposite. The mature, developed answer regarding the limitations of mortal logic would appear to them to be a weak, "straw" answer, while the "magical" explanation would appeal to today's generation. And I fear that this slightly childish approach attracts not only our younger students.

This is another proof that the spiritual world of our Sages of blessed memory, 2,000 years ago, was richer and more mature than ours today.