Shabbat Shalom: Parshat Hukat (Numbers 19:1-22:1)
By Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel - One of the most profound mysteries of the Torah is the law of the red heifer, a ritual by which an individual who has become ritually defiled by contact with a corpse is purified by a Kohen - priest, who sprinkles him with a mixture of burnt ashes of a completely red heifer with water, into which must be thrust a piece of cedar wood, branches of hyssop and a scarlet thread of wool. (Numbers 19:1-6).

Not only are the various ingredients of this ritual difficult to fathom, appearing to be some kind of voodoo applied by Indian medicine men (G-d forbid!); the strangest aspect of all is the fact that while the impure person upon whom the ashes mixture is sprinkled emerges purified, those Kohen-priests involved in the carrying, the burning and the thrusting all become defiled. How can the very same object be a purifying agent and a defiling instrument at one and the same time? It is no wonder that our Talmudic Sages applied the words of King Solomon, wisest of all mortals, “I attempted to be wise, but it only moved further away from my understanding” (Kohelet 7:23), to the mystery of the red heifer.

Further, why does the Torah record this particular ritual here, at the conclusion of the desert sojourn of the Israelites? Rav Abraham Ibn Ezra explains that these laws were also given at Sinai, but were included in this context because the ritual must be prepared and performed by the Kohen-priests. But the rules of the Kohen-priests belong much more to the books of Exodus (the sanctuary portions of Terumah, Tetzaveh, Vayakhel and Pikudei) and Leviticus (the Holy Temple sacrificial cult) than to these stories of desert dissatisfaction, rebellion and intrigues in the book of Numbers. Why is the ritual of the red heifer sandwiched between the sins of the scouts and of Korah in the two previous portions and the transgression of Moses in the segment immediately following?

Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik masterfully answered a significant part of our first query. To what may the ritual of the red heifer be compared? To a hapless individual who finds himself drowning in a quick-sand of mud. Certainly he must be rescued but the rescuer who must lift the victim up from the quagmire, will of necessity become soiled in the process. Hence, those who prepare the mixture of purification are themselves defiled by it!

My revered teacher went one step further. Is it then fair, he asked, that those who attempt to purify become themselves impure in this fashion? And he explained that if we understand that it is the religious leadership which has the responsibility of purifying society, that had the priest-kohanim uplifted humanity to higher spiritual and ethical attainments, people would not have become contaminated by impurity in the first place, then it is only right that this same religious leadership take the risk of becoming defiled; when the nation as a whole is alienated from Torah and sanctity. The leaders must leave the ivory tower of the Bet-Midrash (Study Hall) and reach out to the masses of Jews wherever and in whatever state they may be. As G-d tells Moses, spiritually ensconced in the ethereal realms of the heavens receiving the Oral Law, “Go down, descend from your supernal heights, because your nation is acting perversely with the golden calf; if your nation is sinning, what do I need you for?!” (B.T. Berakhot 32a).

Indeed, religious leadership must assume responsibility for the defection of the masses of Jews, for the sorry state of Jewish morality and sanctity. The heifer or cow, usually a symbol of maternal concern, commitment and nourishment, is changed form the purity of white to the sinfulness of blood red in the detail of this ritual. Death, from the pristine and primordial period of the Garden of Eden, is the result of transgression, a punishment for straying beyond the proper boundaries of conduct set by G-d. The materialistic and hedonistic worship of the golden calf, the lazy and apathetic sin of the scouts in the desert, are all acts of impurity which lead - at the very least - to spiritual death. And this is the destiny of the desert generation.

Why did these freed and empowered slaves who refused to conquer the Promised Land, opt to remain in the desert? First and foremost, because they did not wish to assume responsibility. Indeed, their lives in the desert were virtually free of responsibility; food in the form of manna descended from heaven, divine rays of splendor provided them with shelter, and a “cloud by day, pillar of fire by night’ told them when to journey and where to settle. They lived in a perennial “Kollel”, free of worries and obligations.

Conquering Israel meant growing up, taking risks, suffering the dangers of welfare, assuming responsibility for their national destiny and mission to the world. Some thought they were on too high a spiritual level to get their feet dirty in the trenches (symbolized by the too proud cedar tree); others thought they were incapable of acting with such courage and strength in the face of the unknown (symbolized by the too-humble hyssop). Both groups are guilty of sin symbolized by the scarlet wool: the sin of the scouts and the sin of the silenced leadership of a frustrated and beaten -down Moses who failed to bring his people even to the portals of the Promised Land; the sin of too much pride and of too little courage! Moses who had courageously struck a threatening Egyptian task-master at the beginning of his career is now reduced to striking an inanimate rock in displaced anger against his complaining and rebelling nation. Comes the timeless message of the red-heifer to every Jewish leader in every generation: you must learn to assume the risks of responsibility!

The third day of Tammuz (this past Tuesday), mark the 10th anniversary of the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe zt”l. In my eyes as well as in the eyes of countless others - many who like myself never became real Lubavitcher hassidim -he was truly the leader of this past generation. From the time that I made the decision to become the rabbi of Lincoln Square Synagogue at age 24 until and including my aliyah to Efrat and the establishment of the Ohr Torah Stone Institutions, I never made a significant move without seeking his sage advice. The one word which most characterizes his phenomenal style of leadership was his assumption of responsibility: he took responsibility for Jews all over the world, from Melbourne, Australia to Johannesburg, South Africa to Auckland, New Zealand to Kiryat Malachi, Israel. He inspired hundreds, if not thousands of his disciples to become his emissaries in communities throughout the world, each one assuming a small share of the enormously heavy burden carried with such grace and faith by their revered Rebbe.

The Rebbe provided a magnificent addendum to the interpretation Rav Soloveitchik gave to the ritual of the Red Heifer. Yes, those who prepare the mixture of purification - the one who burns the heifer to make the ashes, the one who thrusts into the mixture the cedar wood, the hyssop and the scarlet thread, the one who gathers up the various ingredients together and the one who carries them - all of these become defiled in their pursuit of purifying those who are impure. However, the one who actually sprinkles the mixture upon the individual defiled and thereby effectuates the actual purification, he himself remains pure. Hence the Rebbe made a promise to each of his shlichim (emissaries) all over the world - to those individuals who did the actual purifying themselves, the junior partners of the Rebbe who took responsibility to perform G-d’s work of purification - these were guaranteed, they and their families, to remain pure, no matter how isolated they may be. It is through these emissaries that the Rebbe’s legacy lives on.

Shabbat Shalom.