זאת חוקת התורה
Acknowledging Our Limits
Rabbi Joey Haber
The law of the parah adumah, which the Torah presents the beginning of Parashat Hukat, is often seen as the quintessential חוק – law whose reasoning eludes our comprehension, but we perform anyway. The Torah here commands finding a perfectly red cow that is free of all blemishes and has never been used for any sort of labor, burning it, and mixing its ashes with water. That water would then be used to sprinkle people and objects that had become tameh (impure) through contact with a human corpse, in order to purify them anew.
None of this makes sense to our minds. We cannot understand why following specifically this procedure brings purity. Even more mysterious is the fact that all the people involved in preparing this water, and the kohen who sprinkles the water, become tameh. Meaning, although this water brings purity to those who are impure, it brings impurity to those who are pure. To our limited minds, this does not make any sense.
And this is precisely the point of this mitzvah: to show us the limits of the human brain, that there are things we cannot understand.
זאת חוקת התורה
Rashi, in his commentary to this parashah, brings an approach that explains the command of parah adumah as intended to atone for the grave sin of the עגל הזהב – the golden calf which Beneh Yisrael worshipped at Mount Sinai several weeks after receiving the Torah. What connection can there possibly be between the golden calf of the parah adumah? True, a calf is a young cow, and thus, in Rashi’s words, the mother – the parah adumah – comes along to “clean” the “mess” of the golden calf, just as a mother cleans the mess made by her child. But what deeper connection is there between the sin of the עגל הזהב and the command of parah adumah?
The answer might lie in the point made above – that the parah adumah seems not to make sense, and is something which our limited minds cannot comprehend.
What happened at the time of the עגל הזהב? Moshe Rabbenu did not return from the top of the mountain at the time Beneh Yisrael expected him to, and so they decided they needed a new leader. They then went ahead and chose as their new leader a statue which they made out of gold. This was so foolish. Why would a golden calf be able to lead them? This was a very foolish mistake, but the people were convinced that they were correct. They were certain that this was the right course of action under the circumstances. Even though it went against the a, b, c’s of everything Moshe had taught them, they insisted that it was the right thing to do.
The way we atone for a mistake of this nature is through the parah adumah – by embracing and committing ourselves to a mitzvah whose value and purpose cannot be understood by the human mind. Our Sages teach that even King Shlomo, the wisest man who ever lived, could not make sense of the parah adumah. And this is precisely the purpose of this mitzvah – to show us that our minds our limited, that we don’t know everything and we do not understand everything. When we, like Beneh Yisrael at Mount Sinai when Moshe did not return at the expected time, want to do something drastic, convinced that we know what we are doing, the parah adumah is there to remind us to pause, and to consult with other people who know better than we do. It reminds us that we do not always understand, that we do not always have the answers, even when we think we do.
This explains why the Torah introduces the command of the parah adumah is an especially dramatic way: זאת חוקת התורה – “This is the statute of the Torah.” This mitzvah is presented as “THE” law, the foundation of the entire Torah. This is because it truly is. The foundation of the Torah is recognizing that we need guidance and instruction for how to live in this world, that we do not know everything ourselves. The whole notion of having a Torah is that we need Hashem to tell us what to do and what not to do, because our minds are limited. We cannot on our own decide the way to live a meaningful, spiritual life. We need Hashem to do that. And thus the חוקת התורה, the quintessential law of the Torah, is parah adumah, the law that shows us the limits of our understanding.
The Greatness of the Jewish People
With this in mind, let us examine a famous story told in the Gemara about the birth of a parah adumah.
There was a certain non-Jew named Dama ben Netina who lived in Ashkelon and had a diamond business. Once, a group of Jewish leaders came to his home in order to purchase a certain precious stone that was needed for the kohen gadol’s breastplate. The delegation offered Dama a handsome price for the stone, and he happily agreed to the deal. There was only one problem – the key to his safe, where he kept his jewels, was under his father’s pillow, and his father was sleeping. Under no circumstances was Dama prepared to wake up his father – even for the sake of a profitable transaction. And so he declined the offer, and the Jewish leaders went elsewhere to purchase the stone they needed.
A year later, the Gemara continues, a red calf was born in Dama’s herds. A perfectly red calf is exceedingly rare, and so when the news of this animal reached the Jews, a group of leaders immediately came to Dama to purchase this animal, which was needed for the preparation of the purification waters. When they arrived, Dama said to them, “I know you are prepared to pay any price in the world for this animal. But I am only going to ask for the amount I sacrificed for the sake of respecting my father, because I know this animal was born in my herds in reward for that deed.”
Why was the parah adumah the reward for this man’s sacrifice for his father’s honor? Why didn’t Hashem give him back the money he forfeited some other way?
The Huddushei Ha’Rim explained that when Dama ben Netina refused to wake up his father to access the key, his sacrifice created in a stir in the heavens. The prosecuting angels came before Hashem and pointed to the contrast between this gentile and the Jews.
“Would the Jews have gone this far to respect a parent?” they asked. They argued that the Jews did not deserve their special status, as the non-Jews are more devoted to their parents than the Jews are.
In response, Hashem arranged the birth of parah adumah in Dama ben Netina’s flocks. As he himself acknowledged when the Jewish delegation approached him, the Jews were prepared to pay any sum in the world for a parah adumah – to perform a mitzvah that they could not even begin to understand, that made absolutely no logical sense. True, Dama ben Netina excelled in the mitzvah of כיבוד אב ואם (honoring parents), but that is one of the most understandable and intuitive commands in the Torah. He was prepared to make great sacrifices for this mitzvah which is perfectly sensible and morally instinctual. But the Jews did something even greater – showing great sacrifice and devotion to a mitzvah that makes no sense to the human mind.
This is what is special about the parah adumah – it teaches us to acknowledge our limitations, to trust in mitzvot even when we cannot understand them, and to stop thinking that we are capable of understanding everything.
The Freedom of Knowing Limits
Recognizing our limits is vitally important not only for unconditional commitment to Torah, but also for another reason – because it allows us to experience peace of mind.
As ironic as it sounds, there is nothing more liberating than knowing that we cannot understand everything. At first glance, we might resent the need to accept and commit ourselves to laws that we don’t understand. We might instinctively think we are freer by choosing to observe only that which we understand, and dismissing that which we don’t. But the truth is just the opposite – we are far freer when we realize that our minds are limited. When we live with this realization, we are able to focus our attention on what we need to know and understand, without worrying about what we cannot know or understand. And this is why the חוקת התורה, the fundamental principle taught by the parah adumah, is such a precious gift. It allows us to focus on learning and observing the Torah and trust that this is the way to live. We have many questions with no answers, but they should not concern us. The Torah tells us what to do, what not to do, and the way we should live our lives, and as long as we follow what it says, we are doing the right thing, and we need not worry about anything else.
If we look around the world, we see so many things that nobody could have possibly predicted just several years ago. Whether it’s an erratic billionaire becoming President of the United States, the effects of social media on human behavior, and so much else of what is happening in the world around us, it could not have been imagined in the past. There are very strange phenomena going on – such as men who decide they are women, and vice-versa, demanding that they be treated as their gender of choice – which nobody foresaw. And we have no idea what the world will look like when our children and grandchildren grow older, or even just ten years from now. The חוקת התורה teaches us that this is not something we need to worry about. We know what we are supposed to do, and we need to do it to the very best of our ability. If we do that, then we’re ok, and we don’t have to worry about that which we cannot predict or control.
This is part of what makes Torah life so beautiful and so fulfilling. As the world around us changes at lightning speed, with new fads and new ideas rising to the surface every day, and people not knowing what to think and believe as they are constantly flooded with new ideas and beliefs, we have the Torah as our anchor. We need to study it and follow it, and if we do, then we can rest assured that we are living exactly the way we are supposed to live, even if we do not have satisfactory answers to all the questions that arise.
Think!!
However, like every value in Judaism, there is another side to the proverbial coin.
One might take this concept to an extreme and conclude that there is no purpose to thinking for ourselves. After all, if our minds are inherently limited, and there is so much which we are incapable of understanding, then why bother? Maybe we should just not think at all. We should do whatever we have specific instructions for how to do – meaning, all halachic requirements – but beyond that, we should just “wing it,” and not bother thinking about things at all. What point is there to using our minds if our minds are limited?
Of course, this is absurd. Hashem gave us intelligence and the power of reasoning. While we must, as discussed, recognize the limits of our minds, we must push our minds to their outermost limits and strive to understand as much as we can.
We know this from Avraham Avinu. G-d gave Avraham ten “tests,” ten difficult challenges to his faith which he needed to overcome. Significantly, in only about half of these tests did Avraham receive a specific instruction from Hashem. For example, Hashem told him to leave his homeland and settle in Eretz Yisrael, and Hashem told him to offer Yitzhak as a sacrifice. But in some of Avraham’s tests, he had to use his own logic. He had nobody telling him what to do. Hashem caused a famine in Eretz Yisrael after he arrived there without warning him in advance and without telling him what to do. When his wife was abducted in Egypt, Avraham was not warned or told what to do. When Nimrod threatened to throw Avraham into a furnace if he refused to bow to an idol, nobody told Avraham what to do. He figured all this out with his mind.
So certainly, reason and common sense play a vital role in Torah life. Many of the decisions we need to make over the course of the day are governed by specific halachot, but others aren’t, and we need to decide what to do with our minds. Hashem gave us minds which are limited, but which are still pretty impressive. We need to think! We need to use our intellectual capabilities to their fullest, while recognizing their limits and knowing that we will not know and understand everything.
If we would ask people in our community, “Should you bring your questions to Rabbis, or should you just use your own intuition?” I imagine that the vast majority of people would give one of two opposite answers. Some would say, “You have to ask Rabbis everything. You can’t do anything on your own. Everything requires Rabbinic guidance.” And others would say, “There is no need to ask Rabbis. They don’t know any better than you. Use your own common sense and judgment.”
In my view, both responses are exactly right, and terribly wrong.
The correct approach is to do what we can within the limits of our understanding, and seek guidance for matters beyond those limits. There are many questions that come up that require consultation with people with greater knowledge and wisdom. Instead of deluding ourselves into thinking that we can handle these questions ourselves, we need to humbly consult with those who know more than we do. But this does not mean that we need to call a Rabbi to ask what we should eat for breakfast, or what car to buy. We are intelligent human beings, and we must use our intelligence while recognizing its limits.
Doing What We Need to Do
The story is told of a Jewish woman who lived in Russia in the 1970s, during the period of the burgeoning underground movement among Soviet Jews to secretly learn Hebrew and Judaism. This woman got involved in the movement, and began learning about her Jewish heritage. With time, she began drawing closer to tradition. Her husband, however, wanted no part of it. Not a particularly nice person, he fiercely resented his wife’s interest and involvement in Jewish learning and practice, and became hostile. Eventually, the wife left home, and managed to receive an exit visa. She went to Israel to continue studying about Judaism.
One day, she learned about the law of a get – that a Jewish woman who gets married is not permitted to marry another man until she receives a get – a writ of divorce – from here current husband. The woman panicked. She left her husband a while earlier, and she had no contact whatsoever with him ever since. She would not even know where to find him. How could she get married again, if she had no chance of ever receiving a get from her husband?
She decided to consult with Rabbi Yitzchak Zilber, a Rabbi who had emigrated to Israel from Russia and was intimately involved in Jewish affairs in Russia. He decided that he would fly to Russia and try to find the husband to receive his authorization to deliver a get to his wife. The people around him tried discouraging him from going, explaining that there was zero chance of his finding this man, whose whereabouts were not known even to his wife. But Rabbi Zilber decided to do what he could, what he thought needed to be done. He took down the information about the man, and traveled to Russia.
As he was passing through customs, the KGB was alerted and right away took him in for questioning. He was then thrown into prison and told that his fate would be decided by the Russian authorities.
He sat in his prison cell together with another man. He looked at his fellow inmate, and couldn’t believe his eyes. The man looked exactly like the picture given to him by the woman. Could it possibly be that this was her husband? Rabbi Zilber calmly began speaking with the man, and after a few minutes it became clear that indeed, this was the husband. The man struck Rabbi Zilber as every bit as obnoxious and mean as the woman said he was. Rabbi Zilber knew that if he came right out and asked him to authorize a divorce, he would refuse. So instead, he spoke to him in a friendly, concerned tone, until he earned his trust and his admiration.
After the man spoke about his wife who left him, Rabbi Zilber explained to him that she needed to receive a divorce before she can remarry. Right there and then, the man authorized Rabbi Zilber to write the writ of divorce and give it to his wife.
Not long thereafter, the prison guard returned and informed Rabbi Zilber that the authorities decided not to allow him into the country, and to deport him immediately. He promptly returned to Israel and gave the get to the woman.
Not every story has this happy and dramatic an ending. And not always does everything work out so perfectly. But what’s most meaningful about this story is the fact that this Rabbi did what he could. He did not know if or how he would be successful in his mission, but he knew that he needed to try. A woman’s future was at stake. He could not just shrug his shoulders and do nothing. He needed to make an effort. This is all he knew, and this is what he did.
This should be our mindset, as well. We have many concerns about our lives and about our future. And we try hard, as we should, to educate our children the right way, to work hard to secure our livelihood in the present and the future, and to help our community any way we can. As long as we do what we are supposed to do, we should not worry about what the future will bring. The parah adumah, the great “statute of the Torah,” assures us that we don’t need to know everything, and we don’t need to have the answers to all questions or the solutions to all problems. We need to just do what we can, as instructed by the Torah and Torah scholars, and feel confident that everything will, somehow, fall into place.