Synagogue Sermon
The Taste of Torah (1959)
The law of the Parah Adumah, or red heifer, which forms the content of this morning’s special reading, has always proved a source of difficulty and even embarrassment to sensitive, alert Jews. Our Sages, quoted by Rashi, already told us of the perplexity caused us by Parah Adumah in antiquity: lefi she’ha-satan v’umos ha-olam monin es Yisrael mah ha-mitzvah hazot umah taam yesh bah, that Satan and the gentiles would taunt the Jews and say, what does this commandment mean, and what sense does it make? What is the reason for this strange rule? For indeed it is strange: one who has been defiled, declared tamei because of contact with a cadaver, is to be purified by a ceremonious sprinkling with the ashes of a red heifer; yet the priests who participated in preparing the animal which would purify are themselves declared impure as a result of their contact with it. Parah Adumah purifies the impure, and defiles the pure! What an irrational paradox! And so the umos ha-olam, the higher anti-Semites, and the Satan, or our inner skepticism, challenge us and taunt us and tell us that all this is simply absurd, irrational. And the Rabbis’ answer, quoted by Rashi, does not seem to help us much: chukah hi, gezerah milefanai – it is a decree, one which you may not question.Indeed, in the history of Jewish hashkafah, or religious philosophy, whole schools have been built about this central idea of whether or not we can know the reasons for the observances required of us by the Torah. Some deny we can ever know or should ever search for the taamei hamitzvot, the reasons for the commandments. In fact, the mitzvot have no reasons! Maimonides, rationalist that he is, disagrees. Every command of God must have a reason. He is, after all, the source of intellect. How then explain Parah Adumah? There is a reason for its strange paradox, but we do not know it. But the reason for Parah Adumah must always remain a mystery to us, for God has chosen to conceal rather than reveal. Of other mit…
