Tomorrow afternoon, at about three o’clock, 85 young Rabbis, ordained by Yeshiva University within the last three years, will gather in the University’s Lamport Auditorium for the official convocation celebrating their Smicha, or ordination. This Rabbi will be one of those so honored. And at an occasion of this sort it is no more than right that some sincere words of tribute be said in public.

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…

One of the least understood portions of the entire Torah is that dealing with the laws of tumah and taharah, ritual impurity and the cleansing from that state of impurity. In most cases, these laws no longer apply today. An example might be that of which we read in today’s Parshat Parah, concerning the purification of one who had been defiled by coming into contact with a corpse. These laws do not apply, because the principal effect of tumah is that the person who becomes tamei, unclean, may not enter the sanctuary or eat of the flesh of a korban, a sacrifice, such as the Korban Pesach. Since today we no longer have a temple, nor do we have any sacrifices, hence most forms of tumah are no longer effect, except for the one kind where the law deals with that sort of tumah which has consequences for domestic life as well. These laws of tumah are sorely misunderstood. Some people who read the Bible only superficially have come to the conclusion that they are merely guides to hygiene, and that hence they have no deeper spiritual meaning and are totally irrelevant in this age of scientific prophylaxis. Others have imagined that they are a form of Jewish magical taboo. What does our tradition teach us about the meaning of the laws of tumah and taharah? Generally, Judaism discourages probing too deeply into the meaning or reason for these commandments. Especially with regard to the laws of Parah Adumah which we read of in today’s Parshat Parah, our tradition teaches us that this ritual must forever remain a mystery, and the secret of the red heifer must for all eternity remain concealed from the inquisitive eyes of human reason. Nevertheless, while we shall not presume to discover Divine intention, I do want to share with you what I recently heard in the name of a great rabbi of our century, the Kovner Rav, an explanation which makes the laws of tumah and taharah more meaningful and more relevant to us so that at the very least we might better appreciate the Divine wisdom…

I feel I owe it to my congregation to begin today’s sermon with an apology, or at least with an explanation. Ever since our country has slowly but surely been sucked into the vortex of the Vietnam involvement, I have refrained from any public comment on the war. This I have done for three reasons. First, I have always been apprehensive about reducing the pulpit to a platform, and making of the sermon a running journalistic commentary. Second, I have always considered Vietnam to be a technically political, diplomatic, and military problem, beyond any special competence that a Rabbi can be expected to possess. Third, I have been annoyed at those clergymen, Jewish and non-Jewish, especially the former, for whom Vietnam and civil rights have become the totality of religion, as if there is nothing else in Judaism to speak of except to fulminate against the Vietnam war and to espouse the cause of civil rights.However, because of developing events, I have been forced to change my attitude, and I therefore feel impelled by conscience to address myself to the problem of Vietnam, though not without some hesitation.I am still opposed to any political pronouncement from the pulpit. But Vietnam has become one of the major moral problems of our time. True, it remains largely a political issue. Yet, there comes a time when certain issues expand beyond the narrow lines of politics and into the larger sphere of morality.A great part of our population is convinced that the Vietnam war is immoral. At the very least I believe that most of us here this morning are not enthusiastically certain of its morality. The following, I believe, is an excellent test of how to intuitively judge the moral quality of the Vietnam War: How would you feel if your 18 year old son was ready to be drafted? Would you feel, as you felt during World War II and even during the Korean war, that it was unfortunate, but that as long as it was going to be done the cause was worthy of the sacrifice that you and…

The theme of Parshat Parah is tum’ah and taharah, which we usually translate as “levitical purity and impurity.” Now there are two aspects to the category of tum’ah and taharah in the Jewish tradition. The first regards tum’ah as a state of enforced separation from holy places or objects, initiated by contact with death: a dead body or a part of it, a debilitating disease, or the loss of vital tissue or fluid. This is the kind of tum’ah about which we read from the Torah this morning.The second understanding of tum’ah and taharah is the spiritualized interpretation about which we read in this morning’s Haftorah. Tum’ah is considered a state initiated by sin, which is the rebellion against and the cutting off of oneself from the living God of Israel. Both physical death and partial death, as in the sidra, and spiritual death and partial death, as in the Haftorah, are regarded as the sources of tum’ah.Thus our Haftorah begins, “Son of man, when the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, ויטמאו אותה בדרכם, they defiled it by their ways and by their doings” (Ezekiel 36:17). Israel’s way of life was disobedient and rebellious against the living God, and therefore their tum’ah had to be purged.But the remaining part of the Haftorah, its major section, does not deal with tum’ah and taharah but with another theme, that of Kiddush Hashem and Hillul Hashem the sanctification of God’s name and the desecration of the name.Now, Kiddush Hashem and Hillul Hashem are very important concepts in Judaism. They constitute one of the greatest and most powerful ideals in all of our faith. They tell us that God’s name, His reputation, is at stake in the world, and that it is our responsibility to enhance or sanctify that name, and never to diminish it or desecrate it.However, the question arises: What does taharah have to do with Kiddush Hashem? Why does the prophet combine these two concepts? How does the “Divine prestige” relate to the twin concepts of sin and death that are inherent…

The temper of the contemporary spirit inclines towards relevance. “Relevance” has become the major test of concepts, systems, and commitments in our times. Part of the campus revolution was powered by a revulsion against the irrelevance of many courses, which seemingly had nothing at all to do with life as it is now lived. In politics, a new breed of young person has been taking over, rejecting the older table-thumping, flag-waving type of politician. In religion too, or especially, there has been a call for relevance, for going “where the action is.” I confess my complicity in this call for making ourselves relevant to contemporary issues. For too long, we of the Orthodox community have acted as if Torah was an isle of refuge, and the less bridges we build to the world at large the safer we will be. IIBy this criterion of relevance, however, much of traditional Jewish teaching becomes problematic. Consider, for instance, an extreme but illuminating example: the biblical law of the Parah Adumah, or Red Heifer, that was sacrificed in order to purify a person who was tamei, levitically impure, because of contact with a human corpse. The ritual had to be performed outside the camp, the cow had to be completely red with not more than two hairs of some other color, its ashes mixed with hyssop and cedarwood and scarlet, the whole thing dissolved in freshwater, and there had to be sprinkling on the third day and the seventh day... How awesomely exotic all this is to technological, secularized man of the late twentieth century! The Parah Adumah may intrigue us, but does it say anything to us? To complicate matters, the Rabbis give the ritual much more importance than is endurable to contemporary man with his standard of relevance בשעה שעלה משה למרום שמע קולו של הקב”ה שיושב ועוסק בפרשת פרה אדומה ואומר הלכה בשם אומרו (במד"ר יט). When Moses went up to the heights of Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, he heard the voice of the Holy One. What was God saying at this cruc…

I begin this sermon with an apology. I have never liked dramatists who write plays about playwrights, actors who act the roles of actors, or authors who write about novelists. I have always considered this a self-serving kind of literary inbreeding. Similarly, I am weary of rabbis who preach sermons about the rabbinate. So, I beg your leave if this morning I violate my own principle. My reasoning is that, first, I rarely do speak about the subject; second, I tell myself that the nature of the rabbinate and its destiny is of some interest to the congregation at large; third, the role of the kohen (priest) in the special reading of this morning, Parashat Parah, suggests the topic itself.Religious leadership – whether of the pulpit or classroom or institution – moves between two poles, and the tension between them is characteristic of all spiritual leadership. We may locate it, as I have indicated, in the role of the kohen.Parashat Parah tells us of the פרה אדומה or red heifer. The law is that if a man had contracted impurity (tumah) and desired to reattain the state of purity (taharah), then he must be sprinkled with the ashes of the heifer. The kohen who ministers at this procedure, in which purity is granted to the one who is defiled, himself becomes tamei or defiled. It is for this reason that the red heifer is considered a paradigm of the mysterious or the non-rational in Judaism: מטהר טמאים ומטמא טהורים, the red heifer purifies the impure and defiles the pure.What is the nature or the essence of this mystery? Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vorker left us a pithy saying in response: סוד פרה אדומה הוא אהבת ישראל, the mystery or the secret of the red heifer – is the love of Israel. Now, that is a cryptic remark, appropriate to one who is known in Hasidic lore as דער שווייגער, “the silent one.” A student of Reb Menachem Mendel expanded and explained his mysterious statement: it refers to the kohen who embraces tumah in order to bestow taharah upon his fellow Israelites. H…

The rite of Parah Adumah (the Red Heifer) is the most puzzling of all the commandments of the Torah. The procedure entails a paradox which defies all logic. A man who had been ritually defiled by contact with the dead would appear before the kohen (priest) who was pure. The kohen would sprinkle on the man a mixture of the ashes of the Red Heifer and certain other substances in water, and thereupon the man would become pure – whereas the kohen would be defiled. It is the symbol of the classic law for which no reason is offered and no explanation seems adequate. There are a number of such laws in the Torah, of which Parah Adumah is the most blatant. In their own quaint way, the Rabbis saw Parah Adumah as a challenge to Judaism and as an embarrassment to Jews. אומות העולם מונין את ישראל… מה טעם יש בה?, “The nations of the world taunt Israel and say, what is the reason for this commandment?” What sense does it make?Not only non-Jews, but Jews too are disturbed by this reason-defying law. I was recently consulted by a couple of young men who have done superb work in presenting Judaism to non-religious Jews and in interesting them in our sacred tradition. Their technique was to show how meaningful, relevant, and rational the commandments are. They offered what is classically known as טעמי המצוות, the “reasons” for the commandments, and they were most persuasive and often remarkably successful. However, they were troubled by the fact that some commandments defy explanations, and many in their audience were disturbed that there should be any observances for which there are no known reasons. Is it really necessary, they asked me, to insist that there are such things as חוקים, laws without explanations? My answer was, yes. It is true that we must always search out the elements of relevance and subjective appeal in the commandments of the Torah, but honesty forces us to say that rationalizing can be overdone. Not everything in Judaism can be easily explained. God, in His obdu…