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 mitzvot we can and often do know the reasons.

What Parah Adumah means therefore, is that man is to be reminded of the limits of his mind and the boundaries of his intelligence. We are presumptuous if we think we can fully know the mind of God. Only through submission to the greater intelligence of the Creator can we achieve the taharah, the purity which Parah Adumah comes to bestow. Parah Adumah tells us to call a halt to our intellectual arrogance and cultural haughtiness: you cannot understand this law, you cannot fathom this paradox, you may plumb the depths of the atom and extend your grasp into the heavens – but you cannot understand the mind of God “for My ways are higher than your ways, saith the Lord.” We must remain puzzled and mystified. We must be overwhelmed by the reality of our ignorance.

To the modern Jew this idea has special relevance. We are a generation that has had its intellect pampered into believing that everything can be known and understood. Many a Jew rejects whole sections of Torah and Yiddishkeit only because he has not satisfied his rational curiosity as to why not ride on the Sabbath, why not non-Kosher, why repeat certain prayers. Parah Adumah tells us that a central idea of Judaism is the limitation of man in the face of God. Parah Adumah teaches us the virtue of intellectual modesty as well as humility of character. Hasidim relate that the origin of the custom of wearing the yarmulke is this kind of modesty. Just as we wear clothes not only because of warmth and protection, but also because of modesty in covering the body, so the yarmulke covers the cranium, testifying that he who wears it acknowledges the limits of his thoughts, that his mind cannot penetrate the inner thoughts of God.

But lest anyone here come to a wrong conclusion, let me say that this does not mean that we are not to investigate the mitzvot for their reasons. It does not mean that we aren’t to search for the motives and meanings of our observances. On the contrary, one of the greatest and most urgent tasks facing religious educators today is the rational and reasonable presentation of Jewish way of life to our youth. But… we must always remember that the reasons we ascribe are only tentative, only afterthoughts, that the observance itself merely because God commanded it is the important thing. Our reasons that we ascribe – they may change from one generation to the next as we gain new insights into the world; but the act of obedience and love and fear of God – that remains forever. How interesting that the word taam – reason, as in taamei hamitzvot – in early, unsophisticated Hebrew meant not “reason” but “taste”. When I observe God’s commandment, then the observance itself, the religious devotion and acceptance of divine discipline – that is the substance, the essence, the meat. The extraneous reasons I assign to my observance – such as the healthfulness of kashruth, the psychological benefits of taharat ha-mishpachah, the social good inherent in Shabbat law – these are taam, they add taste and flavor and spice to the מצוה. It is important that our meals be flavored and tasty, so is it important to learn and discover the taamei hamitzvot. But ultimately, we must remember that it is possible to survive on a bland diet as long as we have our vitamins and proteins, but it is impossible to survive on a diet of flavoring, alone, much as we may delight in it. The essential vitamin of our spiritual Torah diet is: the command of God merely because He is Creator and I am creature. The taste and flavoring are the expendable reasoning I ascribe to the divine mitzvah.

Many people ask why we recite a berakhah only over mitzvot in the realm of man’s duties to God, such as tefillin, kiddush, candles, shofar, [but] not over our religious obligations to our fellow men such as love of neighbor, charity, paying one’s employees on time. One great Sage gave this answer: the berakhah over a mitzvah is worded as follows: baruch ata… asher kideshanu bemitzvosav vetzivanu, “Blessed…commanded us to perform such-and-such mitzvah”. Now when I perform a social or ethical obligation, I may not always do so because of the commandment but also out of humanitarian reasons, for inherent motives of civilized conduct, which I might do even without Torah. Hence my act is not because of vetzivanu, not because God commanded. When I perform a ritual mitzvah, however, there is no real reason other than God’s command for my doing it. And only when a Jew acts because God commanded, out of love of God Himself, does he achieve kedushah – asher kideshanu. And only when a Jew’s submission to godly discipline leads him to holiness can he attain berakhah or blessings. That is what Parah Adumah wants to teach us: to do because God commanded; to make Him, and use our mortal, fallible, inadequate intellect, to convince us. Only thus do we arrive at kedushah and berakhah and the taharah of Parah Adumah.

This is a hard doctrine which we are enunciating. And we must be prepared to face the challenge of the American Jew reared on the liberal fare of our day: “is not that a matter of a blind religion? Isn’t that too much like the Catholics? Are we to do something we do not understand? Let us not answer, that all of us do things we do not completely comprehend as long as it benefits us. The skeptic who will not trust God’s word usually fails to question the wisdom of his physician’s prescription. Let us rather answer that not only in the spiritual realm but in the natural-physical realm there are things we do not and never shall understand. Modern science does not confirm the popular impression that there is little we do not or cannot know about nature. Modern science shows the futility of this popular prejudice that we can know all and that what we do not know is nonsense. Thus Professor Conant – eminent educator and leading chemist – declares, “I would subscribe to the answer (given in the Book of Job) that the universe is essentially inexplicable.” Or listen to the words of one of the wisest of modern physicists, Professor P. W. Bridgman, “the most revolutionary of the insights to be derived from our recent experiences in physics (is that) we are now approaching a bound beyond which we are forever stopped from pushing our inquiries, not by the construction of the world, but by the construction of ourselves.” Or the astounding words of the “father of the atom bomb,” Professor Robert Oppenheimer: “we will have to accept the fact that no one of us will really know very much (for) we are of course an ignorant lot.” Well then, if we cannot know all about the beriah, how much more so about the boreh? If we are to remain ignorant of the created world, how can we dare to expect to know and understand all about its Divine Creator? That is precisely what Parah Adumah has come to tell us: chukah hi, gezerah hi, there are laws in the spirit as there are laws in nature that are simply beyond man. The taamei hamitzvot are the flavoring, the taste of Torah. The essence, however, is: chukah – the will of God, period.

In both cases, Parah Adumah comes to tell us that we must use our minds to the fullest extent – but always remember that even at their best our minds are just fragmentary chips from the Lord of all Creation.

The reasons we may discover are, after all, only flavor in our spiritual diet – taamei hamitzvot are both the reasons for the commandments and the taste of the Torah. But the substance of the religious life, the real, true, basic motivation for obeying God – is vezos chukas haTorah, that this is the decree of Torah, the will of God: imponderable, inexplicable, impenetrable. It is here that man comes face to face with God. It is here that, stripped of his false props and his ambitions and his pretense, man realizes the inscrutable will of God. And here, too, man discovers, is the road not only to kedushah and taharah and berakhah, to holiness and purity and blessing, but to hope and happiness and courage:

Beyado afkid ruchi, b’eis ishan v’a’ira

V’im ruchi geviyasi, Hashem li ve’lo ira

In His hand do I trustfully commend my spirit,

When I lie down to sleep and again when I awaken

And with my spirit – my body,

For the Lord is with me, I shall not be afraid.