Vayakhel-Pekudei (Parah): Making No Sense of the Red Heifer

When a young child gets that whole language thing sorted out, s/he soon begins to ask questions about, well, everything. The inquisitive

mind churns away, and the child displays an insatiable desire to understand anything and everything. My daughter is on the verge of this state, and has taken to asking "What happened?" constantly, even when literally NOTHING has happened, and I have no idea why I'm being interrogated. Eventually, we stop being quite so nosy and curious, but in some cases we retain our desire to scrutinize, analyze, and evaluate. This, for instance, is where religion gets into a bit of trouble. Most religions ask us to accept SOME things at face value; to take a leap of faith and put our judgment and skepticism aside. This is very hard to do.

This week, we continue to march towards Passover. We read a special accompanying reading, along with our Torah portion, that marks our journey leading up to Pesach. It is a highly peculiar passage from the Book of Numbers, about the ritual of the Red Heifer, and so this weekend is traditionally known as "The Shabbat of the Cow." 

A most a-moooo-sing name, I know! :-) So what is this ritual? In short, a blemish-free, lazy ("on which no yoke has been laid," 19:2), red cow is slaughtered, and all parts of the animal are turned into ashes on the altar. Then, when someone in the community has come in contact with a dead body (rendering them ritually "impure"), the ashes of the cow are mixed with water and sprinkled on the person, so that they can become pure again. We may ask: Why are THESE particular ashes so powerful? Why is the ritual performed just so? Why do we read about this ritual every year, so long after the institutions of Temple and sacrifice have been abolished? All really great questions... and all unanswerable.

So this is where I get back to the question of taking a leap of faith. Do all religious practices need to make "sense"? How important is it to learn that the laws of Kashrut have health benefits, or that resting every seventh day is good for you? The rabbis were very wary of trying 

to PROVE value in religious observance, because religion ain't science. It is also an illusion that we could ever possibly understand everything in life; some things are simply unknowable and/or cannot be quantified. Of course, there is a difference between a leap of faith and blind faith. We all see the terrible and destructive consequences of blind faith, where groups like ISIS or fundamentalists in pretty much ALL religions justify horrific behavior because "God [or my holy text] says so." Yes, we can take it too far, and people constantly do. But the opposite extreme - of constant scrutiny and total lack of faith - is damaging as well. In our efforts to run far away from extremism, we sometimes distance ourselves from the great value and beauty in religion. And we cannot let the fundamentalists "steal" away our faith.

Now you may be wondering, is the Red Heifer really the issue we go to bat for? No, probably not. I'm not looking to resurrect sacrifices or impurity laws. But to me, this bovine is a symbol. It's an example of a law that makes no sense. So what? We can read it, and value it, anyway. Do we need to observe 

EVERY minor aspect of Passover cleaning and preparation? Do we need to perform every Mitzvah with exact precision, painstaking detail, and total adherence? Maybe not. It is quite unlikely that God will be upset if you miss something, or fall short of your own ideals. But religion should challenge us. It is not here to (only) bless and sanctify the easy things we already do, and it does not need to stand up to our scrutiny or standards of logic, science, and reason. I get it: You don't plan on accepting things with blind faith. Great! I agree. But how about considering a LEAP of faith? Can you let religion in to your life a little bit more, and with a bit of acceptance that some things just are, without explanation? Food (or ash?) for thought, especially with Pesach lurking just around the corner...

Photos in this blog post:
1. Image of Caroline discovering Vietnamese flat noodles, courtesy of my iPhone.
2. CC image courtesy of Dovi on Wikimedia Commons
3. CC image, "The Leap of Faith," courtesy of Superscramble on Wikimedia Commons
4. CC image of Bernard Picart's "The Search for Leavening" courtesy of Dauster on Wikimedia Commons