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Shabbat Chukat

Note to future self: the second aliya of Chukat is kind of hard. When this comes around again in seven years, either be a better reader or duck this one. :-) (Nothing too bad, and there's a reason we have someone whose job is to check the torah reader's accuracy. But still... And I got rattled enough that I nearly forgot to do hagbahah and dress the torah before reading haftarah! Eeek!)

Chukat begins with the ritual of the para adamah, the red heifer, which is a mysterious process by which the subjects of the ritual become tahor (ritually pure) but those who prepare/administer it become tamei (ritually impure) in the process. It's almost as if the red heifer is a state toggle or something. It's one of those laws that people much more learned than I don't understand either.

A person becomes tamei through contact with the dead. The parsha teaches these laws and then gives us two deaths and a death sentence -- Miriam dies, Moshe is told he will die in the desert for what seems a minor transgression, and Aharon dies. (It's not a good week for that family.) We're told why Moshe dies out here, but not Aharon and Miriam. (Ok, when God tells Moshe about his fate he addresses Moshe and Aharon, but since Aharon didn't do anything I don't know what that means.) We know why the rank and file of the generation that left Egypt are going to die in the desert, but the implication until now had been that this wouldn't apply to the leaders. So what did these three do? Were their transgressione even a thousandth as bad as those of the people who spent forty years challenging their leaders and complaining about how life was so much better in Egypt?

It's human nature to hold leaders to higher standards. Things we expect to get away with ourselves, when done by those who lead us, are seen as bad. I've heard of congregations where almost no one keeps Shabbat, but the rabbi is required by contract to do so because he's the rabbi. (I guess he's the congregation's Shabbat Jew. :-) ) We've all heard of employees who call "harrassment" if a manager compliments someone on appearance, while those same employees are ogling their coworkers. And while our political leaders and the big names in the entertainment industry have undoubtedly done plenty to be chastised for, we sometimes seem to focus on the stupid little things while ignoring the big ones.

But that's not the lesson of the parsha. I said this is human nature. What we learn from the parsha is that God sometimes delivers harsher judgements to the leaders than to everyone else. That doesn't mean we're allowed to; just last week Korach made such judgements and challenges, and look where it got him.

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Chukat begins with the ritual of the para adamah, the red heifer, which is a mysterious process by which the subjects of the ritual become tahor (ritually pure) but those who prepare/administer it become tamei (ritually impure) in the process. It's almost as if the red heifer is a state toggle or something. It's one of those laws that people much more learned than I don't understand either.

Clearly I don't know enough yet to see why there's a problem....

As I understand it, contact with things that are sufficiently holy (including scrolls of Torah, although by rabbinical enactment IIRC) cause uncleanness (tum`a) until evening, whereas a dead body causes a higher level of uncleanness (seems to me this is fairly well documented in Vayikra). It makes sense to me that something capable of purifying the latter uncleanness would need to be holy enough to itself cause uncleanness. Yet the Torah commentaries I've read for this week's parasha (Plaut, the commentaries from Yeshivat Har Etzion and torah.org, and a Chumash with Rashi commentary from PilotYid) don't even mention this possibility but instead dwell on the apparent contradiction.

(Maybe all of the former are rabbinical in nature? I thought it was mentioned in Vayikra, though.)

As I understand it, contact with things that are sufficiently holy (including scrolls of Torah, although by rabbinical enactment IIRC) cause uncleanness (tum`a) until evening,

Doesn't that mean that the person who reads torah, and all the people who come into contact with it during the torah service (hagbahah, g'lilah, aliyot) would be tum'a? I'm not sure I've seen the consequences of that play out. Ok, on Shabbat it might not matter so much (because you weren't going to do the things where tum'a mattered anyway), but Mondays and Thursdays?

For that matter, if holy things cause tum'a then all those who handled the various instruments and parts of the mishkan would have been in a near-constant state of tum'a. It may be time to reread the relevant parts of Sh'mot and Vayikra, because that's not ringing true for me.

So far as I know, it's only the scroll itself that will make a person tumah. If you have an aliyah, you won't be touching the scroll. You use the wooden dowels to roll it up and unroll it, a tallis or some other object to kiss the place where the reading begins and a yad to keep your place. (At least that's the way I've always seen it done.) Same with hagbah -- you hold the wooden dowels to lift it up. And for gelilah, you use the dowels to roll it up, and you don't necessarily have to touch the scroll to put the ribbon around it or to put the cover on. (I have also seen people cover their hands with a tallis to do these jobs.)

>> I'm not sure I've seen the consequences of that play out. Ok, on Shabbat it might not matter so much

The consequences of this are not the same as they would be when the Temple is standing. What tumah meant at those times was that a person couldn't enter the Temple (and therefore couldn't bring a sacrifice) until they could immerse and become tahor. Whether it was Shabbos or not wasn't so much the issue, except insofar as that was one of the days a Torah scroll would be handled. Nowadays -- well, we don't have the Temple, so it doesn't have the same effect on our daily lives.

So far as I know, it's only the scroll itself that will make a person tumah.

Oh, just the parchment? Ok, that does make things easier -- though I'd be surprised if there wasn't concern about accidental touches, particularly when tying the sash around it. I know there have been times where I've brushed the backside while reaching around; I never knew it was something to be concerned about.

In one sense, of course, none of it matters because we're all tum'a today. Yet even so, we worry about contact between men and women during niddah, so I assumed there might still be some implications of touching the sefer torah even though we don't bring korbanot any more (lacking the temple). There's probably discussion of this in the talmud; I haven't looked for it.

Well, niddah is still an issue because with or without the Temple, a man who has relations with a woman while she's niddah is chayev kares (his soul is cut off). But yes, you're right, we all have tumas meis now.

In the case of Torah scrolls it was to discourage unnecessary handling.

Anything that makes a person impure when he moves it also makes things that he touches while moving it (or, except for an animal corpse and a saddle used by a person who makes seats impure: while touching it) impure. Otherwise, a person or thing that has become impure through contact with a source of impurity cannot -- except in the cases where he or it too becomes a source of impurity, as specified earlier -- make persons or utensils impure but can only make food and drink impure. Rabbinically they also make a person's hands impure, as do writings from the Bible (to ensure that they are not handled casually). If a person eats or drinks something impure or washes in "drawn water", or has bathed on account of impurity but the sun has not yet set, he too has this minor degree of impurity (which is that of food that has touched something that has touched a source of impurity); writings from the Bible must also be treated as though they had this degree of impurity.

—from torah.org "Halacha Overview - Other Sources of Impurity"

Unfortunately I'm failing to remember where I got the idea that sufficiently holy items caused some form of uncleanness. (And I still wish some of these books I have here had useful indexes....)

Well. Still don't have an original, but note the italicized text in this from "Halacha Overview - Impurity of Food" (torah.org halacha mailing list):

In ordinary food there are only two degrees of impurity (food that touches a source of impurity and food that touches such food), as it says "And if any of them falls into an earthenware vessel everything that is in it becomes impure".2 Thus hands that become impure, Biblical writings, or a person who has eaten impure food or washed in "drawn water" do not make ordinary food impure (but do make fluids impure). In heave-offerings there is a third degree of impurity (so that all of these things do make them impure), as it says "[He shall be unclean until evening and shall not eat of the sacred things unless he washes his flesh in water] and the sun shall set, and he shall [then] become pure and afterwards he shall eat of the sacred things, for it is his bread".3 In sacred things there is a fourth degree, as it says "And the flesh that touches any impure thing shall not be eaten".4 All non-sacred meat is regarded as being impure in the third degree.b

2 Lev. 11:33
3 Lev. 22:6-7
4 Lev. 7:19
b She'ar Avos ha-Tumos 11:2-5,7-8; see 13-15

Maybe the reference I was thinking of was about offerings? The Levitical reference is about how the kohen's share of an offering becomes tamei if it touches anything with any degree of impurity, and near it is a statement that anything touched by (the kohen's share of) an offering becomes holy.

I presume the final reference has something useful, but I'm not sure what the reference is (doesn't seem to be a Talmudic tractate).

Clearly I don't know enough yet to see why there's a problem....

Another aspect which is strange is: why a red heifer? What does that have to do with death? Immersion in water, OK, that makes sense. Being sprinkled with the ashes of a dead cow, ???

Also, to a certain extent, this law is the canonical "law which makes no sense". If Rashi and Rambam both agree that they have no idea what it means, who are we to say that we understand it completely?

I've heard of congregations where almost no one keeps Shabbat, but the rabbi is required by contract to do so because he's the rabbi.

Which brings to mind the old joke:
Q: What's the difference between Reform and Conservative?
A: Conservative Jews expect their rabbi to keep Kosher.

:-)

(Ok, smiley for the joke; frowny for the reality behind it...)

We're not supposed to just blindly follow, of course. We should monitor and, as necessary, question our leaders, because we need to have confidence in those who represent us. But maybe we should leave the actual judgement and punishment to God and the courts, while we focus on our own behavior.

Well put! It's like we're not the ones who have the ultimate power and responsibility to judge in that way, so we shouldn't feel an obligation to do so. But naturally I feel we do have an obligation to "judge" by voting a bad leader out of office when appropriate.

But naturally I feel we do have an obligation to "judge" by voting a bad leader out of office when appropriate.

Of course. That's a different kind of "judgement" (as I think you realize). We don't have the authority to punish (that would validate lynch mobs and the like), but we certainly have the authority to make changes. (I leave untouched the notion that the voted-out person may perceive that as "punishment". :-) )

We're told why Moshe dies out here, but not Aharon and Miriam. (Ok, when God tells Moshe about his fate he addresses Moshe and Aharon, but since Aharon didn't do anything I don't know what that means.)

In the original commandment to Moshe in Numbers 20:8, it says "v'dibartem el-ha-sela", "and y'all shall speak to the rock". So Aharon is just as culpable as Moshe for not speaking to the rock, and may also be culpable for not doing anything to cool Moshe down.

So the punishments for a sin of comission and a sin of omission are the same? I wonder to what extent that generalizes. On the one hand, "you shall not stand idly by the blood of your brother", but on the other hand, Tractate Sanhedrin's discussion of capital cases and culpability.

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Shabbat Chukat

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