Numbers 19:1–22:1
This week's commentary was written by Dr. Barry W. Holtz, dean of the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education and the Theodore and Florence Baumritter Professor of Jewish Education, JTS
This week's Torah reading opens with one of the most mysterious and incomprehensible rituals in the entire Bible. Numbers 19:1–22 describes the ritual of the red heifer—the complex practice that allows a person who has come in contact with a dead body to become "purified" of the contamination (tu'mah) that accompanies connection to those who have died. A red heifer is slaughtered, its body and blood are burned in a fire with certain woods and plants, and the ashes that remain after that burning are used in a mixture with water to create a kind of paste that is sprinkled on those who have come in contact with a corpse. The sprinkling of this "water of lustration" (in the New Jewish Publication Society translation) allows the contaminated person to return to the community freed from the tu'mah related to contact with the dead. Adding to the mystery is the fact that those who are impure become purified, but those who are already pure and then come in contact with the ashes of the heifer become impure (Num. 19:10).
This passage in the Torah has troubled interpreters throughout the ages, going back to the earliest figures of rabbinic Judaism. There is, for example, a famous story (Numbers Rabbah 19:8) about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai (the great Sage who lived around the time of the destruction of the Second Temple), who was asked by a pagan about the ritual of the red heifer. Isn't this a form of witchcraft, the pagan remarked? Yohanan replied that in fact it is something very much familiar to the pagan himself: it is a kind of Jewish version of an exorcism ritual. Yohanan's explanation satisfied the pagan, but once the pagan left, Yohanan's students pressed him further: "Master, you brushed him off with a piece of straw! But what are you going to say to us?!" Yohanan answered them: "It is not the dead that defiles nor the water that purifies! The Holy One, blessed be He, says: 'I have laid down a statute (hukkah), I have issued a decree. You are not allowed to transgress my decree'; as it is written: 'This is the ritual law (hukkat ha Torah) that the Lord has commanded'" (Num. 19:2).
Continue reading.
This week's commentary was written by Dr. Barry W. Holtz, dean of the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education and the Theodore and Florence Baumritter Professor of Jewish Education, JTS
This week's Torah reading opens with one of the most mysterious and incomprehensible rituals in the entire Bible. Numbers 19:1–22 describes the ritual of the red heifer—the complex practice that allows a person who has come in contact with a dead body to become "purified" of the contamination (tu'mah) that accompanies connection to those who have died. A red heifer is slaughtered, its body and blood are burned in a fire with certain woods and plants, and the ashes that remain after that burning are used in a mixture with water to create a kind of paste that is sprinkled on those who have come in contact with a corpse. The sprinkling of this "water of lustration" (in the New Jewish Publication Society translation) allows the contaminated person to return to the community freed from the tu'mah related to contact with the dead. Adding to the mystery is the fact that those who are impure become purified, but those who are already pure and then come in contact with the ashes of the heifer become impure (Num. 19:10).
This passage in the Torah has troubled interpreters throughout the ages, going back to the earliest figures of rabbinic Judaism. There is, for example, a famous story (Numbers Rabbah 19:8) about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai (the great Sage who lived around the time of the destruction of the Second Temple), who was asked by a pagan about the ritual of the red heifer. Isn't this a form of witchcraft, the pagan remarked? Yohanan replied that in fact it is something very much familiar to the pagan himself: it is a kind of Jewish version of an exorcism ritual. Yohanan's explanation satisfied the pagan, but once the pagan left, Yohanan's students pressed him further: "Master, you brushed him off with a piece of straw! But what are you going to say to us?!" Yohanan answered them: "It is not the dead that defiles nor the water that purifies! The Holy One, blessed be He, says: 'I have laid down a statute (hukkah), I have issued a decree. You are not allowed to transgress my decree'; as it is written: 'This is the ritual law (hukkat ha Torah) that the Lord has commanded'" (Num. 19:2).
Continue reading.
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