This Shall Be a Law for All Time Central Synagogue Text Study for Parashat Chukkat June 27 2017 / 4 Tammuz 5777

(2) This is the ritual law [or: law of Torah] that the LORD has commanded: Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid. (3) You shall give it to Eleazar the priest. It shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence. (4) Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting. (5) The cow shall be burned in his sight—its hide, flesh, and blood shall be burned, its dung included— (6) and the priest shall take cedar wood, hyssop, and crimson stuff, and throw them into the fire consuming the cow. (7) The priest shall wash his garments and bathe his body in water; after that the priest may reenter the camp, but he shall be unclean until evening. (8) He who performed the burning shall also wash his garments in water, bathe his body in water, and be unclean until evening. (9) A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the cow and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, to be kept for water of lustration for the Israelite community. It is for cleansing. (10) He who gathers up the ashes of the cow shall also wash his clothes and be unclean until evening. This shall be a permanent law for the Israelites and for the strangers who reside among you. (11) He who touches the corpse of any human being shall be unclean for seven days. (12) He shall cleanse himself with it on the third day and on the seventh day, and then be clean; if he fails to cleanse himself on the third and seventh days, he shall not be clean. (13) Whoever touches a corpse, the body of a person who has died, and does not cleanse himself, defiles the LORD’s Tabernacle; that person shall be cut off from Israel. Since the water of lustration was not dashed on him, he remains unclean; his uncleanness is still upon him. (14) This is the ritual: When a person dies in a tent, whoever enters the tent and whoever is in the tent shall be unclean seven days; (15) and every open vessel, with no lid fastened down, shall be unclean. (16) And in the open, anyone who touches a person who was killed or who died naturally, or human bone, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days. (17) Some of the ashes from the fire of cleansing shall be taken for the unclean person, and fresh water shall be added to them in a vessel. (18) A person who is clean shall take hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle on the tent and on all the vessels and people who were there, or on him who touched the bones or the person who was killed or died naturally or the grave. (19) The clean person shall sprinkle it upon the unclean person on the third day and on the seventh day, thus cleansing him by the seventh day. He shall then wash his clothes and bathe in water, and at nightfall he shall be clean. (20) If anyone who has become unclean fails to cleanse himself, that person shall be cut off from the congregation, for he has defiled the LORD’s sanctuary. The water of lustration was not dashed on him: he is unclean. (21) That shall be for them a law for all time. Further, he who sprinkled the water of lustration shall wash his clothes; and whoever touches the water of lustration shall be unclean until evening. (22) Whatever that unclean person touches shall be unclean; and the person who touches him shall be unclean until evening.

(8) A gentile asked Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, "These rituals you do, they seem like witchcraft! You bring a heifer, burn it, crush it up, and take its ashes. [If] one of you is impure by the dead [the highest type impurity], 2 or 3 drops are sprinkled on him, and you declare him pure?!" He said to him, "Has a restless spirit ever entered you?" He said to him, "No!" "Have you ever seen a man where a restless spirit entered him?" He said to him, "Yes!" [Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai] said to him, "And what did you do for him?" He said to him, "We brought roots and made them smoke beneath him, and poured water and it fled." He said to him, "Your ears should hear what leaves your mouth! The same thing is true for this spirit, the spirit of impurity, as it is written, (Zachariah 13:2) "Even the prophets and the spirit of impurity will I remove from the land." They sprinkle upon him purifying waters, and it [the spirit of impurity] flees." After he left, our rabbi's students said, "You pushed him off with a reed. What will you say to us?" He said to them, "By your lives, a dead person doesn't make things impure, and the water doesn't make things pure. Rather, God said, 'I have engraved a rule, I have decreed a decree (chukah chakakti, gezeira gazarti), and you have no permission to transgress what I decreed, as it says "This is a chok (rule) of the Torah."

The commandment of the Red Heifer - That Israel is commanded to burn the red heifer, so that its ashes are prepared for those that need it, and to purify those defiled by contact with a dead body... Even though my heart was filled to write the connotations of the reasons for the commandment that are foremost through peshat, with this being successful in the work of educating my children and his youth friends to keep this mitzvah, my hands became weak, and I became afraid to open my mouth about it at all, even about peshat, for I saw that our rabbis, their memory be a blessing, spoke at length in the depths of its secrets and the vastness of its points, to the point that they said that King Solomon understood, with all his vast wisdom, all the reasons for the mitzvot, except for this one, as he said about it, (Ecclesiastes 7:23) "I said, I will understand, and it was distant from me."...

Mishna: If one [in prayer] says, "Your mercy reaches to the bird's nest", "Your name should be remembered for the good things," or "We acknowledge, We acknowledge ", he is silenced.

Gemara: ... "Your mercy reaches to the bird's nest" - Why [is it forbidden to say]? Two amaraim argued in the West, one Rabbi Yossi Bar Avin, the other Rabbi Yossi bar Zvida. One said, "Because it places jealousy into the natural world [that God only has mercy for the bird]." The other one said, "Because he presents the measures taken by the Holy One, blessed be He, as springing from compassion, whereas they are but decrees."

One who says in his supplicatory prayers: "May He who showed mercy on a bird's nest prohibiting the taking of the mother together with the chicks, or the slaughter of an animal and its calf on the same day, also show mercy on us," or [makes other] similar statements should be silenced, because these mitzvot are God's decrees and not of mercy. Were they of mercy, He would not permit us to slaughter at all.

(1) The LORD said to Moses: Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: None shall defile himself for any [dead] person among his kin,

(22) They shall not marry widows or divorced women; they may marry only virgins of the stock of the House of Israel, or widows who are widows of priests. (23) They shall declare to My people what is sacred and what is profane, and inform them what is clean and what is unclean. (24) In lawsuits, too, it is they who shall act as judges; they shall decide them in accordance with My rules. They shall preserve My teachings and My laws regarding all My fixed occasions; and they shall maintain the sanctity of My sabbaths. (25) [A priest] shall not defile himself by entering [a house] where there is a dead person. He shall defile himself only for father or mother, son or daughter, brother or unmarried sister.