We are in the midst of a series of special shabbatot. Yes, all shabbats are special—a chance to feel rested at the end of a week of putting pressure on ourselves—but we have a few special shabbatot over the course of the year, concentrated especially in anticipation of passover, which facilitate a sort of spiritual preparedness through engagement with special parshiot, special portions of the Torah. On these special shabbatot, we jump out of order from the normal, week-by-week, chronological march from the beginning of genesis and the creation of the world through the end of deuteronomy, with the Israelites on the precipice of reaching the promised land.
This week is Shabbat Parah—the Shabbat of, yes, the cow. And not just any cow, the parah adumah—the red cow, which God commands the Israelites to slaughter, to burn up, and to turn into mei nidah—water of lustration, water of ceremonial washing—to use for purification of anyone who has become impure through contact with a the dead.
If your response to this is “huh?”, you and even the sagest of ancient rabbis.
This ritual, which we read about in anticipation of Passover, first in ancient times so people would remember to purify themselves before they made the annual pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem, and then in post-temple times, so they would remember to purify their homes of chametz, of leavening before the holiday—is what’s known the paradigmatic example for the rabbis of chok — a law, a mitzvah, a commandment, that defies rational explanation.
That is, there are some mitzvot in Judaism which are morally intuitive—thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not murder, love thy neighbor as thyself; there are countless mitzvot in Jewish tradition which we would immediately recognize as advancing some sort of ethical good, some sort of moral good, and that therefore, the modern Jew might say, “even if I don’t believe in a God who commands these actions—which I might not—still I think these are mitzvot/commandments that worthy of being followed.”
Of course, there are many other mitzvot, which, were they not conjured up in Jewish tradition, we might never find ourselves even fathoming them. “Take two boxes of leather, filled with parchment scrolls and strap them on your arm and head;” “do not wear cloth consisting of wool and linen that has been twisted together.” “Once you’ve eaten meat, you need to wait at least three hours before eating dairy.”
In wrestling with this latter category of mitzvot, the rabbis often lifted up parah adumah, the ritual of the red cow as being the classic example of a mitzvah that seems to defy reason. Even King Solomon, known the world over for his wisdom is depicted in a midrash, a rabbinic expansion on the text, as saying:
עַל כָּל אֵלֶּה עָמַדְתִּי וּפָרָשָׁה שֶׁל פָּרָה אֲדֻמָּה חָקַרְתִּי וְשָׁאַלְתִּי וּפִשְׁפַּשְׁתִּי. “About all of the word of God I have knowledge; but in the case of the parsha on the red heifer, I have investigated it, inquired into it, and examined it. I thought I could fathom it, but it eludes me.’”
So what do we do in Jewish tradition when we encounter mitzvot, calls to action that seem to offer no intuitive reason, no rational reason for doing them?
In some ways, that’s the dilemma of the modern Jew. The mitzvot that do have a rational basis, we do anyway, or at least we aspire to, treating others with the kindness and decency they deserve. We and everybody else does them, not just Jews. But why perform the other mitzvot, the ones that have no empirical cause and effect; no apparent moral basis? What’s the case for still engaging with them?
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel struggled with the question this way: “The modern Jew cannot accept the way of static obedience as a short-cut to the mystery of the divine will.” That is, we don’t just do stuff because an old book tells us to. He continues, “[The modern Jew’s] religious situation is not conducive to an attitude of intellectual or spiritual surrender. He is not ready to sacrifice his liberty on the altar of loyalty to the spirit of his ancestors. He will only respond to a demonstration that there is meaning to be found in what we expect him to do.”
We need someone to demonstrate something’s meaning before we’re willing to do it.
And yet, he suggests, that’s going to miss much of the melody that comes from living in concert with Jewish tradition.
Not in exactitude of Jewish law. He suggests there are ways in which Jewish law has been expanded so much as to eclipse any rhythm we’re trying to be in tune with—a classic example of missing the forest for the trees. There are ways in which the expansion of detail—building a fence, around a fence around a fence—can so distance us from the core of what the tradition has to offer that we throw all of it out.
At the same time, he suggests, if everything needs to have an immediately discernible rationale behind it, we’re going to miss out on so much of what is sacred in Judaism.
When you’re talking about ethics, he suggests, sure, there, you are trying to figure out what is rationally justifiable. But, he says, when you’re talking about religion, the question is “what is the ideal or principle of living that is spiritually justifiable?” That is, can spiritual meaning be found in the mitzvah in the commandment.
What is spiritually meaningful?
Well here Heschel says, “Religion is not within but beyond the limits of mere reason. Religion’s task is not to compete with reason, to be a source of speculative ideas, but to aid us where reason gives us only partial aid. Its meaning must be understood in terms compatible with,” what he calls “the sense of the ineffable. Frequently where concepts fail, where rational understanding ends, the meaning of observance begins.”
He compares a mitzvah, lighting shabbat candles, blowing the shofar, finding some way to acknowledge kashrut, keeping kosher, even if not like an orthodox rabbi, he compares all these actions, in a sense, to works of art. “They are functional, they serve a purpose,” — sure, art has an effect “but their essence is intrinsic, their value is in what they are in themselves.”
Fundamentally, he says, they are a pathway to a connection with God. And, might I add, I feel that way, even if we don’t feel that God literally commanded them. Let me say what I mean. Heschel writes, “The Divine sings in our deeds, the Divine is disclosed in our deeds. In exposing our lives to God we discover the Divine within ourselves and its accord with the Divine beyond ourselves. If at the moment of doing a mitzvah…, you are in it with all your heart and with all your soul, there is no great distance between you and God. For acts of holiness uttered by the soul disclose the holiness of God hidden in every moment of time.”
Regardless of whether we believe that God literally commanded these various actions, when the proper intent is brought to them they serve as opportunities to live in harmony with whatever we understand the source of existence to be.
We commonly say that Judaism is not so much a religion of faith, but a religion of action. This is demonstrably true when we look at history. Christianity is a creedal religion. Its foundational decisions were about the nature of God, the nature of Jesus, are they one, are they separate? They would have synods, conventions to formulate a particular statement of faith. In Judaism, far more ink is spilled on the question of actions. From what time in the evening can we start saying the shema; do we light the candles on the hanukkah menorah beginning with the first candle or the eighth candle, do kitniyot, do legumes count as chametz, as leavening during pesach. This isn’t to say one—action or faith— is better than the other. Just to say that for Jews, much of the spiritual rhythm comes about through an understanding that even if there seems to be an arbitrariness to some of the minutiae of Jewish actions, that we place our faith and our spirit in carrying out those actions as a means of “disclosing the holiness of god.” These actions, even if, on their face seem to have an arbitrariness to them, have the capacity to serve as vessels in which we facilitate a meeting point between us and God.
Even if human beings constructed these invisible vessels, the act of lighting shabbat candles—even if a rabbi centuries ago invented the act of lighting shabbat candles—they have been created for us and passed down to us with an energy, and an opportunity to facilitate communal connection, countless others taking on the same practice, that can allows to try to place our hearts in concert with the Divine. These ritual actions provide a space, an arena for the spirit to unfurl itself, to take up from its pent up place inside the self and unspool and stretch out in the ways it intrinsically needs to.
The ritual of the parah adumah, like the ritual of cleansing the house of chametz thousands of years later, may not have a rational basis, but like generations of Jews before us, they provide us with the opportunity to operate in tune with the divine, whatever that might mean for us. I think even Solomon could get behind that.
