Chukat - Numbers 19:1-22:1

This weeks reading is titled "Chukat", as in "laws".

And the the first law given is the law of the parah adumah, or the "red heifer", and how it's magic is supposed to work.

According to the text, this creature had certain magical properties that, unfortunate for her, only became available by killing her and burning her corpse until nothing was left but ash. And it were these ashes that had special powers to do...well, nothing, actually. At least not in the sense of anything observably measurable.

Tamai and tahor

According to the Torah, a Hebrew person can become tamai (often translated as "impure") as well as tahor ("usually translated as "pure"). These were two metaphysical categories that, Rabbinically,  only applied to the Hebrews, and could not be seen or measured. For example, a Hebrew walking over the grave of another Hebrew would immediately become tamai. This view has been taken to the extreme where some zealous Jewish men will buy special "anti-tamai bags to sit inside of while in a plane, which might fly over a grave.

From this we learn several things:

1. Tamai can extend miles int the air, and perhaps beyond this planet.
2. Special plastic bags which can stop this unseen force are more powerful than the material of the plane.
3. The more zealous you are, the more gullible you probably are.

The actual story about this fellow is interesting to read in that he was obediently following his Rabbi's orders. You can read the story at this link.

The laws about the ashes of the red heifer are this: if someone was tamai ("impure"), and he or she then performed the appropriate rituals, and if these ashes were sprinkled upon the afflicted person, then the person would no longer be tamai, but would become tahor. On the other hand, if a person, such as the priest, was tahor when touching the ashes, then he would become tamai.

I explain this process as well as tahor and tamai in greater detail at this other post.

Logically, we can see this as a form of "the emperor has no clothes". You cannot measure if someone is tamai in most cases, and one can unknowingly be in this state. And furthermore, it is impossible to become tahor without this special ash, which is why Jews who believe that they are descended from Aaron, avoid graves because they can never be tahor again, and only a tahor priest, one who cannot be verified to be tahor, can slaughter and burn the red heifer, if and when it is ever found.

So you can see the quandary that these people are in.

Now if they can only find that special red heifer!

And here's the rub - they may never do so. And this is not because a biblically mandated baby cow that is red will never be born, but because one will not meet the definition of a parah adumah as defined in halacah, Rabbinical definitions of the law.

Remember, the Rabbis who made up all of the descriptions and rules and the minutia about the red heifer never saw one themselves.

They might have seen a biblically acceptable one, but they wouldn't have known that.

How could this happen?

It's because of how halachah works within "Torah observant" Judaism.

To understand this, I want to also explain two other halachically affected commandments.

Ritual Circumcision

It is important that you know that the form of ritual circumcision done today, that which is halachically accepted, is only about 1900 years old. (I explain all about the in this other post). Prior to that, the crown, or edge, of the foreskin was cut away, leaving most of the foreskin and all of the glands and membranes beneath it intact. This was referred to as brit milah. The later form that was instituted by the Rabbis is brit periah, and the entire foreskin is removed and the glands/membrane beneath it is scraped away. People incorrectly refer to this replacement form as brit milah, but it isn;t. Even so, this is the only halachically permissible form of circumcision permitted. Anything else is not considered "kosher", or "fit".

Etrogs

In the celebration of Sukkot (aka "Festival of the Booths"), one is required to acquire and shake a fruit that is hadar, meaning, beautiful. Today, the only halachically permissible fruit is the etrog, which is not native to the land of Israel! In the context of the Torah commandment, it appears that it is supposed to be a fruit from the land where the Jews were to reside. But is wasn't until the Roman occupiers brought etrog trees from their homeland to Israel, perhaps to use the fruit as offerings to their Gods, that this fruit became available. The Rabbis, for some reason, love this fruit and declared it is the fruit that the Torah commanded the Jews to shake on the holiday, even though these fruits were unknown during the time of the writings.

Red Heifers

And this brings us to red heifers. 

As you can see, it doesn't matter what the writers of Scripture were thinking when they wrote about a red heifer. To the "Torah observant" Jew, what matters is what the later Rabbinical leadership declared as being the correct view, the halachic view. It is forbidden for such people to step outside of halachah when it comes to these this things. There are many books, full of minutia, on what is a kosher brit and what is a kosher etrog. And, of course, what is a kosher para adumah. And it doesn't matter if the Rabbis were right, because they cannot be wrong.

And that brings us to the problem of the red heifer. Do a search on YouTube and you will see people proclaiming that the found one, year after year. And they often have a Rabbi with a magnifying glass inspecting every single hair. What they don't show you is that the Rabbi will look up and shake his head, "no".

Rabbinically, there cannot be a single spot of non-red on the heifer.There cannot be a spot where hair is missing. No blemish of any kind. If a single hair is not red, the entire cow is not kosher. And this is just the beginning!

No farmer is likely to ever produce a calf that will meet the criteria of the Rabbis, one that is perfectly red from the tip of her nose to the tips of her hoofs. One Christian in the USA had been cross-breeding Red Angus cows specifically for that purpose, and every time a representative from the Temple Institute in Jerusalem, a group committed to recreating the objects needed to create a Third Temple, travels to inspect the latest claim, he returns home disappointed.

Now one way to force it to work is to lower the standards of the Rabbis, as the Temple Institute did when it commissioned a "pure" gold menorah to be built, just as the Torah describes it. 

A menorah for a non-existing Temple is one thing, but to create ashes that would completely change halacha is something else, and it is unlikely that the Rabbis will ever lower the bar on that one. One such suggestion was, "The Ancient people, when they wrote "red" also meant "brown" as well!" But the Rabbis aren't going with that one.

And it doesn't matter, because the halachah has already been written. Just as bee-honey is kosher because, even though a bee is not kosher, the Rabbis erred in saying that the honey was produced from outside of the bee, and nothing from the inside of the be was introduced. Even though this is an error, the halachah stands. It is permitted to kill kinim (head lice) on the Sabbath only because the ancient sages ruled that since that were not born from eggs, but spontaneously were created from the air, that killing them was allowed. And even though they were incorrect, the halachah stands.

Summary

There can never be a Third Temple without a red heifer. And based on how the Rabbis transformed their requirements to be greater than the Scriptural requirements, there should be nothing to worry about - the bar for the perfect red heifer was raised extremely high a long time ago. And the inability to create the perfect red female calf is a reflection of most laws of the Torah that were rewritten by the leadership a long time ago.

And besides, to create a cure for something that cannot be objectively measured is a bit odd. And because it makes no sense, it is called a "chok", a law that only God understands, and because it is not understood, the claim follows that this is evidence that it must have come from God.