Khukas and Mutual aid / חקת און אַנאַדיקע הילף

This is a weekly series

of parsha dvarim (Tōrah commentaries) written by a frum, atheist, transsexual anarchist. It's crucial in these times that we resist the narrative that Zionism owns Judaism. Our texts are rich—sometimes opaque, but absolutely teeming with wisdom and fierce debate. It's the work of each generation to extricate meaning from our cultural and religious inheritance. I aim to offer comment which is true to the pshat (i.e. engages with the plain meaning of the text, especially when it's difficult) and uses Tōrah like a light to reflect on our modern times.

This parsha is an important piece of my parnosa (income), and the full dvar is paywalled for four weeks to help me sustain my work as a writer. But it's important to me that anyone can access Yiddishkeyt—if you can't afford to subscribe, email me and I'll send you the link for free.

An appeal

My friend Kamal needs help to leave Gaza. He is trying to immigrate to Greece to search for his missing son, who in desperation took a small and dangerous lifeboat across the Mediterranean. Please donate what you can.

Content note

None :)

It's a meaty parsha.

The red heifer. Miriom dies. Mōshe strikes the rock and the waters of M'ribo flow forth. Ahrōn dies. Mōshe attempts to negotiate passage for the Israelites through foreign lands. The people complain about the food again and Hashem sends serpents which bite and kill the people until Mōshe intercedes by erecting a large pole with a copper serpent, ending the snake-plague. It ends with some victorious military battles.

The red heifer is an opaque ritual, impossible to conduct today without the Mishkon. But it shows us that we cannot carry the burden of Jewish ritual life alone. We need help.

The red heifer (אֲדֻמָּה תְּמִימָה)

is an umblemished, never-been-yoked red cow that is ritually slaughtered and burned. Its ashes are mixed with water to create the "water of lustration", which is used to re-purify people who are ritually impure. People can become impure through touching a corpse or any human remains, entering the house of the recently dead, going to the cemetery, or touching someone who is ritually impure. The water of lustration is "dashed" across them to reinstate a status of ritual purity that allows them to enter the Mishkon and participate in communal religious life.

But, slaughtering the red heifer and transporting the ashes—conducting the ritual which allows others to regain a status of ritual purity—makes you impure for the day.

Rashi says that the cow "should be perfect with respect to its redness — so that if there are two black hairs in it (or two of any color other than red) it is unfitted for the rite here described." Is a single black hair permissible?

This is one of those Jewish rituals that feels more like spell-casting than building community cohesion between between the Jews, or between the Jews and Hashem. We aren't given an explanation as to why this ritual restores us to purity because it isn't rooted in logic: it's a khuk (a divine statute) rather than a mishpot (law or ordinance). Mishpotim have reasoning we are intended to understand; khukim we do "because I said so".

We don't conduct this ritual today because we do not make burnt offerings without the Mishkon. But I am sure, dear reader, that there are many instances of you acting with a similar drive of altruism to help your community. When do you put aside your own needs in order to serve someone else's? Tōrah tells us that this is holy work. And, you cannot burn the red heifer for yourself. Other people must help you. We must prioritize the balance.

Please enjoy these beautiful William Blake paintings which depict other parts of the parsha: