Weekly Dvar - Death's Challenge To Life

Chukas
(Numbers 19:1-22:1)

GOOD AFTERNOON!! I’m a simple Rabbi, so perhaps someone out there can explain to me the rationale of those rioting in Greece – if there is a rationale. The country is massively in debt, facing the prospect of national default – and yet people are fighting against the government spending less money?! I understand that on a personal level people don’t want to cut their standard of living, but is the issue really just about human selfishness and irresponsibility or is there more to it also? Thanks if someone has ideas.
 
Torah Portion

The portion begins with the ritual of the red heifer – an offering brought to help atone for the spiritual impurity associated with a dead body. Although challenging to understand, it is not un-understandable per se. The ritual is replete with meaning – but beyond the scope of this davar.
 
Miriam dies and there is no water. The Jews immediately revert to character and begin to complain. Moses brings water from a rock, but in doing so, his subtle, but significant, mistake is responded to with the decree that he may not enter the land of Canaan. The Jewish people complain now about the mannah. (Only Jews could possibly complain about food that tasted like anything you wanted it to and arrived on your doorstep daily in exact portions!) Snakes attack the camp, but are warded off by Moses’ timely intervention. Aaron dies and the Jewish people are set upon by various nations who they defeat. Just to point out that not a single time in the Torah do the Jewish people initiate a fight.

Davar Torah

This week’s portion begins with the red heifer. It is a ritual purification process that the Torah requires when a person has come into contact with a dead body. And the Torah makes a very big deal about it.
 
The truth is that death is a big deal to all of us. It’s that inevitable, unavoidable end to our existence that minimally lurks ominously in the background and maximally looms large and terrifyingly on the horizon. Every so often it pops to the forefront of our minds – most especially when we come into direct contact with it, such as when around a dead body.
 
Death is not something we are ever ambivalent about. Interestingly, however, there is a very broad range of emotion that it can awaken within us – opposite extremes. On the one hand, death can make us feel depressed. It makes us scared of our own future demise; it makes us feel what’s the point of it all; it makes us feel that the world is a scary and miserable place. That’s one possibility. But on the other hand, death can also make us feel very differently. Whenever I visit a graveyard I leave feeling very motivated. Invariably I will look at the graves and remember that one day my body will be in one of them. Then I look at the gravestones and I wonder what will be written on mine. It reminds me that life is short and time is very precious; I feel genuinely eager to use the few years that I am blessed with to accomplish something meaningful.
 
Coming into contact with death can make us feel motivated and eager, or it can make us feel depressed and disinterested in life.
 
Part of the ritual of the red heifer uses the branch of a cedar tree and the branch of hyssop. The cedar tree is amongst the tallest of trees and the hyssop amongst the smallest of bushes. In my mind, there is a message – we have time enough in our lives to build great cedar trees. But equally, we can give up and leave this world with lowly hyssops. We have the choice.
 
And so when a person comes into contact with death, the Torah sets out a ritual to help ensure that his response looks in the direction of cedar trees and not hyssops. Death reminds us that life is short. The ritual of the red heifer helps us remember that that’s a good thing – a great motivator. If we choose to make use of our time, there are very few limits to what we can genuinely accomplish.

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Shaul Rosenblatt

 

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