Or HaChaim on Numbers 19:2/אור החיים על במדבר י״ט:ב׳

1 זאת חקת התורה, This is the statute of the Torah, etc. Why did the Torah call this single commandment "Torah?" The Torah should have written simply: זאת חקה, וגו "this is a statute, etc." Alternatively, the commandment could have commenced with the words: "this is the law of ritual impurity, etc." We have such examples in Exodus 12,43 where the Torah wrote: זאת חקת הפסח וגו. We cannot answer the question we raised by saying that the Torah wanted to tell us that in order to be able to study Torah one first had to purify oneself with the ash of the red heifer. This is not only not so, but we have learned in Berachot 22 that "words of Torah are not susceptible to ritual impurity at all." All the opinions offered in the Talmud, including the ones that are most stringent when it comes to the purification rites needed for people who have experienced seminal discharges, agree that it is permissible for people who are ritually impure due to contact with the dead to study Torah while in that state of ritual impurity.

2We may be able to answer our question by referring to something we have learned in Nazir 61 and which has been ruled on by Maimonides in the first chapter of his treatise on Tumat Met. It is stated there that the concept of ritual purity originating from a dead body and conferring ritual impurity does not apply to the type of Gentile known in the Talmud as a Kuti. Here is the wording of Maimonides' ruling: "If a Kuti touches a dead body or carries same or forms a tent over such a dead body it is as if he had never touched the dead body. The situation is analogous to an animal having touched a dead body. Just as the animal does not become ritually impure thereby, neither does the Kuti." Thus far Maimonides. The Jewish people have been elevated above other nations in that they have received the Torah without which the Jews would not be different from any other nation. The wording of our verse then reminds us of the distinction of the Jewish people in that contact with the dead confers ritual impurity on a people who have been given the Torah. Lesser spirits yearn to attach themselves to the Jewish people inasmuch as the latter represent a high level of spirituality not only while alive but even while they are dead. The sanctity Jews experience during their lives is evident due to the fact that contact with the dead, or even being under the same roof with a dead body confers ritual impurity on the bodies of living Jews. This reflects how the Gentiles even while dead aspire to attach themselves to Jews, somehow. Were it not for the power of the ash of the red heifer with which this legislative act of the Torah has endowed us to help counteract the pull of the impurity associated with a dead body, we would not be able to shake off this attachment by the spiritual residue of the dead.

3I have already illustrated this relationship between Israel and ritual impurity by means of a parable. Let us assume that we have two containers inside a house, one full of honey, the other full of refuse. If you take both these containers outside it will be observed that the container full of honey attracts swarms of flies whereas the number of flies which are attracted to the container full of refuse is insignificant by comparison. Similarly, when a Jew dies, the fact that he was full of holiness while alive -i.e. sweet as honey,- now attracts all kinds of spiritually negative elements seeing the soul has departed from that body. These are the forces of impurity which always attempt to attach themselves to anything sacred as they wish to benefit from the physical sweetness of holiness. This is the reason that the body of a dead Jew confers impurity on any other Jew who is under the same roof. This is so even if 1000 houses attached to each other surround the room in which the dead body is kept. As long as one door opens into those houses the impurity is spread throughout the airspace in all these houses. The same does not occur if the dead body is not that of a Jew. This is because the Gentile never possessed holiness while alive so that the spiritually negative elements have no reason to think they would benefit by attaching themselves to it. The body of a dead Gentile confers ritual impurity on a Jew only if the Jew touches it, etc., not if he merely shares the same roofed-over airspace with it. The only impurity which does cling to the body of a dead Gentile is that which is capable of killing on contact. The root cause for all these rules is the Torah (which was given to the Jewish people).

4With the help of this explanation I have been able to understand why G'd was so particular about only two aspects of the Passover legislation in Egypt. The first aspect is G'd's insistence that only Jews who had been circumcised were allowed to offer and eat the Passover lamb. Our sages in Shemot Rabbah 17,3 understand Ezekiel 16,6 and 8 as referring to the blood of circumcision and the blood of the Passover sacrifice respectively. The second aspect G'd was so concerned with at the time was the prohibition of a בן נכר (normally translated as a Gentile) eating from that sacrifice. The sages in Shemot Rabbah 16,3 explain Exodus 12,21 משכו וקחו לכם צאן, "draw out and take for yourselves lambs, etc." to refer to people who had withdrawn from worshiping idols. The visible evidence of abandoning idol worship consisted of slaughtering the very animal which served the Egyptians as a major deity. When a Jew did this he ceased to be a בן נכר, a Gentile. It is strange that the third major stricture which the Torah warned the Jews of regarding the observance of the Passover ritual, namely, that it must not be eaten by people who are ritually impure did not feature in the legislation as it applied to the Jews in Egypt. Why did G'd not care about this at that time? It is true, of course, as you are all aware, that if the majority of the Jewish people were to find themselves in a state of ritual impurity due to contact with the dead the rule about eating the Passover while in a state of impurity is relaxed, as we know from Pessachim 67. Nonetheless, G'd could have at least commanded that the Jews in Egypt should endeavour to be ritually pure before eating the Passover? Moses could have prepared the ash of a red heifer to facilitate the process of a Jew cleansing himself of such impurity! Even the whole Passover legislation for future observance as detailed in Exodus 12,42-49 does not mention the need to be ritually pure! While one can come up with various excuses as to why ritual purity inside Egypt was not feasible, the Torah should have at least mentioned this as part of the requirements for the Passover observance forthwith! When you reflect on what we have written above you will find that there was a perfectly good reason why the Torah ignored the requirement of ritual purity in Exodus. The Israelites did not need to purify themselves because they had not been defiled through contact with the dead in the first place. As long as they had not been Jews in the legal sense of the word, i.e. through circumcision and the affirmation of their monotheism through the act of slaughtering an Egyptian deity, i.e. the lamb, they were no better than the Kutim discussed in Nazir 61 and the rule laid down for who is subject to such ritual impurity by Maimonides. As long as the Israelites had not received the Torah they would not contract ritual impurity even after they had circumcised themselves and prepared the Passover lamb for ritual slaughter. Moreover, even assuming that Jews could contract ritual impurity as soon as they had converted by circumcision and the denial of idol worship, such a conversion took place only on the 14th of Nissan as they prepared to slaughter the lamb. Any so-called ritual impurity which was contracted before that date would be automatically cancelled as it had been contracted by a different person, a Gentile instead of a Jew. Even nowadays, if a Gentile converts on the 14th of Nissan, any impurity he had contracted prior to that date is ignored for the purpose of including him in the people who may eat of the Passover, provided he meets all the other requirements. Having written this we are faced with the problem mentioned in Pessachim 92 where it states that a proselyte who converted on the 14th of Nissan may not participate in that year's Passover although he had ritually immersed himself [a requirement for all proselytes. Ed.], the reason being that in the event he would be impure due to contact with the dead in the following year he would think that all he had to do was to immerse himself in a ritual bath. Maimonides also rules this way in chapter 6 of his Hilchot Pessach. The reason both the Talmud and Maimonides had to explain the reason for this prohibition teaches that in actual fact such a proselyte had not been ritually impure at all at the time of his conversion. The same applied to the Jews in Egypt. This then is the meaning of the Torah writing זאת חקת התורה.

5On a moral/ethical plane we may see in the words חקת התורה a message telling us that whosoever observes this commandment although it is labelled as a statute lacking rationale, is considered as if he had observed the whole range of commandments contained in the Torah. The reason is that when we observe a commandment which is completely beyond our understanding this is equivalent to a declaration of faith in G'd and in His Torah. It is as if one declared one's preparedness to observe all the commandments given the opportunity to do so. Who knows if G'd did not present this commandment as a חקה in order to enable us to make such a declaration by means of observing it.

6אשר צוה ה׳ לאמר, which G'd commanded to convey. Why was this half-sentence necessary at all? We have already learned from verse one that G'd was the One Who instructed Moses and Aaron to convey this commandment to the Israelites! Besides, why did the Torah employ the third person i.e. אשר צוה instead of the usual אשר אנכי מצוך, "which I command you, etc.?" Why did the Torah have to repeat the word לאמר once more in our verse? The Torah already wrote לאמר in verse one! We must also analyse why the words דבר אל בני ישראל do not appear at the very beginning of our verse instead of after the words זאת חקת התורה.

7Most commandments are either based on reason or on traditions which have to be symbolised. The author calls the former מצות שכליות and the latter מצות שמעיות. An example of the former is the commandment to honour father and mother, whereas the commandment to rest on the seventh day is an example of the latter. Observance of the Sabbath is a symbolic form of acknowledging that G'd rested on that day when He created the universe. We observe certain festivals as commemorations of miracles which the Jewish people experienced on those dates. We do not worship idols to testify that G'd is our deity, that He took us out of Egypt. The examples mentioned are, however, only the apparent, i.e. the visible reason for those commandments. There is not a single commandment that does not contain mystical dimensions, unknown to most people but whose meaning had been revealed to Moses. It behooves each one of us to acquire as much insight into the meaning of the Torah as the 48 methods described in the last chapter of "Ethics of our Fathers" have revealed to us. If one pursues Torah study by taking advantage of all the various tools mentioned there one will be able to gain insights similar to those that G'd revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai and which Moses in turn communicated to the Jewish people. The members of Moses' generation were informed about all the mystical dimensions of the various commandments.

8In our instance, G'd decided to legislate a commandment which did not fit either of the two categories we mentioned before. He decided to withhold the reasons which prompted Him to formulate this legislation. The first time the Torah writes the word לאמר in verse one was to tell Moses to convey this commandment without elaborating on its meaning. This is why the Torah told Moses to say "זאת חקת התורה" as if to say: "do not ask me any questions about the meaning of this law." The second time the Torah writes אשר צוה ה׳ לאמר is equivalent to Moses telling the people: "this is all I am allowed to tell you." He implied that he himself had received further insights into the meaning of this law although he had to keep this a secret.

9This solves all the questions we had posed about the peculiar wording employed here. It explains why the commandment did not commence with the words דבר אל בני ישראל before saying זאת חקת התורה. The reason was that these words were precisely what made this commandment different from all the other commandments which Moses was meant not merely to convey to the people but also to explain to them. The word דבר referred to the substance of the commandment to be conveyed to the Israelites. The Israelites might counter that anyone who observes a commandment without knowing both the visible and the hidden reason for that commandment was like a person performing a commandment which had a body but no soul. In order to counter such an argument the Torah wrote דבר אל בני ישראל ויקחו אליך פרה אדומה, "they shall perform the commandment because you know the reason behind it." The Torah meant that seeing that Moses was familiar with even the hidden reason for this commandment the people could observe it in a perfect manner although G'd had not taken them into His confidence in this instance. When looking at the paragraph in this way we can even understand the conjunctive letter ו at the beginning of the word ויקחו. It means that in addition to the actual taking of the red heifer the people should be conscious at that time that Moses was aware of the reason for this commandment.

10One could have reasoned that granted that there was a reason for the red heifer of the generation Moses led in the desert not to have been revealed; what was the situation with the red heifers during all subsequent generations? It is possible that G'd had not withheld the meaning from everybody but had revealed it to selected individuals in each generation such as to Aaron. It is reasonable to assume that such selected individuals in turn would reveal it to selected individuals of the next generation. Alternatively, the Torah expects that all successive generations have to be content with the fact that Moses had known the meaning of this commandment. I have found a comment in Midrash Rabbah according to which the words ויקחו אליך mean that all future red heifers would be named as the "red heifer of Moses." We have to understand why G'd departed from His custom when He formulated this commandment. When you review our explanation you will come to the conclusion that the verses make good sense without recourse to any other commentaries.

11You may also look at our text in light of the Midrash Rabbah where it is claimed that the Gentile nations would approach Israel demanding to know the rationale of this commandment. The Torah said זאת חקת התורה in order for the Israelites to be able to respond to the enquiries of the Gentiles by pointing out that the nature of this legislation is such that we cannot explain it. We do not make an attempt to second guess G'd on the subject or to question it and by inference doubt Him. If we accept the Midrash, Moses was permitted to reveal his insights to the people on the understanding that the people in turn would keep their secret and not reveal it to the Gentiles even under provocation.

12פרה אדומה, a red heifer, etc. I believe that all the details described by the Torah here are references to a variety of rules to be observed in connection with this red heifer. 1) אדומה; this is a reference to the ascendancy of the attribute of Justice; (a reminder of blood) 2) תמימה; it must not have black hair. We have learned in Parah 2 that two black hairs disqualify a red heifer from being used as such. Not only must it not have black hairs, but even the horns and the hooves must be coloured red. The colour black, and most certainly the colour white, disqualify such a heifer. 3) אשר לא עלה עליה עול, "upon which there never has been a yoke." The yoke reduces the impact of the power of the attribute of Justice. This is the mystical dimension of Berachot 5 that if a person experiences afflictions this cleanses away all the sins of a person. In other words, afflictions are an aspect of the attribute of Justice in action. 5) The burning of the red heifer is also symbolic of the attribute of Justice being in action. Once these various aspects of G'd's judgments have been reduced to ashes, these ashes enable the accumulated impurity which cleaves to man to escape, seeing that the impurity (טומאה) itself is only like a painful whip employed by the attribute of Justice in subjecting us to justice and retribution.

13I have seen in Sifri Zuta that it is part of the rules of the red heifer that a person must not buy a calf and raise it because the Torah wrote ויקחו פרה, "they shall buy a (fully grown) cow and not a calf." Maimonides also rules like this in chapter 1 of his Hilchot Parah. In light of what we said that all the details the Torah wrote about the red heifer are related to its connection with the attribute of Justice, there is a deeper meaning to the last mentioned halachah. The very name פרה reminds us of a certain number (known to Kabbalists) connected to the process of judgments and retribution. If one were to use a calf and raise it this would throw this connection out of balance. Even though such a calf would eventually become a cow=פרה and as such would symbolise the number 285 which is the number of judgments G'd has in store for man, G'd insisted that the red heifer be of age at the time it is designated as such.