Sweet Subjugation

King Solomon was the wisest man who ever walked the face of the earth. He knew all the secrets of creation. He could understand what two chirping birds were talking about. He had a deeper insight into human nature than a thousand social scientists put together. He was just as familiar with the spiritual realm as he was with the material world. But he couldn’t understand the mitzvah of the Red Heifer. In Ecclesiastes, he says, “I have become wise, but this is far from me;” he was referring to the mitzvah of the Red Heifer.
 
We read the Torah’s commandment of the Red Heifer between Purim and Pesach, because during the time of our Holy Temple, one was not allowed to fulfill the mandatory mitzvah of eating from the Pascal Lamb unless he or she was ritually pure. A ritually impure man or woman could not complete his or her purification process without being sprinkled with the Mei Chataat, the purification water that was made with the ashes of the red heifer. A such, the red heifer played a key role in our people’s spiritual preparations for Pesach (Passover). Without it, on cannot fulfill one’s obligations on Pesach.
 
Since we have no Holy Temple today, or ritual sacrifices, red heifers, or Pascal lambs, our prayers and rituals serve as a substitute. That’s why we must read the Torah’s account of the Red Heifer to prepare us for Pesach.
 
The Red Heifer defies all logic. The Cohanim (priests of the Holy Temple) who participated in the process of slaughtering the red heifer, burning the carcass, collecting the ash and preparing the purification water all were rendered ritually impure. Yet, when the purification water was sprinkled on a person with the worst type of spiritual impurity, he or she would become pure. This is the only mitzvah of the Torah that causes a pure person to become impure and an impure person to become pure. It makes no sense!
 
That’s exactly the point – it makes no sense; for that very reason, the Red Heifer – at least reading about it and learning about it – is still part of our Passover preparation and spiritual purification.
 
The most important mitzva in the Torah – emuna, the pure and complete belief in Hashem – doesn’t make any sense either. Why? Emuna is Divine sense, not human sense.
 
Man, as the Zohar and Midrash teach us – is 50% animal and 50% angel, or spiritual. Logic and human sense is located down on the animal half. Even an animal has basic instinct and logic; few animals bite the hand that feeds it. They react positively to love and kindness yet negatively to threats, like a whip or fire. They also have a keen instinct. Human logic is based on the empirical; like an animal, a normal human also reacts positively to kindness and negatively to the opposite. But, human logic cannot grasp the soul; it hasn’t the slightest inkling about what’s good for the soul, namely, what purifies the soul and what contaminates it.
 
As soon as we limit our Judaism to what makes sense, not only are we starving our souls but we’re not left with Judaism anymore. Although we perform and observe most of the commandments of Judaism with our bodily limbs, the commandments are nonetheless designed by Hashem for the health of the soul. Since emotions stem from the soul, emotional difficulties can frequently be traced to some sort of malnutrition of the soul.
 
Those who shop for the logic of mitzvot are wasting their time. Not only that, they’re weakening their Judaism. For example, the modern “enlightened” succeeded in convincing the gullible unlearned masses that the Torah forbids us from eating pork because of the trichinosis (trichina roundworm) that’s so common in swine and wild game. So now, since there’s modern sanitary slaughter and refrigeration, there’s no more trichinosis, so eat what you want.
 
Every lie has truth in it, otherwise people won’t believe it. True, pork is prone to trichinosis, but that’s not why the Torah forbids us from eating pork. Many biblical commentators have contemplated reasons why the Torah forbids us from eating pork. They say that since what we eat becomes a part of us, then we shouldn’t eat animals that impart bad character traits. The truth is that we don’t really know what Hashem doesn’t want us to eat pork. Intrinsically, it’s just as illogical as the Red Heifer.
 
Emuna teaches us to cast our human logic aside and to subjugate ourselves to Divine logic. “Subjugation” is a harsh word. But when we surrender our intellect to Hashem and to His Divine intellect, it’s sweet subjugation, just what the soul needs.
 
The Torah lifestyle – liven with emuna and joy like it should be – is the greatest freedom on earth. You’re free of peer pressure, free of the rat race, and free of social convention when you serve Hashem rather than serving other humans or their institutions. This sweet subjugation to Hashem is a prerequisite to the true Torah lifestyle and its benefit of personal and national freedom. That’s the lesson of the Red Heifer; we don’t let our lack of understanding get in the way of moving forward. Most people don’t understand how an airplane functions, but that doesn’t stop them from boarding a flight from New York to Miami. The fact that we understand zilch about the Red Heifer – and all the other mitzvot, for they’re Divine logic too – won’t stop us from seeing Mashiach and the full redemption of our people, speedily and in our days, amen!