Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Practical Parsha Podcast with Ravi Shlomo Cohen. Thank God we've been growing each and every week. And if you enjoy this podcast, please share it with your friends. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to me at Rabbi Shlomo Cohen with a kmail.com I'd love to hear from you.
[00:00:21] This week's parsha, parshas Chuchas, really deals with a lot of different mitzvahs and different stories that happen in the Torah.
[00:00:31] The parsha begins with the, uh, special mitzvah, the special commandment of the paradumah, the red heifer, the process of how you get a red heifer, what it accomplishes, how it purifies, what are the qualifications of finding, ah, a cow that is designated to be a para aduma. And the parsha then segues. The parsha then segues into the laws of tuma and tahaira, the laws of purity and impurity. And we discussed Miriam in this week's Parasha passes away.
[00:01:01] And subsequently, because of her death, the well of Miriam, which the Jews used to drink water from in the desert, dries up. The Jews come to Moshe Rabbeinu, complaining to him they have no water.
[00:01:15] Moshe gets angry. He davens to Hashem.
[00:01:18] God commands Moshe Rabbeinu to go speak to the rock. And in this week's parsha, Moshe Rabbeinu commits the sin of striking the rock. Aaron passes away.
[00:01:30] And the parsha also concludes with the different battles the Jewish people fought in the desert.
[00:01:37] I wanted to discuss three ideas in this week's parsha and to really go into the story that goes along with each one of these ideas.
[00:01:47] The first lesson which I want to discuss is the idea of paraduma. The Torah describes us very clearly about how we find a paraduma. What is a paraduma? What has to be done.
[00:02:01] But the first thing that we speak of is the Torah says chukas, zos, chucas, hatorah. And the parsha is referred to as parshas chucas.
[00:02:11] Now, literally, the word choik means a decree.
[00:02:15] But it really brings us to a more broader discussion about the different types of mitzvos that we have as Jews. It's brought down that there are three types of mitzvos. There are edios, there are mishpatim, and there are chukim.
[00:02:32] So edios are these testaments. They're mitzvahs that we do that testify to, to hashem, uh, running the world. They testify that we Went out of Egypt, we blow a shofar, we eat matzah, we put on tefillin. These are all mitzvahs that we do that are meant to help us remember what we're supposed to do and our position in this world and God, how God runs the world.
[00:02:55] There are other sets of laws which are referred to as mishpatim, which help the world exist.
[00:03:00] Do not murder, do not steal, do not commit adultery.
[00:03:03] These. If we wouldn't have these laws of the Torah, civil law, people would just swallow each other up.
[00:03:10] And finally, the third type of mitzvah is referred to as a choke, and that is translated loosely as a divine decree, meaning that, uh, hashem has given us certain mitzvahs that we, in our finite understanding of things, are not able to understand because God is infinite and we are finite. We're limited.
[00:03:33] And there are just some mitzvahs, parahduma, the red heifer, being one of them, that we cannot fully understand. And I'm going to explain what are the contradictory elements about paradumah, just to start off. So first off is that, number one is this paraduma. It had to be a completely red cow with no blemish. If it would have more than two black hairs, it would disqualify it, but from this halacha of paraduma. And it could never have a yoke placed upon it. Now, the Torah describes to us the process of what they would do to this red heifer. They would take it and they would burn it with, you know, different things would be added to it, and it would be ground up and create this certain special type of ash.
[00:04:19] And the ashes from the paraduma, the red heifer, would be used to purify.
[00:04:25] That is, if someone became impure by touching a dead person or becoming in, um, the same room as someone who passed away, they would use the ashes of the para aduma to purify them and to make them tahar pure again.
[00:04:42] Now, one of the aspects of the paradumah which seem to be contradictory and something that are and something that's incomprehensible is the fact that the kohen who would speak sprinkle the ashes on top of the person who is tameh and make him tohar, he himself would become impure. So the kohen who sprinkles the ashes on the individual, the individual becomes pure and the kohen becomes impure.
[00:05:09] Seems a little bit contradictory. And it's brought down in the medrash that the nations of the world mock the Jewish people for this mitzvah of paraduma. Because it doesn't seem to make any sense. It seems to be contradictory and nonsensical. God forbid. But for us, we know that Hashem gave us the mitzvah to do. And it's our job to do the mitzvah. Even if we don't understand it. We don't fully grasp all its details.
[00:05:37] This is the commandment that we got from G D. And therefore we have to do it even though we can't fully understand the mitzvah of para aduma. Because it's out of our realm of understanding.
[00:05:48] There are different hints that are brought down in the midrash and in the Talmud that relate this special mitzvah of becoming pure through the red heifer to the sin of the golden calf. That it seems, through the different commentary and the different sources, that the, uh, process and the purification of the red heifer Is meant to atone for the sin of the golden calf with the Jews committed also in the desert. And there's also one big, very important idea which I think we can gain from this idea of par aduman, ah, from choked, this idea of divine decree.
[00:06:25] Many times humanity has questions.
[00:06:30] And a lot of times those questions are, how could bad things happen to good people? And there seems to be contradictory forces of good and evil happening in the world, right? How could certain things happen? How could young and innocent children die?
[00:06:46] And the mitzvah of paraduma, the enigma of paraduma, how it simultaneously defiles and purifies, contains an important lesson.
[00:06:56] Because even though there is this coexistence of good and evil, we don't understand it.
[00:07:02] We can't explain it.
[00:07:04] We have to know within ourselves that there is a plan and there is a vision. That, like we said before, that God is infinite and we are finite. And just like if we have a picture, a beautiful portrait that we're drawing, and you take the portrait and you put it very close to your face, you're not going to know what that picture is, of course.
[00:07:29] But if you take that same portrait and pull it away from your line of vision, you begin to see the beauty, the grandeur, all the different details in it. So when it comes to our vision, how we see things, we're like the person who zoomed in to the portrait. We can't even begin to understand what this is a picture of. But Hashem, uh, who sees from who was before us and will be after us, he knows the whole picture. He is infinite.
[00:08:00] He has the whole portrait. He sees the whole Picture.
[00:08:03] And the nations of the world, when they're faced with this question of good and evil, people will say that there's no God in the world, there is no ruling power. But we know as Jews that the Torah teaches us not like that, that since we are limited and God is unlimited, that everything comes from one source, everything happens, is from Hashem, um, good, and things that seem evil as well. And we have to realize that certain things that don't make sense transcends our understanding of things. If we take this outlook and approach it to all areas of our life, it'll help us have the correct emunah, the correct faith, and the correct outlook when challenging situations arise.
[00:08:51] Another thought which I wanted to talk about, which I think is very important, and we see this from Paradumah, is that I mentioned before that there's three types of mitzvahs. There's ediyos, testaments, there's chukim, I'm sorry, there's mishpatim, which are these civil laws. And number three is chukim, is divine decree. We must realize at the end of the day, the reason why we do all the mitzvos is because Hashem, uh, said so. In essence, all mitzvos are chukim.
[00:09:24] And the reason why I'm saying this, and it's important to internalize this idea is that although it is very important to get the meaning behind things, to understand why we do things, why we do what we do, why do we have Shabbos, why do we eat kosher, and to have reasons, and the significance is a blowing shofar, and it brings out the beauty. It helps us feel more attached to the mitzvah. It makes us have that stronger connection that we really want and we should have.
[00:09:52] But we all have to realize in the end of the day, when it comes to doing mitzvos, that the bottom line, the reason why we do mitzvos is not because of reasons and how it makes us feel. It's because Hashem said so. And the reason why this is important to have this realization is because if we just go with reasons and how we understand things and how something feels for us, so then if we have a good feeling about a mitzvah, we'll do it. But if one day we wake up and we don't feel like davening, we don't feel like doing that mitzvah, so we're not gonna do it, because it's not about the responsibility we have, because it's all about the feeling, right? And the way I like to bring this out Is that when someone has a job, hopefully most people enjoy their job or parts of their job.
[00:10:41] And we hope that we want to look forward to going to work. But even someone who enjoys their job, right, we don't always want to go to work. There's just some days that we get up and we're not interested. We don't want to go. But we know since we have a responsibility to ourselves, to our family, and we have to keep a roof overhead, we have to feed our family, we have to pay the bills, we get up anyway because we know we have a responsibility.
[00:11:09] That's why it's important to have this realization that mitzvahs, in the end of the day, all types of mitzvahs are, because Hashem said so. Because on the day that we wake up and we're not interested, I mean, obviously we want to work to get to a point where we want to do things. But everyone's human. We have our ups and downs.
[00:11:27] And there's just some days where we're not interested, we don't want to. So it's imperative that we have this realization that we have a responsibility, we have an obligation that the master of the world, the king of the universe, told us to do something, and therefore it is incumbent upon us to fulfill his will.
[00:11:43] After discussing the laws of the red heifer, the parad duma, the Torah continues with some of the basic halachos of tuma vitahara, laws of ritual cleanliness.
[00:11:54] Now, spiritual impurity is something that could come on a person.
[00:11:59] Food, liquids, vessels, garments.
[00:12:03] And there are different ways that a person can become tame or his food can become tame, or his clothing.
[00:12:11] There is something referred to as avi, avos hatoma, a person who is a corpse, a dead person that transmits the most severe degree of tumm, each passing level. First degree tuma, second degree tumah. If someone touches a dead person and that person touches another person and that second person touches food, there's different laws as to how the different levels of tuma, of spiritual impurities are passed from one person to another and from a person to a, uh, food and from a food to anything else. One idea which I want to discuss regarding tuma vitahara, the different spiritual impurities, is this basic concept of tuma, of impurities. Now, we don't see tuma. You know, you think of, uh, bacteria, we think of dirt, we think of cleaning ourselves.
[00:13:05] But spiritual impurities maybe becomes a little bit easier. Nowadays, we all believe, we all know there's such a thing as bacteria and, and germs and things we can't see. Now, tomah does not work like that. You could have something that's very, very clean, but it is.
[00:13:21] And as a side note, nowadays most tumm impurities do not apply. But I wanted to give a basic explanation and understanding for this concept of tumm. Now we know that the biggest source of tuma, the most spiritually impure thing, is a corpse. And if you look at a corpse, what happened? A person had life, and now the neshama, the spiritual life force, has left.
[00:13:51] And if you look at other ways that a person can become tame, there is a common denominator, right? A woman, when she menstruates, when she has her period, there was an egg that now is leaving the body, and now she becomes tame, right? A person, a man, who has an emission, right? There was a certain, right, the semen is a source of life, and now it's gone.
[00:14:16] So there's a certain vacuum that is created. So the common denominator which you see here is the fact that whenever there is a potential for something and it leaves, it is gone. It sort of creates a vacuum, a spiritual vacuum. And that's why a corpse, a dead person, where there was a neshama, there was something living here. A person could accomplish, a person could do, a person could do mitzvahs. And now that neshama has left this body, there is a certain vacuum, a spiritual vacuum that is created, which is this sense of tuma. And the same thing could be said for a woman who menstruates, right? There was a certain potential. There was potential for life, and now it's gone. And same thing can be said for a man who has an emission, that there is potential for life, and now it's gone. So it creates a certain spiritual vacuum. And that is that helps us understand this idea of tumm.
[00:15:10] Now there's moving on in the parsha to the last idea. As we know, this week's parsha discusses the sin of Moshe and Aaron and Moshe Rabbeinu.
[00:15:22] The Jewish people, after Miriam passes away, come to Moshe Rabbeinu and they complain to him, how come you took us out of Mitsrayim? He took us out of Egypt to die.
[00:15:32] It would have been better if you left us in Egypt. And they're complaining.
[00:15:35] And Moshe gets angry at the Jewish people.
[00:15:40] He davens to Hashem, and Hashem commands him to go to the rock of Miriam, the rock that used to give the water from the well of Miriam.
[00:15:50] And Hashem wanted Moshe Rabbeinu to Take the elders who to the rock. And to learn Torah by the rock, to speak to the rock.
[00:15:58] And water would come forth from it. And henceforth a Kiddush Hashem would have been created. A sanctification of Hashem's name would have been created. The people were questioning Hashem. They were questioning God's ability. And now, through Moshe Rabbeinu, by him speaking to the rock, by learning Torah next to the rock, God's name would be sanctified.
[00:16:20] And what happened is that Moshe Rabbeinu didn't listen carefully to the command of Hashem. He told entire Jewish people to come to see him perform this miracle by the rock.
[00:16:32] And in the end, it sort of caused problems. Because when it didn't happen exactly how, uh, Moshe thought, the people started. Some of the people started chastising Moshe Rabbeinu. And Moshe Rabbeinu started talking to the rock.
[00:16:44] And blood came out of it. And after seeing that blood was coming out of the rock, the people, some of the people, the naysayers and the riffraff of the Jewish people started mocking Moshe Rabbeinu. And Moshe Rabbeinu hit the rock. He hits the rock, and water starts dripping out of it.
[00:17:03] And again the people mock Moshe Rabbeinu. Is this enough for our babies? Now we have enough for our children to drink. What about us? And he strikes the rock again, and water comes gushing out of the rock.
[00:17:16] Now, because of this sin, Moshe Rabbeinu is destined to. And Aaron is destined to die in the. In the wilderness with the rest of that generation.
[00:17:27] And the commentary give different reasons as to why this was considered a sin. We know earlier in the Torah, Moshe Rabbeinu hits the rock, uh, and the rock gives water. And over there, earlier, it wasn't a sin. What happened here that in this situation, by May Meriva, that Moshe Rabbeinu sinned by hitting the rock.
[00:17:51] And there's, uh, different reasons that are given.
[00:17:53] But the main idea which you see in many of the commentaries is that the sin, the Avera that came out from Moshe Rabbeinu hitting the rock is that there was a Hillel Hashem. There was a desecration of God's name because it was supposed to be a sanctification of God's name. But by speaking to the rock, people would realize that Hashem could do anything. And the fact that Moshe Rabbeinu hid it, it was not on the level of the same level of sanctification as it should have been. And for someone such as Moshe Rabbeinu, who was the greatest leader the Jewish people ever had.
[00:18:29] He was on the 49th level of holiness.
[00:18:32] For him, it was considered an infraction, as small as it may be, as small as that, as it would have been. It was something that he should have done in the proper way. And therefore he was punished by not being able to enter the land of Israel and passing away with the generation in the midbar. Now, there's one very nice idea which I saw, which is an important lesson for us when it comes to the story of Maimariva and Moshe Rabbeinu's sin.
[00:18:59] We see that before Moshe Rabbeinu hits the rock, the Jewish people come and complain to Moshe Rabbeinu.
[00:19:08] And Moshe Rabbeinu becomes very frustrated. He calls the Jewish people rebellious ones. He becomes angry with the Jews.
[00:19:15] And it seems that the Jewish people were coming out of a place of desperation. They had no water, they needed to drink. And therefore they are frustrated and angry. And they're coming to Moshe Rabbeinu.
[00:19:25] And Moshe Rabbeinu became angry.
[00:19:27] He became upset with his people. He called them rebellious, he criticized them.
[00:19:33] And it's because of that, because of his anger, Moshe Rabbeinu came to a mistake of hitting the rock. And this is not the first time this happened. We see that other places in the Torah where Moshe Rabbeinu became upset with Jewish people, he erred in judgment.
[00:19:50] And over here in May Meriba, when the water dried up and the people came to him because of his anger, he made a mistake by hitting the rock. And therefore he did not merit to enter the land of Israel. And the lesson for us is that many times we get angry. Now it's a separate discussion about why we get angry. Should we hope we should not get angry, but we get angry. We're human beings. And the point is that we have to realize that when we get upset, we make mistakes.
[00:20:20] We say things that we shouldn't have said. We do things that we shouldn't have done.
[00:20:25] And if we realize that we do these type of that we make erroneous when we make bad judgment calls when we're upset.
[00:20:37] If we realize that we make bad judgment calls when we get upset, number one is it'll help us from begetting angry. And number two is when we are in that position where we're boiling inside, we should think to ourselves, it's better not to act, to not do something, to let time cool things off, to let the temperature come down. And God willing, if we do that we'll have. We'll be able to handle situations better and to not make those tragic, tragic mistakes and things that say things that we regret to do things that we regret. And God willing, it'll help us be better people.
[00:21:11] That's going to do it for this week's Practical Parasha podcast, I hope you all enjoyed. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to me at Rabbi Shlomo Cohen with a kmail ah dot com. Have a great day.
