Among the Masai
tribesmen of East Central Africa, spitting is considered an act of
friendship. Tribesmen spit at each other when they meet and spit again
when they leave each other. When two Masai make a trade in business, they spit
at each other to seal the bargain.
According to the Masai, it is disrespectful not to spit in these
moments.
Every year in a
small community in India, members get together to throw the new village babies
off the top of a 50-foot tower. Don’t worry – the babies are caught in a sheet
held by other villagers on the ground. It is believed that the practice will
give their children long and healthy lives. The ritual has been occurring for over 500 years.
What seems
criminal, rude, or simply unsanitary in our worldview, is an essential element
of cultural norm for another.
These practices, and many others like them, are part of a communal
understanding created over centuries.
To the outsider looking in, who can only intellectually consider these
rituals within their context, it seems impossible to understand why they do
such strange things. You have to
be on the inside of a
community to truly experience the power of the practice.
This week parashah, Chukkat, contains one of Judaism’s
most unexplainable rituals – the mitzvah
(“commandment”) of the “red heifer.”
To call it unusual would be an understatement. Even insiders find it bizarre. At its core, it describes an elaborate purification
ritual. It involves blood, ashes,
water and lots of steps that make me long for an ancient instruction
manual. The end result creates “mai niddah” – which I might translate as
“waters of purification.” These waters are then used to purify the impure. Paradoxically, the maker of this
complicated purification mixture becomes impure as a result of making the
mixture. So strange – purifying
another leaves the purifier impure.
I don’t know about you but it leaves me baffled every time. Texts like this make me wonder about
the state of mind of our ancient ancestors. And just exactly how I should relate to such an archaic
idea?
Luckily for me,
I’m in good confused company. The red heifer ritual has challenged scholars for
centuries. The ancient
commentators have a field day trying to figure out exactly what the point is of
this rite. They often come up
short. Even wise King Solomon, a midrash teaches, was mystified by the
reasons behind the red heifer.[1] My favorite of the commentaries
recounts the story of Moses witnessing God studying the law of the red heifer.[2] If God has to study the law in order to
explain it, I feel fairly certain my attempt at explanation is probably best
left unsaid.
Perhaps then the
most interesting way to represent this law, as well as some of the other
seemingly irrational mitzvot given to
us by Judaism, likely starts with classification. The mitzvot found
in the Torah generally fall into three categories. The first category we call mishpatim (“judgments.”)
These include laws we humans would have eventually come up with on our
own even if the Torah did not present them. Think 10-commandment type of laws – Thou shall not murder or
commit adultery. These laws make
sense. They emit a moral
sensibility. Almost everyone
understands the rational reasons behind these laws.
The next category
of Torah laws are mitzvot whose
function we have come to understand in spite of the fact that we humans would
not necessarily have come up with them on our own. Referred to as eidot
(“testimonials”) these laws include the observance of Shabbat and our holiday
festivals. They are, as a whole,
somewhat less rational but most of us are have learned to appreciate their
purpose and meaning.
The final category
of Torah laws are chukim
(“decrees”). Chukim frankly defy logic and explanation, which might be why
traditional understanding suggests we follow these laws because “God said
so.” Chukim include the laws of impurity and purity, this strange mitzvah of the red heifer, and many also
put the laws of kashrut in this
category. These laws seem
incomprehensible to us. They just don’t make sense – especially in today’s
modern, rational world.
But
for all the reasons they fail to resonate for us today, there surely must have
been clear motivation for putting these chukim
into our tradition. The culture
that created these laws was different from ours – its understanding of the role
of the community in society versus the role of the individual in society was
wholly foreign from our Western culture that promotes independence as a leading
value. Laws like kashrut, ritual bathing and the purification
rite of the red heifer involved a cultural norm that put the needs of the
community above the needs of the individual. For our ancestors, many of the laws they put down in the
Torah were in support of the health and preservation of the community at
large. The individual mattered but
not at the expense of communal wellbeing.
Within today’s society, it sometimes
seems that this concept of communal wellbeing has become a distant idea. We live in a culture that underscores
autonomy. Rules that promote the community over the individual challenge our
individual needs and wants.
Consider, for example, security measure at airports. I permit an invasion of my privacy
because I consider the law beneficial to my individual safety. I’m willing to follow a law that
actually benefits the community but only if I deem it worthwhile for me. The author Jonathan Haidt calls this
mindset the “ethics of autonomy.”
In a chapter of his book entitled The
Righteous Mind, he proposes that societies like ours generate moral
systems that are individualistic and universalist. He suggests that this creates people who see a “world full
of separate objects, rather than relationships.” We buy into ideas like justice and equality but not
necessarily at the expense of our individual desires.
But
this moral system does not necessarily dominate all cultures. There are others that see
“relationships, contexts, groups and institutions as their core.” Haidt calls this the “ethics of
community” and it should sound vaguely familiar to all of us who call ourselves
Jews. Judaism thrives in a space
where the “ethics of community” dominate.
These ideals put community first and create an interdependence designed
to strengthen not just the community but also the individuals who live within
that community. This perspective
perhaps makes most sense from which to begin understanding rituals like the red
heifer, purity and kashrut. These laws are a reminder of the
importance of the health and wellbeing of the group. Viewed in this way, the chukim
of the Torah lose some of their individual irrationality and become communally
rational.
Rabbi
Leo Baeck once taught that Judaism was founded equally upon both mystery and
commandment. Commandments like the
chukim teach that the “ethics of
community” can move us beyond our innate ethical intent. To live in community means we must
sometimes answer the call of an action because
we are part of something larger than just ourselves. Then, the irrational becomes rational as we work together to
create a better world.
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