Post by Rabbi Neil on Jul 12, 2024 6:24:34 GMT
Do you remember 15th April 1997? (It was a Tuesday, if that helps!). Probably not, but for some people it was an incredibly important day. The Sunday Telegraph, a British newspaper, ran an article on the momentous event. It said:
“The birth of a red heifer in Israel is being hailed by religious Jews as a divine sign that work can soon begin on building the Third Temple in Jerusalem. A team of rabbinical experts confirmed that the animal, born on April 15, 1997 on a religious kibbutz near the north Israeli port of Haifa, meets the correct Biblical criteria for a genuine holy cow. According to the Book of Numbers (XIX: 2-7), the animal is needed for an ancient Jewish purification ritual. "Speak unto the children of Israel that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke," says the fourth book of the Old Testament, also part of Jewish holy scripture, the Torah. The heifer will be slaughtered and burned, and its ashes made into a liquid paste and used in a ceremony which religious Jews believe they must undergo before they can enter the old Temple site in Jerusalem to start building a new structure. Since Herod's Temple was destroyed by the Roman emperor Titus in AD 70, no flawless red heifer has been born within the biblical land of Israel, according to rabbinical teaching. The birth of the animal, to a black-and-white mother and a dun-coloured bull, is being hailed as a "miracle" by activists who want to rebuild the Third Temple and prepare the way for the Jewish messiah's entry to Jerusalem. The faithful will need to wait until the heifer is at least three before it can be used in a ritual sacrifice. That would enable religious Jews to start the new millennium (a Christian event, but still regarded as portentous) in a state of purity.
News of the red heifer's appearance, however, will not be well received by Muslims. The site of the old Jewish temples in the Holy City is now occupied by one of Islam's holiest shrines, the Dome of the Rock. Jewish extremists want to destroy the Dome and the adjoining Al-Aqsa mosque to make way for a new temple. In 1985 a group of Jewish terrorists were jailed in Israel for planning to destroy the Dome with high explosives.
But Jewish activists say they regard it as their divine mission to build a new Temple. "We have been waiting 2,000 years for a sign from God, and now he has provided us with a red heifer," said Yehudah Etzion, the ringleader of the Eighties' plot to blow up the Dome, who was present at last week's inspection of the red heifer at Kfar Hassidim. "There were a couple of little white hairs which worried us, but the rabbis are satisfied that it is the red heifer referred to in the Bible," said Etzion.”
Guess what happened next? After months of speculation, of real preparation for the coming of the Messiah amongst the ultra-Orthodox, the news came in November that the “couple of little white hairs” were in fact of great concern, and that the calf was finally declared unclean. The destruction of the Al Aqsa mosque and the coming of the Messiah would have to wait!
There are two times when we traditionally read of the parah adumah – the red heifer. One is around this time when we reach the Torah portion of Chukkat, as we have done this week. The other time is as an additional reading before Purim. It’s that latter reading which is most fascinating because then the reading of the Red Heifer is attached to the Torah portion that describes the worship of the golden calf. One generation, waiting intently for God’s word, ends up zealously building a golden calf to become the object of their adoration. Thousands of years later, recipients of the same narrative start looking to a small, red calf for their salvation, and fail to notice that they’re making the same mistake. And I think the connection between the two readings, and the mistake that both sets of people are making is that they both try to find God in a closed, zealous community. Both are a group of men who just get so carried away with their own beliefs that they don’t stop to look around them to see how realistic what they’re doing is. They’re not grounded by external parameters, and they just get carried away.
Of course, it is also important not to get carried away by the opposite extreme – by infusing so much of the external world into our life that it pulls us away from our Judaism. As with so many aspects of our tradition, we need to find a balance between existing fully in this world, and existing solely within the realm of Judaism. We need to find a balance, and both readings warn us profoundly of the errors that happen when we get the balance wrong. Balance is challenging, though. It is easy to see why the Sages in Pirke Avot described the whole world as a very narrow bridge, adding that the most important thing was not to be afraid. While it is difficult, while the journey may sometimes be perilous, balance is possible.
The journey of the Israelite people wasn’t an easy one – for the last two weeks of Torah readings in particular, they took things to extremes and were punished as a result. In the first instance, the spies are nervous and bring back extreme reports that terrify the people and cause the entire nation to wander for forty years. In the second, Korach and his men address their concerns not just respectfully to Moses but, rather, in an attempted coup that must ultimately result in a public showdown. It’s too much. But so are the calls of the people to go back to Egypt, to abandon the journey forward that started in the Book of Exodus and continue here in the Book of Numbers. There must be a balance. Religion’s biggest critics are those who point to the extremes and who then say that the religion is flawed because of those extremes. So, we Reform Jews, who balance tradition and modernity, we are reminded by this week’s Torah portion and its strange ritual of the red heifer, of the need for balance in the face of the extreme applications of our tradition. We are reminded of the sacred duty to spread a positive, balanced, nuanced expression of Judaism, to share its values loudly so that all people understand that ours is not a religion of extremists but one of love, tolerance, understand… and perhaps even an ancient religion with a few interesting rituals that should be consigned to the past. May we learn to find balance in all that we do, and let us say, Amen.
“The birth of a red heifer in Israel is being hailed by religious Jews as a divine sign that work can soon begin on building the Third Temple in Jerusalem. A team of rabbinical experts confirmed that the animal, born on April 15, 1997 on a religious kibbutz near the north Israeli port of Haifa, meets the correct Biblical criteria for a genuine holy cow. According to the Book of Numbers (XIX: 2-7), the animal is needed for an ancient Jewish purification ritual. "Speak unto the children of Israel that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke," says the fourth book of the Old Testament, also part of Jewish holy scripture, the Torah. The heifer will be slaughtered and burned, and its ashes made into a liquid paste and used in a ceremony which religious Jews believe they must undergo before they can enter the old Temple site in Jerusalem to start building a new structure. Since Herod's Temple was destroyed by the Roman emperor Titus in AD 70, no flawless red heifer has been born within the biblical land of Israel, according to rabbinical teaching. The birth of the animal, to a black-and-white mother and a dun-coloured bull, is being hailed as a "miracle" by activists who want to rebuild the Third Temple and prepare the way for the Jewish messiah's entry to Jerusalem. The faithful will need to wait until the heifer is at least three before it can be used in a ritual sacrifice. That would enable religious Jews to start the new millennium (a Christian event, but still regarded as portentous) in a state of purity.
News of the red heifer's appearance, however, will not be well received by Muslims. The site of the old Jewish temples in the Holy City is now occupied by one of Islam's holiest shrines, the Dome of the Rock. Jewish extremists want to destroy the Dome and the adjoining Al-Aqsa mosque to make way for a new temple. In 1985 a group of Jewish terrorists were jailed in Israel for planning to destroy the Dome with high explosives.
But Jewish activists say they regard it as their divine mission to build a new Temple. "We have been waiting 2,000 years for a sign from God, and now he has provided us with a red heifer," said Yehudah Etzion, the ringleader of the Eighties' plot to blow up the Dome, who was present at last week's inspection of the red heifer at Kfar Hassidim. "There were a couple of little white hairs which worried us, but the rabbis are satisfied that it is the red heifer referred to in the Bible," said Etzion.”
Guess what happened next? After months of speculation, of real preparation for the coming of the Messiah amongst the ultra-Orthodox, the news came in November that the “couple of little white hairs” were in fact of great concern, and that the calf was finally declared unclean. The destruction of the Al Aqsa mosque and the coming of the Messiah would have to wait!
There are two times when we traditionally read of the parah adumah – the red heifer. One is around this time when we reach the Torah portion of Chukkat, as we have done this week. The other time is as an additional reading before Purim. It’s that latter reading which is most fascinating because then the reading of the Red Heifer is attached to the Torah portion that describes the worship of the golden calf. One generation, waiting intently for God’s word, ends up zealously building a golden calf to become the object of their adoration. Thousands of years later, recipients of the same narrative start looking to a small, red calf for their salvation, and fail to notice that they’re making the same mistake. And I think the connection between the two readings, and the mistake that both sets of people are making is that they both try to find God in a closed, zealous community. Both are a group of men who just get so carried away with their own beliefs that they don’t stop to look around them to see how realistic what they’re doing is. They’re not grounded by external parameters, and they just get carried away.
Of course, it is also important not to get carried away by the opposite extreme – by infusing so much of the external world into our life that it pulls us away from our Judaism. As with so many aspects of our tradition, we need to find a balance between existing fully in this world, and existing solely within the realm of Judaism. We need to find a balance, and both readings warn us profoundly of the errors that happen when we get the balance wrong. Balance is challenging, though. It is easy to see why the Sages in Pirke Avot described the whole world as a very narrow bridge, adding that the most important thing was not to be afraid. While it is difficult, while the journey may sometimes be perilous, balance is possible.
The journey of the Israelite people wasn’t an easy one – for the last two weeks of Torah readings in particular, they took things to extremes and were punished as a result. In the first instance, the spies are nervous and bring back extreme reports that terrify the people and cause the entire nation to wander for forty years. In the second, Korach and his men address their concerns not just respectfully to Moses but, rather, in an attempted coup that must ultimately result in a public showdown. It’s too much. But so are the calls of the people to go back to Egypt, to abandon the journey forward that started in the Book of Exodus and continue here in the Book of Numbers. There must be a balance. Religion’s biggest critics are those who point to the extremes and who then say that the religion is flawed because of those extremes. So, we Reform Jews, who balance tradition and modernity, we are reminded by this week’s Torah portion and its strange ritual of the red heifer, of the need for balance in the face of the extreme applications of our tradition. We are reminded of the sacred duty to spread a positive, balanced, nuanced expression of Judaism, to share its values loudly so that all people understand that ours is not a religion of extremists but one of love, tolerance, understand… and perhaps even an ancient religion with a few interesting rituals that should be consigned to the past. May we learn to find balance in all that we do, and let us say, Amen.