Hukat, Kohelet, Tolstoy, and the Red Heifer.

The command of the Parahaduma, the Red Heifer, with which our Parcha begins, is known as the

hardest of the mitzvot to understand.

The opening word, Zot Khukata Torah, are taken to mean, this is the supreme example of

a hock in the Torah, that is, a law whose logic is obscure, perhaps unfathomable.

It was a ritual for the purification of those who'd been in contact with, or in certain forms of proximity to a dead body.

A dead body is the primary source of impurity, and the defilement it caused to the living

meant that the person so affected couldn't enter the precincts of the tabernacle or the temple

until cleansed in a process that lasted seven days.

A key element of the purification process involved a priest sprinkling the person so affected on the third and seventh day with a specially prepared liquid known as the water of cleansing

verster red heifer had to be found without blemish and which had never been used to perform work a yoke had never been placed on it. This was ritually killed

and burned outside the camp. Cedarwood hyssop and scarlet wool were added to the fire

and the ashes placed in a vessel containing living, i.e. fresh water. It was this that was

sprinkled on those who had become impure by contact with death.

One of the more paradoxical features of the right is that, though it cleansed the impure,

it rendered impure those who were involved with the preparation of the water of cleansing.

Now, though the ritual hasn't been practiced since the days of the temple,

it nonetheless

remains significant in itself, and for an understanding of what a hook usually translated

as statute actually is. Other statutes, for instance, include the prohibition against eating

meat and milk together, or wearing clothes of mixed wool and linen, chutneys,

or sowing a field with two kinds of grain, chalaim,

...