Broken Necks and Red Heifers – Death at the Edge of the Camp Chulin 23-25

Chulin 23

Broken Necks and Red Heifers: Processing Death at the Edge of the Camp

Our Gemara on Amud Beis discusses the laws of the Red Heifer and the “Calf-whose-Neck-is-Broken.” These are two unique rituals which have both extreme similarities and differences.

1. Both have to do with death. The Red Heifer is to cleanse death impurity and the Calf-whose-Neck-is-Broken is to atone for an unsolved murder outside the city.
2. They are both bovine.
3. They are both unfit if they were used for labor.
4. They are sacrificial but their process does not happen at the altar or the Temple.

Conceptually, these are both somber rituals, clearly of a sacrificial nature, yet on the outskirts and the edge. They also are extreme in their requirement of purity in not having been worked for any purpose. Their existence on the edge, outside of the camp, likely has something to do with connection to death and the need to manage and process the nihilistic feelings that come from death through rituals that are both outside the camp but still with a sacrificial process. As if to say, there is death, there are feelings of chaos and distance from God, but also even from that place, we can reach out to Him. The requirement of not working these animals might be similar to the requirement for a mourner not to work (Shulchan Aruch YD 380). There are moments of loss where there is a need to stop, absorb and grieve. It is not appropriate to push hard to “just move on.” It is important to be comfortable for a period of time in paralysis, grief and shock.

Yet there is a noticeable dissimilarity between these rituals. The Red Heifer undergoes shechitta, while the Calf-whose-Neck-is-Broken does not, but instead is killed by breaking its neck. In an obvious way, this suggests the brutality that we suspect the unsolved murder victim endured. 

But there is more. Sod Yesharim (Parah) explains:

Slaughtering with Shechitta represents an orderly process; while it is still death, it is via the approved process and represents the appropriate connection to God and transition from this world to the next through death. Since it is still disorienting and tragic it feels disconnected from God, but as we said, though outside of the camp, it still is a sacrifice and connected to God. The Calf-whose-Neck-is-Broken represents the murder. It is a sudden death that feels subjectively even more disconnected from providence. A random, senseless murder and a John Doe victim, who no one knew (he was outside the city — no one befriended him or escorted him (Sotah 46b)). This is a greater breach. The head violently severed from the body not only represents physical murder, but also represents spiritual murder; the complete alienation of the body from the soul, the head from the heart. To heal a rupture, one first recognizes and accepts the enormity of the rupture. Yet, even with that great distancing from God, it is still part of a sacrificial order. It is still service and connected to God, because in the end, the rupture heals and the reconnection happens.

Chulin 24

Time Wounds All Heels: When Indecision Is the Costliest Choice

Our Gemara on Amud Aleph discusses the criteria for qualification and disqualification of Levites:

“Levites remain fit for Temple service with the blemishes enumerated in the Torah but are unfit with the passage of years, as they are fit for service only between the ages of thirty and fifty (see Numbers 4:47).”

Beis Yisrael (Behaalosecha 5709) reads a deeper hint in this statement. Blemishes do not automatically invalidate but years do. People make mistakes in life, but they can be corrected; time, however, can never come back.

This is a heavy truth. There are times where a person spends years in guilt or indecision. He or she never makes the choice to go one way or the other out of fear of being wrong. While caution is valid, staying in the same place and not taking action might be worse, because we can try to take the right action, and even if wrong, we can try to correct it. However, time that is lost cannot be recovered. One of the hardest and momentous decisions in life is whom to marry, and sometimes tragically if one should divorce. These decisions are often fraught with anxiety and fear of making the wrong call. It’s all valid. Yet it’s also true that time keeps marching on, and so no decision and limbo may be appropriately cautious or an even greater loss.

Chulin 25

Don’t Judge a Sinner by His Cover: The Ancient Psychology of Modern Idolatry

Our Gemara describes the laws of ritual purity that are particular to earthenware vessels. They are unique in that they are not susceptible to impurity from the outside but only from the inside. Furthermore, if there is a tight wrap around the mouth of the vessel, even when it is in a house with a corpse, the impurity will not enter it. This is derived from the verse in Bamidbar (19:15):

“And every open vessel, with no lid fastened down, shall be impure.”

The Biblical word for this tight wrap is tzamid pasil. 

The word tzamid indicates a tight attachment.

The verse Bamidbar (25:5) also uses this word to describe the attachment the Jews had to Baal Pe’or as this same tight bond, using a word of the same root (“nitzmadim”).

The Gemara Sanhedrin (64a) reacts to this description:

“You, the house of Israel, are not like that woman who could not bear the repulsiveness of Ba’al-Peor. It is stated with regard to the attitude of the Jewish people toward idol worship: ‘That have attached themselves [hanitzmadim] to Ba’al-Peor’ (Numbers 25:5), indicating a tight attachment, like a tightly bound cover [ketzamid patil] tied firmly onto a vessel. Yet with regard to the attitude of the Jewish people toward God it is stated: ‘But you who did cleave [hadevekim] to the Lord your God’ (Deuteronomy 4:4), i.e., the connection between the Jewish people and God is like two dates that are lightly attached [hadevukot] to one another but are not tightly pressed together.”

While this is a scathing criticism, Toras Bar Nash (Balak) sees a hidden consolation. He wonders, why does the Gemara use tzamid pasil as the linguistic proof for the definition of attachment? There are several verses which also have the root Z-M-D that they could cite. The word tzmidim means bracelets, as in Bereishis (24:22) and Bamidbar (31:50). Rather, there is a message in the choice of this verse. The vessel in this verse is in a home with the strongest level of impurity, yet because it is wrapped, the impurity remains external but is not absorbed. So too, the Jew who worships idols, deep down inside, is still a Jew.

Sanhedrin (63b) makes a psychological assertion about the Jewish motivation toward idolatry in ancient times:

“The Jewish people knew that idol worship is of no substance; they did not actually believe in it. And they worshipped idols only in order to permit themselves to engage in forbidden sexual relations in public.”

This is a pattern of human behavior that remains long after the urge for idolatry has passed. We have other vices that are rationalized through so-called moral convictions or ideas of liberalism (which is the social and psychological substitute for religion, and to my thinking, paganism).

It’s a chain of twisted syllogistic reasoning. If I believe virtuously that a woman has total choice over her body, to the extent that she can abort a child at any time under any circumstance (even though there is another living entity in her), I do not have to think deeply about the sacred responsibility of sexuality. Sexuality does not have to carry the implication of parenthood even though intrinsically it does. I can now separate it and make it a “choice” (but whose choice, the baby?!? Clearly not.)

And if I reduce sexuality and gender to happenstance of choice instead of considering that there may be a part of this that is a sacred trust and doesn’t fully belong to us, I don’t have to feel guilty about infidelity or even minor forms of sexual objectification.

Being a human being is a sacred trust and responsibility. God gives us life but it is entrusted to us, and we do not fully own ourselves. We don’t get to opt out. This basic truth of human dignity and responsibility is also under assault via the modern idolatry of liberalism. In the name of human rights, people will argue that a person can choose to end his life. This removes responsibility and the fact that we are here for a purpose. If a person can choose to end their own life, they can choose anything.

Indeed, the modern version of this Talmudic statement is that the Jewish people only worshipped the false Gods of liberalism in order to permit sexual infidelity. It’s all to assuage the guilt that we sense deep down. The human soul knows and feels the body is sacred. This deeply felt truth must be deflected and redirected via ideology in order to rationalize selfish indulgence and weakness. The truth is, we are charged to elevate the ordinary into the sacred by serving God and living and loving properly. We may not always succeed but it is far worse to rationalize this away and pretend it’s not true.