OH WOW – A Red Cow (Mitzvah)

Considered the most enigmatic, here are (my) poor conjectures ‘explaining’ the Parah Adumah commandment (logic?); specifically, ‘why’ a Red Heifer, the Cohen paradox, ‘Tumas Mais’, and the ‘technology’ of Cancellation. WARNING: Everything hereinafter is speculation, unauthorized, off the Halacha reasoning main road, and without psychological safeguards; moreover – neither for the wayward, nor for the rebellious, nor for those Life-immature & inexperienced. The following Spiritually Vacuous detour from belief & tradition is not for the faint of heart, nor for the fragile of mind. Return Now! GO No Further. Heed this warning! -or- Enter at your own risk. 

Furthermore, it would be ‘wise’ for YOU to read https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/mitzvah-the-concept/ before seriously continuing your ongoing considerations; and you may -eventually- want to read https://www.derondareview.org/TorahTechnology.pdf to better grasp how the word ‘Halacha’ is being used here too.

Background: 

Please Pause here to research & ‘refresh’ your understanding of the Torat Moshe instructions regarding Parah Adumah, Mishnah ‘Parah’ (12 chapters) -AND- some instantly accessible Orthodox Rabbinic discussions thereof; then Pause again, to digest & contemplate your decision: to read this essay -OR- not to read it → and to ‘just’ be satisfied with a degree of unknown as Healthy – or at least satisfactory – for the navigation of Your Life, Mind, and Time.

‘Why’ a Red Heifer: 

Sacrifices (Korbanot), in a Halacha context, are for people to achieve a sense of complete closure; something that psychotherapy can never guarantee. Among animal sacrifices are various species, such as pigeons, sheep, goats, and cattle. Of course there is a proportional status (in the ‘eyes’ of man) to the choice of species, with cattle having a higher status; representing wealthy persons, kings, and nations. Thus, it would be a complete contradiction to bring an unhealthy animal for sacrifice; and a rather fickle choice to bring an animal with an aesthetic ‘blemish’. 

Even today, the valuation of a cow is by age, weight, and the color-texture consistency of its hide; red blotches typically considered to be contributing flaws in the resultant processed leather. Except, a completely Red Heifer would be above any monetary valuation (of other cattle); a priceless example of uniqueness beyond measure – worthy of use to restore individuals from the unsightly ‘Internal Blemish’ of persistent neurological disturbance from contact or proximity with a corpse; including resultant deeper than infrasound resonances – to personal ideation, creativity, and emotional horizons. 

The Cohen Paradox: 

There are three signature features of a Cohen: (1) His paternal lineage directly goes back to Aaron HaCohen – who was an exemplary sincere & passionate individual without latent (or passive) aggression issues whatsoever – who in turn Educated his sons without transference of aggression, who in turn transmitted this remarkable personality quality upon their sons, and so forth; unto this very day. (2) A Cohen’s mother does not have any innate organic Trust Issues – since her life-partner husband was her first-and-only life-partner – who in turn Educates her sons without transference of trust-related trauma paranoia. Thus, (3) the Cohen, who processes the Red Heifer from being a live animal to being a ultra-dilution of ashes – and/or who is acting in any other Halacha status Agency category, would ‘normally’ not transfer tainted aspects (of passive aggression or transient mistrust) that he did not receive from his parents. 

Now, when there seems to be no reason for a Halacha, then one may consider what would be: in the absence of such a Halacha. For example, the proper Cohen is such a unique individual that we would not want to transfer any taint upon him; and thus – rather than risking that the Cohen processing the Parah Adumah ‘might’ inflate his own ego to think-or-feel that he is now somehow superior to his cohen-fellows ⇒ by virtue of his being the agent for the cancellation of ‘Tumas Mais’ – NOW Halacha imposes a conditional blemish upon the Cohen SO THAT he thinks-feels that his LOVE of Am Yisroel is so great that he is even willing to do that which will invoke a conditional transient blemish upon himself – processing the Parah Adumah. 

Of Course, there are rare individuals who somehow manifest these ethereal qualities – being neither a Cohen nor the proximate descendants of a Cohen -AND- there are individuals of Cohen lineage who ‘somehow’ have lost these magnificent humane qualities (somewhere along their lineage).

‘Tumas Mais’: (the experience) 

IF you have ever attended to a corpse, or been under the roof where there is a corpse, or been in contact with individuals who have attended to a corpse, etc., THEN it seems that you can always Go Back (typically voluntarily – and sometimes involuntarily) into your memory to think-feel that direct or indirect corpse contact again; since the aspect of Lifeless Human Stillness is deeper than any other Quiesced Anticipation. 

NOW, since our entire sensory physiology processing is EITHER a networked filtering out of ‘layered’ micro-anticipation in order to perceive that which is Attention Worthy -OR- an ongoing progressive modification of our erroneous anticipation filtering which had comprised our cumulative maturation of subtle micro-memory → How disturbing to our Life-Mind-Time manifold experience is contact with the lifelessness of a corpse – a Traumatic Shock – so unique & peculiar <by virtue of its lack of signal -and- lack of noise ⇒ as compared to ALL of our human interactions: living, media, text, music, and graphics> that it perturbs ALL subsequent Sensory physiology processing; the expectation, the filtering out, and the cumulative maturation. 

Simply summarized, ‘Tumas Mais’ is a kind of neural network Resonant Noise that keeps on disturbing; never completely dampening into the absorbent anechoic depths of inconsequential memory.

The ‘technology’ of Cancellation:

We should first look at three illustrative examples of how technology hits a scaling inflection endpoint – before delving into ‘Tumas Mais’, per se, -and- the Cancellation of ‘Tumas Mais’.

First Example: Clay pottery are vitrified in a HOT kiln to become stone-like ceramics. The kiln walls are made of fire-brick; which is a clay brick that was vitrified in a HOTTER kiln to become the stone-like ceramic that Does NOT melt when firing the clay pottery. Thus, it must be that the fire-brick was in turn made in a kiln that went to a higher temperature than the kiln for the clay pottery – so the walls of the kiln that made the fire-brick must have been made in a kiln that went to a still HOTTER temperature – OH but that would imply a sequence of never ending hotter and hotter kilns having walls made from endlessly more heat resistant fire-bricks – which resist melting, etc. -NOT TRUE- The walls of the hottest kiln are not made of fire-brick → they are substantially made of kaolin (with similar refractory minerals, various ‘binders’, and/or some structural clay additives) – which is a thermal resistant material that is cast into brick shapes from a plaster-like sludge, and then allowed to ‘dry’ (and inter-crystalize); and thereafter is oven baked at a relatively low temperature to properly solidify & stabilize to thermal-shock resistant ‘bricks’. Simply stated, there is a scaling inflection endpoint to the series of kiln temperatures and their respective fire-brick walls.

Second Example: Mishnah ‘Pirkei Avot’ gives Tongs as a paradox example of metallurgy, since one would need to have tongs forged from molten metal in order to work with the molten metal from which tongs are made. Well, actually one could make & use tongs fashioned from hardwood – which would char and eventually fail – yet remain sufficiently useful to make the first metal tongs – which would be more durable for future use in metallurgical forging, etc. Thus, it must be that the Tongs example of the Mishnah is a mature analogy for something intended for more Life-Mature students (a digression – perhaps – to be discussed at another time & place) – and like the fire-brick example – the endless reflexively recursive example of Tongs likewise teaches a scaling inflection endpoint.

Third Example: Today, there are lots of ultra high-frequency electronic devices (cellphones, microwave ovens, flicker-free LED lights, non-invasive medical imaging systems, etc.); each requiring some strange engineering ‘tricks’ to form, shape, and transform such ‘signals’ – to reach their required ultra high-frequency. These ‘tricks’ rely upon superposition, heterodyne, resonances, interference, and other physical propagation phenomena that are not significant aspects of ordinary human experience; except if you are trying to fabricate a priceless virtuoso violin, etc. → thus (leaving our ‘modern’ conceptualizations of how ‘tricks’ work aside) a kind of human ultra-sensory sensitivity – that was even accessible during primordial times.

In the very ancient world, including epochs before humans recorded history, lots of attention was given to ultra low-frequency phenomena; a multi-millennia long study of time, tides, seasons, and astronomical detail → that gave rise to practical agriculture enabling technologies, taxation, wealth accumulation, and war; which became the ‘traditional’ labor ‘circumventing’ method for taking another’s harvest-bounty storage, labor, and land. Basically, the megalithic architecture of earlier societies exemplified publicly-funded explorations into ultra low-frequency phenomena; much like the modern mega-architecture nuclear accelerators exemplify our costly explorations into ultra high-frequency phenomena. One need only compare sizes of the Giza Pyramids, Stonehenge, Dolmen de Soto, and Göbekli Tepe -TO- the Large Hadron Collider (CERN) in Switzerland, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven, the SuperKEKB in Japan, and the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina.

However, closer to the scale of our ordinary human experiences today – we have (1) the metal screen in the door of our microwave oven, which allows us to see our food cooking without cooking our own eyes → since that screen substantially filters out microwave radiation without filtering out visible-to-the-eye light; and (2) the metal bars & wires that reinforce concrete walls & floors in modern buildings, which are often too close together to allow internal reception of broadcast radio or television → thus requiring cable connection to an outside antenna. Similarly, the Mishnah gives an example of a Tumas Mais ‘cutoff-filter’ – specifically: if there are two apartments having a common wall and a common roof – and there is a corpse in one apartment and anything that can be ‘tainted’ by Tumas Mais in the other apartment → then IF there is a hole in that common wall that is at least the size of a tefach (handbreadth – the Birthing Dilation measure), THEN the Tumas Mais of the corpse ‘propagates’ via that hole to taint that which is in the other apartment >HOWEVER< IF there are multiple holes in that common wall – none being a tefach width or larger, THEN these holes Do Not add together -and- the Tumas Mais Does Not propagate from the corpse to the other apartment ⇒ Just Like the filtering examples: the metal screen of the microwave oven door and the metal bars & wires of the concrete building construction. From this comparison, we may presume (for this essay – but Not authoritative for Halacha) that Tumas Mais is an ultra low-frequency phenomena (not electromagnetic!) – and that it invokes a sufficiently presumptive effect upon a living person (directly or substantially indirectly) for Halacha to present a Tumas Mais Cancellation ‘technology’.

Now, a harder idea: While other kinds of ‘lesser’ Tumah (neurological Noise causing Exposures -or- Events) can dampen out over a predetermined time interval – Often with the aid of the ultra low-frequency damping effects upon human ‘full-body immersion’ into a non-resonant ‘pool’ of water (ocean, lake, mikvah, or the like) – ‘Tumas Mais’ is that ‘Mitzvah Technology’ scaling inflection endpoint example for which some superposition heterodyne type ultra low-frequency ‘perturbation’ event is required to enable ‘Cancellation’ -and- the area dispersed ‘sprinkling’ of the Ultra-Dilute Parah Adumah water provides that.

NOW: 

Rather than continuing along this essay’s imaginary pathways, kindly Go Back (!) & (re)read https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/mitzvah-the-concept/ – Pause – and appreciate that EVERY other Mitzvah is much more akin to the accessible Life, Mind, and Time appreciation of the definitive-paradigm Torat Moshe Mitzvah Tzitzit than this Most Distant example: Parah Adumah; which is reflexively recursively at the ‘Mitzvah Technology’ scaling inflection endpoint of understanding.