Transcript
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so here's you know one level of the
symbolism of the red heifer that spoke
to my heart the midrash asks why the red
heifer is a female if all the others
sacrificed animals are male
so the symbolic answer that the midrash
gives is it's more of an allegory
and so this allegory teaches that the
red heifer comes to a tone for the sin
of the eagle as a half the golden calf
that the Israelites shamefully created
and built in the absence of motion who
they feared disappeared and abandoned
them on the top of the mount we all
remember what happened and so here's the
allegory that the midrash gives it's
about a young child of one of the king's
maid servants who went into the palace
and dirtied the Palace of the king and
so the King was was angry commands let
the mother of this young child come and
clean up her son's mess
right so in the same way the king of
kings
Hashem he says the young child the
golden calf came and dirtied my Palace
let the mother the red heifer come and
clean up the mess in other words let the
red heifer come in a tone for the sin of
the golden calf Jeremy did you hear that
before it's a beautiful teaching
buterman nonetheless points out the
seemingly obvious contradiction here
right if indeed the Commandment of the
red heifer is the Paradigm example of a
hook where it says no reason given that
we can understand then aren't we
attributing some sort of reason to it by
saying that its purpose is to atone for
the golden calf
all right so open your hearts well can I
can I just say a word about that Ari yes
I think that a way to understand the
hook was actually taught to me by emunah
my nine-year-old over Shabbat this
Friday night
and she said to me that a hoax we might
be able to understand some things by
piercing into it and and thinking about
it but the real meaning of a Hulk is
that we would never do that action had
we not been commanded no one would think
let's take a red cow to take its ashes
put it in this kind of water do this and
do that so the essence of a hoax is that
like we have no idea why God is
commanding us to do X but
we just do it because that's what God
told us to do but while we do it we
might be able to extract some meaning
some ideas but we would never have been
able to come to it on our own had we not
been commanded
right right exactly that's beautiful
that doesn't shock me that emuna has
that sort of insights but um no but the
the fact is that it's in a lot of ways
it really should remain a hook we're not
supposed to try to understand or
attribute meaning to it so then why this
midrash says that the purpose of the red
heifer is to atone for the sin of the
golden calf it's a nice idea in your
head right and they're both cows one is
the mother and one is the a baby and
some male and so there's like that
connection and that's a beautiful thing
but aren't we giving meaning to it so
that's the question so open your hearts
here
he explains it like this he explains yes
the para aduma the red heifer is indeed
such a decree we do not know the real
reason for it and therefore we keep it
solely because we have a Muna not
Jeremy's daughter but not meaning faith
we keep it because we have faith we keep
it because we believe in Hashem and that
is why it atones for the idolatry of the
golden calf because idolatry is
definitionally a lack of belief in
Hashem and so the the ammuna the Faith
with which we observe the decree of the
red heifer is the fixing of the lack of
faith that we had in our hearts which
led us to worshiping the golden calf did
you follow that Jeremy
did you guys get that it's like it's a
beautiful idea so it's not about
understanding the reason it's about
fixing the blemish of needing to
understand the reason to begin with
it's about fixing the lack of faith we
had throughout the whole golden calf
Episode by having exactly the faith that
which we should have had there and
applying it to the Commandment of the
red heifer
