Pemikiran Yahudi Mazmur 109:22: Akeidat Yitzchak

The Talmud in Avodah Zarah 4, states in the name of Rabbi Joshua son of Levi, "Jews made the golden calf in order to give hope to repentant sinners, as per Deut. 5,26, "O that their heart would remain like this within them, to revere Me and observe My commandments forever." This too is the meaning of the saying of Rabbi Yochanan, who said that neither Israel nor David were really capable of such a deed, since it says "O that their heart... etc." David was not capable of that deed (Bat Sheva) because it says in Psalms 109,22, "my heart is dead within me." If this is so, why did they commit these respective sins? In order that if an individual were to sin in the future, one could point out to him David, who had repented successfully. In the event the community would become guilty of a sin, one could point to the episode of the golden calf and the successful repentance of the entire Jewish people. One would say to such a community "repent you likewise!"

If nature is full of obstacles to man's development towards physical and spiritual perfection, G'd has gone out of His way to provide Israel with safeguards against the pitfalls encountered in nature. At the beginning of human history, G'd testifies that the heart of man is evil from youth. (Genesis 8,21) Our Rabbis comment "how wretched is the dough of which the baker says it is bad." (Bereshit Rabbah 34) Solomon describes the nature of evil as comparable to a woman who is a harlot. We have explained in the last chapter that none of this reflects on the Creator, His abilities, His knowledge etc., but that this condition is so because of the nature of the universe G'd has created. The reason that G'd revealed the fact that nature has inherent shortcomings, is to warn man not to take his existence for granted, but to be on guard against his yetzer hara, his evil urge. Refinement of man,- the objective of creation,- is only possible if man starts out unrefined. Once warned, he who fails to heed the warning becomes a wicked person. He will suffer death of the soul, which is worse than death of the body. Death of the body is after all a fate common to all living creatures regardless of their moral standing. Death of the soul, however, is the result of free choice. In Kohelet 7,26, Solomon views this yetzer hara (described as an evil woman spinning her snares) as worse than death. He evidently refers to the death of the soul, brought about through the machinations of this evil urge. The enticement is the fact that the evil urge always presents itself in the garb of a seductive, alluring partner. The successful activities of this yetzer hara are facilitated by five factors. 1) Since earth is a constituent part of man, it is natural that earthiness excercises a strong pull on man, so much so, that even people of the calibre of Moses, David and Solomon could not always resist this pull. 2) There is usually an imbalance between the various elements contained in the raw material man is made of. This imbalance frequently prompts man to follow the urgings of these urgings. 3) Lack of supervision and corrective measures during a man's youth, is apt to lead him astray and make him give way to desires inspired by these urgings that have gone unchecked. 4) External circumstances, i.e. depravity observed, being carried out successfully, apparently unpunished. 5) Acquiring the wrong set of moral and ethical values due to exposure to fraudulent philosophical teachings. The antidote to the above mentioned five impediments to proper conduct, may be seen in the five answers given by the students of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai to the latter, in response to his famous challenge in Avot chapter 2. These five students were, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrkanus of the infallible memory; Rabbi Joshua ben Chanayah of whom it was said "happy the mother who bore him;" Rabbi Shimon ben Nataniel the truly G'd fearing person. Then there was Rabbi Yossi the priest, described as "the pious one," and Rabbi Eleazar ben Arach, described as the bubbling well. These five outstanding disciples of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, each gave their respective recipe of how to achieve one's spiritual goals in this life. The order in which their teacher Rabbi Yochanan lists the names of these students indicates the order of effectiveness of these various virtues in counteracting the activities of the yetzer hara. Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrkanus not only possessed total recall, but he advocated ayin tovah, the benevolent eye, (obviously a virtue he practiced personally), a Divine quality. "He" bestows blessings on all His creatures, as we read in the Bible on numerous occasions. The opposite is "the evil eye," which can cause damage even to the most saintly persons. When G'd gave Moses the second set of tablets containing the ten commandments, He commanded Moses to make sure no one would be around to give an "evil eye," when the latter ascended the mountain. (Exodus 34,3) Such an instruction had not been issued the first time around. The essential damage caused by this evil eye is due to the character deficiency of the viewer who infects everything he sees with his own disease. Therefore, such people, especially when full of hatred, reinforce the damage that their look can cause. Rabbi Eliezer therefore concluded that the benevolent eye was the panacea for all that is wrong in the world, and suggested that a person pray to G'd to help him acquire this character trait of the ayin tovah, the positive attitude to all that he sees around him. Rabbi Joshua ben Chananyah, though not of the same high standard as Rabbi Eliezer, who was a saintly person, almost superhuman, nevertheless was made of the kind of raw material that is the envy of all mothers. He was possessed of balanced attributes, positive powers, that enable one to achieve one's perfection. His slogan "select," or "be" a good companion, friend, matches this characteristic. It ensures continuity and intensification of one's good traits. The third disciple, Rabbi Shimon ben Nataniel, though not naturally as well endowed as his colleagues, nevertheless had trained himself to become a G'd fearing individual, had acquired the tools to counter the yetzer hara successfully. His prescription for a successful path in life, matches his own experience, when he tells us that a person needs to consider the consequences of all his actions. Whenever one is in the grip of temptation by the yetzer hara, one should consider the ultimate and inevitable result of succumbing. His dictum is similar to the statement "consider the wages of sin, compared to the loss incurred by committing a transgression." The opposite, of course, is he who borrows without making repayment, since borrowing from G'd is essentially no different than borrowing from man. Rabbi Yossi, who is termed a chassid, devout, pious individual, concentrated on his relations with his fellow man, always acting in a manner that transcended the requirements of justice. Therefore, his recipe for a successful life is to attach oneself to good neighbours, to fellow human beings that cherish such ideals, and thereby reinforce one's own beliefs and standards. Rabbi Eleazar ben Arach supplies a fifth venue designed to confront the yetzer hara successfully. Instead of passively absorbing foreign ideas, he is a "bubbling well," he dynamically and actively espouses Torah viewpoints, nullifies evil influences. His specific recipe, namely to cultivate a good heart, leads to one's being sincere in one's conduct vis a vis G'd. Conversely, of course, an evil heart, insincerity, would spoil everything. In the opinion quoted in Avot at first, Rabbi Yochanan is reported as preferring a quality that comes with birth, i.e. the attribute of total recall possessed by Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrkanus. Later, according to Abba Shaul, he changed his mind and concluded that a "good heart," i.e. an acquired trait, was the superior one. Man is made in such a way that his spirit can conquer his flesh. A combination of brain and good character is an unbeatable combination, and can overcome all difficulties. The five types of impurities discussed in our Parshah parallel to some extent the five impediments to human perfection discussed previously. 1) Menstrual flow, or flux, involuntary seminal discharge at regular intervals by the woman, is due to the nature of the raw material woman or man respectively are made of. 2) Various skin exzemas in their four categories. 3) Skin defects of the head, be they in normally hairy areas or normally bald areas. 4) Spots developing on one's clothing. 5) Spots developing in one's house. These impurities, tum-ot, appear in four gradations. A) Niddah and keree, a natural occurrence, not a disease, the result of the raw material man and woman respectively are made of. (Niddah, i.e. menstrual flow; keree, i.e. ejaculated male semen) B) Zav and Zavah, discharges by men and women respectively from the same source, but due to abnormalities in their respective systems, i.e. a disease. This is due to some imbalance in the physical composition of the body, usually temporarily. C) All kinds of Tzora-at, skin exzemas of the body, also due to errors of "nature." D) Tzora-at of the clothing or house,- completely unnatural, in fact, defying anything and everything we know about nature. Parallel to this, man's food intake can be viewed as comprising four patterns. 1) Food intake for the purpose of maintaining vital bodily functions. 2) Excessive food intake, which may result in a natural imbalance of the body's forces, akin to Zav and Zavah. 3) Intake of unwholesome food; this may cause skin diseases. 4) Intake as food of things which are not fit for human consumption in any state. Intake of such unnatural vegetable matter or animal tissue, may cause greater disturbances, far beyond the mere body of the person who has absorbed them, infecting his environment, i.e. clothing and home. It is natural for man to want luxuries once he has satisfied his vital requirements. Having tasted a variety of the latter, he is apt to begin experimenting with new kinds of physical gratifications, often harmful to him.

Symbolically, the red heifer legislation can be understood in the following manner. The cow herself,- though reminiscent of the golden calf's mother, and thus indirectly responsible for her offspring,- is pure, much as the soul is pure at entry into the human body. The colour red represents the soul after having joined the body and becoming besieged by all the attractions of physical life here on earth. Sin is possible on three levels, parallel to the three life forces that are extant in man. Man possesses the life force of the plants, i.e. he responds to everything physical. He possesses the life force of animals, i.e. he is sensitive to all that goes on around him be it painful or pleasurable. Thirdly, he possesses intellect, being able to sin with it by preferring to pattern his life on heretical concepts. The requirement that the red heifer must not have worn a yoke in order for it to be capable of becoming an instrument of atonement, suggests that it represents the type of man who has rejected any and all limitations from a higher source concerning the manner in which he can conduct his life down here. The fact that only a minute amount of the blood of the red heifer is actually presented on the altar, indicates that the physical pleasures man is permitted to indulge in are minimal, so that he will be free to fulfil the will of the Lord. Removal of the red heifer from all three encampments of the Israelites, both from the most sacred as well as from the relatively least holy, indicates that man must remain free, or free himself from the demands made upon him by the three life forces that we have mentioned earlier. All the remainder of the red heifer is to be burned. The reason that burning of skin, flesh and blood is each mentioned separately, seems to symbolise the three life forces again. Each of these forces is more concealed from view than the next. Skin represents the exterior life force. Flesh is the middle life force; blood is the innermost life force. The use of both cedar wood, representing the tallest of the plants, and hyssop, representing the most lowly plant, is a reminder that we must observe the golden mean. By throwing the aforementioned into the fire, we are to demonstrate that we abandon the path of extremism. The priest washing his clothes, then his body, then re-entering the encampment, constitutes three stages of atonement. Washing one's body is symbolic of purifying the sense of touch. Washing one's clothing symbolises purification of the animalistic life force. Return to the encampment is symbolic of rehabilitating the mind, which through having been outside the encampment had been apart from the shechinah, G'ds Presence. At that point in the process, the rehabilitated are fit again to associate not only with the deputy leader Eleazar, but with the leaders themselves, i.e. Moses and Aaron. Had the whole procedure of the burning of the red heifer and the subsequent sprinkling of its ash contained in springwater, been performed on Moses and Aaron themselves, it might have subdued their anger at the Jewish people sufficiently to have prevented their having later on become guilty of hitting the rock instead of speaking to it. (Numbers 19,7-12) Perhaps this is the reason that this law is recorded at this point in the fortieth year of the wandering of the Israelites. The fact is that the law itself was promulgated already in the second year of their trek through the desert. The part of the purification legislation that requires eventide for completion of the process, may symbolise that the time of day when the body cools off is most suitable for reassertion of spiritual forces within us. Also, at such times, emotional responses are more likely to be tempered by one's intellect. Interestingly, the person who administers the sprinkling, required all three stages of the purification outlined. The person who burned the red heifer, however, needed only two stages. He did not have to leave the camp. Perhaps this is because his entire function had been to destroy the red heifer, the symbol of earthiness. The remains of the red heifer are handled only by ish tahor, someone already purified. The person handling the ashes needs only to wash his clothing, not even his body. Since the sins of man can stem from any of the three life forces, the ash of the red heifer was stored in three different places, as a reminder. (compare Mishnah Parah, chapter three) One part was kept within the precincts of the temple, one part on Mount Olives, and the third part was divided up amongst all the twenty four groupings of the priests, the mishmarot. The Torah describes three instances of a person becoming impure, hinting at the three parts of man that can incur impurity. The annual reading of this portion occurs chronologically after the celebration of the redemption of the Jewish people in the days of Mordechai, shortly before Passover, when we celebrate the redemption from Egypt, and before the month of Nissan which, according to tradition, will herald the coming of the Messiah. It is interesting that our sages,-when the four special readings in advance of the Passover holiday were arranged,- did not place the reading of parshat hachodesh, i.e. the reading of the portion announcing the coming of the month of Nissan, and the Passover legislation, before that of parshat parah. One would have expected them to do so, since, chronologically speaking, the tabernacle was put up on the first of Nissan, and the red heifer was burned only on the second day of that month. This may reflect their view that the concept of purity is so paramount in Jewish philosophy, that it can push historical, chronological considerations into the background. For that reason, though we lack the ash of the red heifer today, and are therefore unable to purify ourselves ritually from contact with a dead body, we still immerse ourselves in a ritual bath (especially prior to the holidays) in order to fulfil the rites of purification at least symbolically.