Chukat begins with the law of the Red Heifer, judged by the Sages to be the most incomprehensible in the Torah. It became a classic example of a chok, a “statute,” often understood as a law that has no reason, or at least none we can understand. The text then shifts from law to narrative. After the death of Miriam…
…sound turned off. The mood eventually passed but while it lasted I made some of the worst mistakes of my life. I mention these things because they are the connecting thread of parshat Chukat. The most striking episode is the moment when the people complain about the lack of water. Moses does something wrong, and though God sends water from…
The Parsha in a Nutshell This summary is adapted from this week’s main Covenant & Conversation essay by Rabbi Sacks, available to read in full via the left sidebar (or below, if you are viewing this on your phone) The most striking episode in Chukat is the moment when the people complain about the lack of water. Moshe does something…
Video Transcript: On Habits of the Heart So this week we read parshat Chukat, which begins with the strangest ritual in Judaism, the most baffling, the one that is called zot chukat haTorah par excellence, it’s the chok, the statute, the thing we can’t understand. This is the prime example of it. It is the para aduma, the Red Heifer….
…for each. [1] For a deeper discussion on Moses’ actions at Kadesh and how the people’s need for a leader was evolving, see Covenant & Conversation essay on Chukat, ‘Why was Moses not destined to enter the land?’ https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/chukat/why-was-moses-not-destined-to-enter-the-land/. What do you think are the main differences between the leadership styles of Moshe and Yehoshua? Why do you think the…
The Parsha in a Nutshell Chukat begins with the law of the red heifer, (the parah adamah) judged by the Sages to be the most incomprehensible mitzvah in the Torah. It is a classic example of a Chok, a “statute,” often understood as a law that has no reason, or at least none we can understand. The text then shifts…
The Parsha in a Nutshell Chukat begins with the law of the Red Heifer (a young female cow who can be used to purify us). The Sages thought the Red Heifer was the hardest of all the mitzvot in the Torah to understand, and it became the classic example of a chok – a mitzvah with no obvious explanation. The…
The command of the parah adumah, the Red Heifer, with which our parsha begins, is known as the hardest of the mitzvot to understand. The opening words, zot chukat ha-Torah, are taken to mean, this is the supreme example of a chok in the Torah, that is, a law whose logic is obscure, perhaps unfathomable. It was a ritual for…
Chukat is about mortality. In it we read of the death of two of Israel’s three great leaders in the wilderness, Miriam and Aaron, and the sentence of death decreed against Moses, the greatest of them all. These were devastating losses. To counter that sense of loss and bereavement, the Torah employs one of Judaism’s great principles: The Holy One,…
There is an important principle in Judaism, a source of hope, and also one of the structuring principles of the Torah. It is the principle that God creates the cure before the disease (Megillah 13b). Bad things may happen but God has already given us the remedy if we know where to look for it. So for instance in Chukat we read…