(or: On the Imperfect Perception
of Human Perfection)
Do you ever feel dirty? I'm not talking about what your
pants look like after working in the garden or on your car engine, or having
just painted the den a new color or cleansing a clogged pipe. I refer now to
the kind of dirtiness one might feel having committed some moral wrong. How do
we get rid of that sense of dirtiness?
Most of us are familiar with the story of Moses, Aaron and
the rock. The children of the Israel were desperate for water and these two
intrepid leaders of the Israelites were at a loss as how to proceed. God
instructs both of them to order water from the rock, which would quench the
thirst of the entire nation. But instead of speaking to the rock, Moses struck
the rock with his staff. More importantly, he suggested that the provision of
water to the people was a human rather than divine act. And for this sin, both
he and brother Aaron were denied entry into the promise land.
After all these two did in the wilderness for the Jewish
people, seems a bit harsh, no?
The first part of our parashah covers a less known ritual of
the Jewish people which has to do with purification after contamination. The
contamination is a result of contact with a dead body or being in close
proximity to death. In such a case water mix with the ashes of a burnt red
heifer, together with some Cedar wood and “crimson stuff,” is sprinkled over the
contaminated people in order to purify them. You’ve never seen that ritual because
following the destruction of the Temple, it could not be performed. But at one
time, purification was a center stage, spotlighted, central feature of Jewish
ritual practice. There are entire Talmudic tractates dedicated to the process. Libera
Judaism does not focus on that aspect of Judaism any more. In a sense, according
to biblical and Temple era Judaism, we all live in a state of perpetual impurity.
On the surface, there is no apparent connection between the two
sections. At a deeper level, perhaps the Torah is trying to suggest a certain
reality which we all too often evade. Do we not all commit hundreds of minor
acts of varying degrees of sin throughout the course of the day, communicating half-truths,
speaking ill of others, killing a helpless bug, etc.? Are we not all guilty of myriad
minor infractions daily? Each sin, in and of itself, is a mere trifle, a speck
of dust, no more. But taken in the aggregate, as all those mini-sins
accumulate, hour after hour and day after day, shouldn’t we feel a certain pain
of conscience that would question our own moral posturing? Our ancestors felt this
profoundly, most of all in facing death, a sort of existential encounter with
human frailty, finitude, and meaninglessness. In a fantasy of sorts, I can hear
Moses pleading with God, “I only hit the rock. It was a rock. It has no
feelings. People know that I attribute all to you. Really—no Promised Land over
that!?” Moses never said any of that. He
didn’t have to. He knew something that most of us ought to know, if we don’t
already.
If we were to doubt the effectiveness of the waters of
lustration in cleansing ourselves of our own moral failings, I suspect we would
be asking a question that began with our biblical ancestors. Did any of them
really believe that a few drops of holy water cleansed them of impurities? We
are a people with a long history of both obedience and rebelliousness. I can
well imagine someone doubting that the waters of lustration were just a weird ritual,
but I suspect those same people still faced the troubling anxiety of that which
brought the waters of lustration to be: the reality of facing our own human frailties
and failings daily. How do we get cleaned when we all too often do dirty work,
our own or those of others for whom we are obliged?
Moses and Aaron were two of the greatest leaders that the
Jewish people has ever known. And yet,
the Torah tells us a tale of their humanity. They committed a sin. They were
not perfect. They were not, in that sense, pure. They were, in a word, human.
And as if parashat Hukkat needed to drive home this point even further,
we learn of Aaron’s death on a mountain top. And his burial would forever be
shrouded in obscurity.
I would hate for anyone to think of themselves as being
hopelessly contaminated. On the other hand, I would hope that all of us would journey
through the few years allotted us in life with a deeper awareness of our own
shortcomings and misdeeds. America is not perfect. The founding fathers were
not perfect. Our leaders are not perfect. I am not perfect. You are not
perfect. Perfection, for the most part, is an illusion. That does not free of
us from pursuing what is right and good and beautiful. It frees us from the disappointment
when in the end, we fall short. And so the words of the great prophet Michah
(6:8): “He has told you, O Man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of
you: Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
That’s what seems to be missing: the humility. If we all knew
just how limited we all were, we might strike each other less and speak to one
another more.
Happy 244th birthday, America. God bless you. God
bless us all. And Shabbat Shalom.
