Parshah Summary – P’shat
The parshah opens with Moses receiving the enigmatic laws of the “red cow,” whose ashes are used to purify a person who has been contaminated by contact with a dead body. The name of the parshah, Hukat, is a form of the word חוֹק hok, which means “decree” or “statute.” The hok referred to here is the opening passage about burning up a פָרָה אֲדֻמּה parah adumah – a completely red cow – and making a magic purification potion from the ashes. Due to the particularly obscure and bizarre nature of this practice, the rabbis came to see the word חוֹק hok to refer to any of the mitzvot that don’t seem to make rational sense.
Next, after forty years of journeying through the desert, the Children of Israel arrive in the wilderness of Zin. Miriam dies, and the people thirst for water. Hashem tells Moses to speak to a rock and that water will emerge from it. Moses gets angry at the rebellious Israelites and instead strikes the rock with his staff. Water issues forth, but Moses is told that neither he nor Aaron will enter the Promised Land. Aaron dies at Hor Hahar and his son Elazar becomes the Kohein Gadol (High Priest). After yet another eruption of discontent from the people, venomous snakes attack the Israelite camp. Moses makes an image of a serpent out of brass and mounts it upon a pole, after which all who gaze upon the brass serpent are healed. The people then sing a song in honor of the miraculous well which, in the merit of Miriam, had provided them water in the desert over their forty year journey, and of which the water from the rock was yet another manifestation. Moses leads the people in battles against the Emorite kings Sikhon and Og (who seek to prevent Israel’s passage through their territory), and conquers their lands, which lie east of the Jordan.
Torah of Awakening | Jewish Meditation Teaching
Once when I was on an airplane, the flight attendant came through the cabin and asked me what I wanted to drink. “I’ll have sparkling water with lime please,” which is what I always used to have. “We have lime flavored sparkling water, is that okay?”
No, that's not okay! That’s what I was thinking – but I said, “sure, thanks.” I had been getting sparkling water with lime on the plane all my life, and suddenly it was gone – and in its place, a cheaper substitute. “Lime flavor” is not the same and is not as good as a piece of real lime – on a number of levels – but business decisions like this get made all the time. So many products nowadays are worse than their predecessors. This phenomenon is sometimes called, “selling out.” “Selling out” means reducing the quality of something for the sake of monetary gain; it is an exchange of one value for another. But this doesn’t happen only in business; it is a basic ability we have to override our inner sense of what is right for the sake of something else we want. And, it’s not a bad ability to have, if used properly. For example, it’s good to exercise every day, to eat healthy food, to spend quality time with others, and so on. But what if there is an emergency – someone has a crisis and needs your help. It’s good to be able to put all those things on hold temporarily and take care of the crisis. In this kind of case, “selling out” your personal health for the sake of another value – helping someone in crisis – can be a good thing. It is good to not be so attached your own needs so that you can respond to the needs of the situation.The problem is when this ability to override – to “sell out” – takes over and becomes our norm. The problem is when we completely “sell out” in the realm of personal health for the sake of a career, for example; that’s when we get into trouble. This is why it’s so important to consciously choose and create our habits. We can break them when necessary, as long as we return to them. Don’t let the exception to the rule become the new rule! Many of us are full of unconscious habits – behaviors we took on for certain reasons – that have become our norm, without ever consciously choosing them. וְיִפְתָּ֣ח הַגִּלְעָדִ֗י הָיָה֙ גִּבּ֣וֹר חַ֔יִל וְה֖וּא בֶּן־אִשָּׁ֣ה זוֹנָ֑ה וַיּ֥וֹלֶד גִּלְעָ֖ד אֶת־יִפְתָּֽח׃ Jephthah the Gileadite was a powerful warrior; he was the son of a woman who was a prostitute; Gilead begat Jephthah. - Shoftim (Judges) 11:1 The haftora for Parshat Hukat tells the story of Jephtah, the son of a harlot. Jephtah’s half-brothers of the same father don’t want their son-of-a-harlot half-brother to share in their inheritance, so they kick him out of the house and send him away. Now Jephtah is a great warrior, and he attracts a band of men to form a militia, and they become his loyal companions. Years later, when the Ammonites attack Israel, the brothers come back to Jephtah and ask him to please come lead the fight against the Ammonites. “But you hated me and sent me away! Now you come back to me when you are in need?” The brothers offer him a deal: “If you come back and help us fight, then when it’s all over, we will make you our leader.” Japhteh is convinced – he “sells out” in a sense, giving up his sense of justice for the sake of prestige and status. Before Japhteh goes into battle, he prays: Oh Hashem, if you make me victorious, I will sacrifice to you whatever comes out of my house first when I return home! What?? This is very strange – what does he think is going to come out of his house? Sure enough, when he returns home, his daughter runs out to greet him, and he cries out in horror as he realizes he must sacrifice his own daughter. This is such a strange story. Obviously, if he vows to sacrifice “whatever comes out of his house,” he will end up sacrificing a family member; it’s not like a goat or sheep is going to run out of his house! But if we understand the story metaphorically, it makes sense as an illustration of this “sell-out” mentality. First, Jephtah is the son of a harlot, and prostitution “sells out” the sacred intimacy of relationship and family for the sake of monetary gain. Second, Jephtah agrees to help his betraying brothers fight for the sake of prestige; more selling out. Finally, he vows to sacrifice whatever comes out of his house if he wins. This is the clearest example – he’s willing to sacrifice the most precious thing at a future time for the sake of gaining something else in the short run. Then, he is surprised when it leads to tragedy – just as we too can be surprised when we unconsciously make bad choices for the sake of short term, relatively unimportant goals. On the deepest level, when it comes to how we use our own minds, “selling out” tends to be the norm for most of us. Meaning: Right now, we have something so precious – the most precious thing there is in fact – we have the ability to receive this sacred moment, to know the miracle of Being, in this moment. And yet, many of us unconsciously and unwittingly give up this most precious gift – for what? Mostly for useless thinking. Unaware of what we are even doing, we compulsively cover up this most precious thing with our constant stream of thoughts, just like our hand can cover our eyes and block out the entire sun. The mind has a certain illusory gravity; it says, “Pay attention to me! I have something urgently important!” But wake up to the majesty of this moment, and see: most thinking is a bogus urgency. Make it a habit to be spaciousness, to be openness, rather than busily thinking, and the miraculous becomes your norm. Yes, of course, sometimes you have to “sell out” – it’s okay – the situation will sometimes require you to get busy with your thinking, to rush around, to take care of business. Sometimes you have to put aside the most precious thing for the sake of the situation, but don’t make that the norm. When you can, come back in t’shuvah to Presence, come back to this moment, come back to the Divine as this moment – be the openness within which the fullness of this moment arises. In fact, our innate capacity to return from the trivial to the miraculous is encoded in Jephtah’s name – יִפְתָּֽח Yiftakh – which means, “will open.” No matter how much we have “sold out,” our potential to return to openness – to know ourselves as openness – is ever-present, and we can always do it from wherever we are, in the moment we recognize that we are. This is the Path of ע Ayin – of seeing deeply into the underlying, Ever-Present Miracle…
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