A Taste of Shabbos – Parashat Chukat

This Torah portion focuses more on mortality than any other. It is sadly an appropriate reading for this week, especially in Boulder, with the sudden passing of a beloved member of the Jewish community, and the tragic death of the bombing victim of June 1, who succumbed to terrible burns. May their memories be for a blessing.

Before I discuss the topics in the parasha, I would like to bring in a Shabbos connection. The sages say that one who passes away before Shabbos is considered righteous. However, what does the moment of death have to do with good life choices? One of the connections is that since Shabbos is a taste of the world to come, one who passes on right before, gets to experience that journey more easily than going through all the weekday travails and those parts of the nether worlds that correspond more directly to mundane attachments.

As a contemporary Sephardic rabbi, David Sutton, puts it, ordinarily death involves a painful separation of the soul from the body. However when death and burial occur on Erev Shabbos, the deceased was already connected to the spiritual realm by dint of connection to the sanctity of Shabbos (a taste of the World to Come) and therefore the separation occurs more easily.

The Hassidic masters interpret the idea of ‘passing on’ to refer to the psychological state of ‘letting go’ of all weekday concerns, fear, and anxiety, before Shabbos comes in. It reminds me of some elementary school teachers (and perhaps should also apply to older ages) who tell their students, ‘Before you come in to the room, leave your feelings of sadness and worry outside the door.’ We can say a full ‘thank you’ to the past, and at the same time look forward to a brand new future.

These literal and figurative aspects of ‘dying on Erev Shabbos’ go together. As Rabbi Sutton continues, if a person connects to spirituality during this lifetime by focusing on Shabbos preparations on Friday, he or she is already practicing turning away from mundane activities, and the separation is that much easier at the end of death.

Like the teaching in Pirkei Avot, this world is the ante chamber to the festivity; work first, reap the fruits later. In the world to come we experience our bliss, but in this world, we bring G-d bliss. But in that twilight zone before Shabbos, we can have a taste of both; if we can ‘choose’ to die to the past, we can open to a new future. Contact with cleansing water also helps us in this choice.  Whether it is bathing or immersing in a Mikvah before Shabbat or ritually washing our hands before eating, to purify our intentions, water is a big part of Shabbos.

A variety of streams and themes about water, flow in and out of this parasha, from the water where the ashes of the Red Heifer are mixed in, to the well of Miriam, to the streams near the border of Israel that flowed with the blood of the Amorites who tried to ambush the Israelites. Is there a common theme of the water that connects all the episodes? Yes, water represents the power of Torah, Tefillah, Teshuvah-study, prayer, and reconnection with others and with G-d. This refinement of the material is also expressed by the passing of the ‘three holy shepherds’ in this parasha- Miriam, Aharon, and later Moshe all of whom died through ‘misat neshikah’-death by kissing, in the holiest way, whereby, as Rabbi Sutton puts it, ‘G-d comes to a person and takes the soul from the world painlessly, as though giving a kiss.’

Regarding the opening of this portion, this is what transpires when the ashes of the Red Cow are mixed with ‘living water’. Then when they are sprinkled on the impure person, he/she then becomes purified, while the sprinkler and others assisting in the process, become impure. This is considered the ultimate counter rational law. What’s happening here I think is a kind of particle-wave like entanglement. The one who came in contact with a dead body is a particle par excellence, but the cohein, who is often ‘waving’ animals or even people, becomes temporarily impure. There is a kind of exchange of energies here, as in the case of healing from the skin disease of Tzaraat, where the most holy and the least holy need to meet somewhere on common ground, dissolving the illusion that Divine Oneness does not permeate everything. Therefore death too is not absolute. These exalted thoughts are finally conveyed by the episode where the people complain, are bitten by snakes, cry out, and G-d tells Moshe to make a copper snake- the epitome of evil- and put it on a pole, and the people are healed by looking up. The looking up, explain the mystics, conveys the principle that that evil too, can be corrected by an internal turning back, or, gazing up to the source of all existence. As the Talmud puts it, ‘Nothing stands in the way of Teshuva.’ Let us combat and transform the negative experiences of the past week, by immersing in the above waters of Torah, prayer, and acts of kindness. We can do this especially in our activities of sanctifying the Sabbath with our additional soul that enables us to engage in more pleasurable food and drink where the soul and the body are equal partners in making this world a Garden of Eden.