{"id":147,"date":"2012-07-02T14:51:23","date_gmt":"2012-07-02T12:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shaareihoraah.org\/wordpress\/?p=147"},"modified":"2012-07-02T23:30:59","modified_gmt":"2012-07-02T21:30:59","slug":"parshas-chukas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shaareihoraah.org\/?p=147","title":{"rendered":"Parshas Chukas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this week\u2019s <em>Parsha<\/em>, <strong>Chukas<\/strong>, we learn about the classic inexplicable <em>Chok<\/em>, the <strong>Para Aduma<\/strong>. <em>Chazal<\/em> tell us that <strong>Shlomo HaMelech<\/strong>, the wisest of all men, was capable of understanding the motive and purpose of every <em>Mitzva<\/em>, until he reached <strong>Para Aduma<\/strong>. The question arises, what was so unique about the <em>Chok<\/em> of <strong>Para Aduma<\/strong>? Dozens of <em>Mitzvos<\/em> are categorized as <em>Chukim<\/em>, and to understand why scales make a fish more \u201cpure\u201d than a scale-less one or why split hooves are better than closed ones is no less mysterious to me than why a red cow can remove the defilement of death. In fact <strong>Rashi<\/strong> gives a rough explanation of the significance of the <strong>Para Aduma<\/strong>, that the mother cow comes to atone for its sinful, golden child and the <em>aveira<\/em> of <em>Chet HaEgel<\/em>. While inevitably not a comprehensive and all encompassing explanation, it is not less than what he understand of the numerous other <em>Chukim<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It seems to me that <strong>Shlomo HaMelech\u2019s<\/strong> issue was not with the mysterious nature of <em>Chukim<\/em> in general, and he understood the significance of all of them, including the <strong>Para Aduma<\/strong>. Rather, his problem was comprehending the inherent contradiction in the process of purifying those who were <em>Tamei<\/em>, while simultaneously rendering those <em>Tahor<\/em> impure. What troubled <strong>Shlomo HaMelech<\/strong> was that the <em>Mitzvos<\/em> are not naturally contradictory or inconsistent, and Tuma is the opposite of <em>Tahara<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>In the other 612 <em>Mitzvos<\/em> of the <strong>Torah<\/strong>, sanctity is a contradiction to profanity, and the reverse. The natural state of events in the spiritual world parallels that of the physical, where light and darkness cannot exist in conjunction. In our daily life, the more we dedicate ourselves to learning Torah, keeping <em>Mitzvos<\/em> and other methods of achieving <em>Kedusha<\/em>, has the inevitable consequence of distancing ourselves from the opposite. A <em>Mitzva<\/em> whose performance could simultaneously lead one to <em>Tuma<\/em> and <em>Kedusha<\/em> is incomprehensible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this week\u2019s Parsha, Chukas, we learn about the classic inexplicable Chok, the Para Aduma. Chazal tell us that Shlomo HaMelech, the wisest of all men, was capable of understanding the motive and purpose of every Mitzva, until he reached &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/shaareihoraah.org\/?p=147\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-parsha","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2z7Yb-2n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaareihoraah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaareihoraah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaareihoraah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaareihoraah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaareihoraah.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shaareihoraah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaareihoraah.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaareihoraah.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaareihoraah.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}