Parashat Chukat
Numbers 19:1-22:1
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
-- From Shakespeare's As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7
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Social psychologists frequently refer to a "dramaturgical self," a notion that human behavior is dependent on the time and space in which it occurs, as well as the audience observing it. A successful performance is one in which the audience accepts the actor's behavior; such acceptance is achieved only when the actor and the audience interactively create and recreate the social norms governing the situation. In essence, this is the foundation of role theory. A role is a set of expected behaviors associated with a given social status or position -- and those expected behaviors are constantly being defined and redefined by the person occupying the role and the people with whom s/he interacts.
In the course of our daily lives, we all occupy multiple roles. We are parents, children, spouses, partners, siblings, cousins, grandchildren, grandparents, friends, roommates, bosses, employees, co-workers, colleagues, clients, drivers, riders, commuters, teachers, students, activists, bloggers, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, and so on. And in each of our roles, we encounter others (or at least have the potential to encounter others) who constitute the "audience" for whom we perform. These role relations -- the relationships between ourselves as "actors" and the various "audiences" for whom we perform -- define all social interactions. There is no "parent" role without a "child" role; there is no "teacher" role without a "student" role; there is no "friend" role without another person to whom to be a friend.
It is against this frame that I interpret the episode of the red heifer recounted at the beginning of this week's parasha. This is the episode about which King Solomon, traditionally considered one of the wisest men in history, wrote "All this have I tried by wisdom; I said: 'I will get wisdom'; but it was far from me" (Eccesiastes 7:23; commentary B'midbar Rabbah 19:3). And truly there is no rational explanation for any of this:
The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying "This is the ritual law that the Lord has commanded. Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red heifer without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid. You shall give it to Elazar the priest. It shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence. Elazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting. The cow hall be burned in his sight -- its hide, flesh, and blood shall be burned, its dung included -- and the priest shall take cedar wood, hyssop, and crimson thread, and throw them into the fire consuming the cow. The priest shall wash his garments and bathe his body in water; after that the priest may reenter the camp, but he shall be impure until evening. He who performed the burning shall also wash his garments in water, bathe his body in water, and be impure until evening. A man who is pure shall gather up the ashes of the cow and deposit them outside the camp in a pure place, to be kept for water of lustration for the Israelite community, for purification. He who gathers up the ashes of the cow shall also wash his clothes and be impure until evening. This shall be for the Israelites and the strangers who reside among you a law for all time."
-- Numbers 19:1-10
A perfectly red calf -- no specks or spots of other colors, and the sages say even two hairs of any other color renders the calf ineligible -- that has never been used for profane purposes is to be sacrificed and burned (there's a protocol for it, but that's a topic for another time), its ashes mixed with water and a few other ingredients (also burned) to create "water of lustration," used for ritual purification purposes.
And just how exactly does the water of lustration purify? We have no idea. The Torah never tells us, the sages don't know the answer, and even King Solomon was stumped. The laws regarding the red heifer are known as "chukim" -- laws for which we have no accepted rational explanation. (This is in contrast to mishpatim -- laws for which we have one or more accepted rational explanations. Most of halacha falls into this latter category.)
And just to make things even more confusing, the people who perform the ritual to make the water of lustration have to be ritually pure at the beginning of the ritual, but the process of creating the purifying water makes them ritually impure, if only temporarily. In other words, while contact with the water of lustration purifies the impure, it also impurifies the pure. How exactly does that happen? Again, we don't know. The Torah doesn't tell us, the sages don't know, and even King Solomon was stumped.
The Torah portion continues by describing some circumstances in which the waters of lustration must be used to purify someone who has become ritually impure; elsewhere in the Torah we can find still other examples. And still we are given no reason for why the waters of lustration and their attendant rituals can purify the impure, or why they make the pure impure.
Enter the social psychologists. Everything comes down to role relations. We cannot identify good without also identifying bad. We cannot know right without also knowing wrong. And we cannot recognize what is pure without also recognizing what is impure.
The priest, a religious leader of the community, can only be a leader if he has a community to lead. The person in need of purification can only be purified with the help of a leader qualified to perform the ritual. Each needs the other, neither can get what s/he needs without the other, and each has his/her status altered by the actions of the other. Neither can afford to take the other for granted.
Therein lies the lesson. Too often in our lives, we take our role relations for granted. We do not give enough consideration to the feelings of our friends or family members; we are too curt with our employees or co-workers; we barely notice or ignore altogether the people who sell us our groceries, change the oil in our cars, clean our streets, teach our children, or provide us with any of the other countless services upon which we rely on a day-to-day basis. (And far too often, our leaders forget that their exalted positions and all the rights and privileges that go along with them depend on us, their many constituents, and not the privileged few who ply them with wealth and power. Too many of our leaders need to be reminded of that desperately, which I suppose is the topic of most of what we read here.) But in one way or another, we rely on each and every one of them, and they rely on us as well.
This is the nature of social life. When we recognize our role relations and treat our audiences with the respect they deserve simply as a matter of human dignity, we all flourish. And when we selfishly ignore our counterparts in our role relations in order to focus only on helping ourselves, we hurt our audiences and ultimately hurt ourselves by cutting ourselves off from our communities and making the world a much more unpleasant place.
No one, myself least of all, is saying we have to let others walk all over us, to deny our own needs in favor of the needs of others. But in every relationship -- in every set of role relations -- there's a point one should never cross. There's a reason I'm often saying that Hillel had it right when he taught that the entire Torah comes down to "that which is hateful to you, do not do unto your neighbor; the rest is commentary." One should never think so exclusively of one's own needs so as to trample those of the other in the relationship. Relationships all come with a degree of give and take, but on balance, in a good relationship, both partners tend to get what they need over the long run.
We'd all be far better off if we did a better job remembering that.
Shabbat shalom.
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