I have this need for my house to look neat and clean before I go upstairs every night. I have to declutter and put everything in pile so that in the morning it is going to look like it belongs in Home and Garden or House Beautiful magazine. I just guess it soothes my sensibilities. It is a need I don’t really even understand and I know my husband does not get it. But, even though he doesn’t get it, he will help me straighten up and put things away knowing that it is important to me. He trusts that it’s of value to me and even though it is something that he cannot understand, because it doesn’t soothe his sensibilities, he does it anyway.
That is what this week’s Torah portion is at least partly about. In the parshah Chukat, at the very beginning a decree is made that defies any rational or known explanation. It’s the mitzvah of the red heifer. Ok. For all of you who may not know what a heifer is- it is a cow that has never been pregnant and therefore very young. And this particular cow has to be red- all over. Not black and white and red all over but RED. Also, she could not have worked a day in her life. Sounds like a pretty enviable position, right? Young, beautiful, svelte, living a life of luxury... well, until she is sacrificed. There goes the life of luxury. But she sacrifices her life to provide the ingredients for ritual purity for those who have been in contact with the dead. You may ask: Why is this sacrifice different from all other sacrifices? Well for 2 reasons: 1) its female, 2) it’s performed outside the Temple. We could spend a whole lot of time talking about this. But, I will give you the opportunity to look it up and we will move on.
So this sacrifice of the red heifer is unexplainable. At least in the human mind. For millennia, literally thousands of years, people- rabbis, scholars, lay folk like you and me- have tried to understand and explain why this commandment has been put in the Torah. Essentially, everyone has come to the conclusion that it is about trust. It’s like cleaning the house because you trust that it’s what someone wants or needs even if you don’t “get” why. You trust because you love, you do it to build and maintain relationships, you do it “because.” And not just “because I told you to.” We (used to) perform the mitzvah of the red heifer even though we don’t get it because if we have a loving relationship with Gd and Gd asks us to do it then we do, just because.
Trust is not easy. Trust in ourselves, in others and in the universe is something that requires, well at least for me, a lot of work. I am envious of those people who just give it up to Gd. My wise cousin used to say “let go and let Gd.” This has never been an easy task for me. But, I am learning that if I understood everything then there would be no opportunity for growth and learning.
In the Anusara tradition of yoga the heart is the center of grace. There is our left and right sides and our front and back bodies. I am not a certified Anusara teacher and I won’t purport myself to be an expert. What I have come to learn through my teachers (who are) and my studies, is that the front body- the part we are aware of all the time- represents our personal self. The back body- the part of us that we so rarely pay attention to- symbolizes the Universe. In today’s modern world we spent most of the time thinking about ourselves, living in our front body. We coil in and retract our hearts, the seat of Divine truth. We stop sharing our true Self and our connection to Gd. We have to trust that Gd has our backs, even if we can’t understand that.
The other lesson of Chukat is that to understand is an intellectual pursuit. As Jews we embody Torah and therefore can experience it in our bodies, not our heads alone. Sometimes we have to “trust our guts” even when our brains cannot process what is going on.
In our practice today I invite you to set an intention to try and turn down the volume of your thoughts, listen to your body instead. I invite you to let the Universe have your back and hold your heart and to trust the breath to take you where you need to be even if you don’t understand why.