Perhaps counterintuitively, it’s much harder to conceive of something infinitely large than it is to think of nothingness at all. Many people confuse the terms Ohr Ein Sof with Ein, the Infinite Light, light/energy without end, with complete absence, and assume that something which is infinite, by which they imagine infinitely large (which is the source of their mistake) is “infinitely” the biggest.

Kabbalah, on the other hand, places the realm of Ein above Ohr Ein Sof. Likewise, our sages have long understood that the laws of the Para Adeumah, The Red Heifer, are the deepest expression of Torah. While the instructions themselves couldn’t be clearer or more precise, the entire concept defies our understanding, perhaps more than any other concept in the entire Torah.

First of all, with death perhaps the most common occurrence in the natural world, why does a human who comes into contact with it become so spiritually diminished that this state is contagious and that it disqualifies one from even approaching the precincts of divinity? A Kohen’s, priest’s primary holy duty is simply to eat, to literally internalize, the meat from a karban, “sacrifice”. The very beginning of the Oral Torah, Torah Sh’Ba’al Peh, the first mishna of Brachot, compares (in many deep ways) the daily recital of Shema, our daily declaration of our special Jewish relationship with The Creator, at night (when the halachic day begins) with a Kohen who had become tamei, impure, has excised this spiritual flaw and requalified himself to eat this holy food? Nonetheless, it takes a week-long detailed process to re-purify himself.

More than that, why does water (the most common material of this world), into which an extremely rare cow’s (so red that it contains no hair of any other color), never even scratched or ever put into service, which had been slaughtered and then completely burned up, ashes been mixed, when splashed on someone thus impure, instantly remove this impurity? Furthermore, why does the one who sprinkles become impure (but at a much less serious level of impurity) while the one upon whom the water is sprinkled become pure? And, once a person has been sprinkled with the extremely rare water (the Para Aduma has, according to the Mishna, only been performed nine times in all of Jewish history up to now!), need to then immerse in a mikvah, a gathering of “living waters”? How does this very common ritual complete what the special water couldn’t, apparently, complete?

Halachic literature is filled with even more questions on this topic.

The Meor Eynayim explains that this set of laws attains the spiritual of Eyn, of nothingness, because Eyn Tefisah Ba, there is no grasping it, that it is L’Ma’ala Min HaTa’am, above all reason. While these laws, like all in the Torah are made up of letters, vowels, musical notes (punctuation) as well as the mysterious ornaments on certain letters written in Torah script, their inner light, their Divine Essence, transcends all material reality. Through the medium of these letters and then their sounds and linguistic meanings, all physical and material, they somehow connect us to God. And while most Torah laws, as demonstrated by the vast halachic discussions about them in the Mishna, Gemara and later commentaries (up to our own day), provide us with the illusion that we can, to some extent at least, understand them, this one, the Para Aduma defies any understanding at all. Thus, it is our paradigm of the Ein.

We hold Moshe Rabbenu, Moses, by far our greatest leader and our greatest prophet (Navi). Of him alone does God declare he is freely welcome to all His Mysteries, Ne’eman Baito (trusted with His House). God also praises him as the most humble of all men, (Bamidbar 12:3). Moreso even than Avraham who describes himself as Dust and Ashes, Afar v’Efer (Bereishit 23:17).

Only by seeing yourself as even less than nothing, less than dust and ashes, can one possibly ascend to being able to grasp, to have intimate knowledge of and with, the Ein, the holiest essence of God. And from there, to bring only brachot, Blessing, to the world.

Shabbat Shalom