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When I lived in New Orleans in the early nineties, one news segment which I always enjoyed was the Frank Davis fishing report. Frank Davis was to fishing what Coach Madden was to football – voluble and excited like a young kid. Upon catching the fish, Davis would hold it out toward the camera, and as it panned in on the catch, I knew if it was a kosher fish. I learned that redfish is kosher not from a rabbi but from Mr. Davis.
Now the laws about fish and kashrut are complex and, truth be told, don’t necessarily make a lot of sense. Why are fish which have fins and scales kosher, while those which lack either one is not? Why does the Torah deem redfish kosher, but shrimp trayf? If someone gives you a logical answer, all I can say is – I’d love to hear it.
The truth is that the Torah is not always logical. Sometimes it simply states a decree, and we are expected to follow it. Take the example of the red heifer, which opens this week’s portion, Chukkat-Balak. Why does it render the priests who sprinkle the mixture of water and ashes pure, while simultaneously rendering the Israelites upon whom the water is sprinkled impure? Consider this passage from the 5th century CE Pesikta d’Rav Kahana:
- A gentile asked Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, "These rituals you do, they seem like witchcraft! You bring a heifer, burn it, crush it up, and take its ashes. [If] one of you is impure by the dead [the highest type impurity], 2 or 3 drops are sprinkled on him, and you declare him pure!"
- "Have you ever seen a man where a restless spirit entered him?" [The gentile] said to [Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai], "Yes!"
- [Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai] said to him, "And what did you do for him?" [The gentile] said to him, "We brought roots and made them smoke beneath him, and pour water and it flees." [Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai] said to him, "Your ears should hear what leaves from your mouth! The same thing is true for this spirit, the spirit of impurity.”
- After he left, our rabbi's students said, "You pushed him off with a flimsy explanation. What will you say to us?" He said to them, "By your lives, a dead person doesn't make things impure, and the water doesn't make things pure. Rather, G-d said, 'I have issued a rule, I have decreed a decree and you have no permission to transgress what I decreed, as it says "This is a rule of the Torah."
In other words, sometimes we observe various Jewish rituals just because G-d said so. Which makes no sense – until you’ve raised children, at which point you fully appreciate and understand it.
- Rabbi Scott Hoffman
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