Day #201–Rambam DAILY Sefer HaMitzvos

[Music] it is day number 201 of our daily study of RA and in the three chapters a day of M we are still inas the laws of ritual impurity contracted through exposure to a corpse chapters 2122 and 23 and our Mitzvah today I'm sure you know what it is because we've been doing the same mitzvah for the past several days and we're going to do it again today positive commandment 107 is the Mitzvah which entails all of the laws having to do with the imp purity of a corpse and how that is contracted yesterday we gave some mystical insights into the Mitzvah I'll try to give some more of that uh today uh and I'll also give you a little heads up tomorrow God willing we're going to finish and we're going to startuma paruma means the red heer the red heer is the ritual which is the only antidote to remove the impurity contracted through exposure to a corpse now both of these subjects both the impurity as well as the method for removing the impurity are in a Torah portion known as hukas hukas literally means a law but it's a special a special type of law it means a law that is not rational it's a law that are finite mortal Minds can't make sense of in fact we're told that schal King Solomon the wisest of all men attempted to understand this Mitzvah he wanted to understand the rationale behind it and was not able to do so and it was only misho our teacher Moses to whom Hashem revealed an understanding of this Mitzvah um and and even with meeno we're told that when he first learned this Mitzvah from Hashem he was perplexed he couldn't understand how it was possible that there could be any cure for such impurity he didn't have this reaction regarding other forms of ritual impurity but specifically the impurity contracted through exposure to a corpse Mao could not understand how anyone could come back from that how could how could there be any rectification Andis explains that as we mentioned yesterday impurity comes in where there's a void of Holiness which is synonymous with a void of life because the only true life is Holiness and it sort of parasitically rushes in to uh pick up any traces of life that were left behind after the uh life has vacated the whole concept of the impurity contracted through exposure to a corpse really represents on a spiritual level complete disconnect from godliness heaven for fend as long as there's some some connection you can rebuild you can repair but when the connection's totally severed H how is it possible to rectify that and that's really what perplexed meeno when somebody becomes completely cut off from God God forbid how does he come back from that and what's interesting there are so many insights regarding this Mitzvah and we could go on and on and on and on about it but I'll just tell you one interesting thing so you studied Carbones right we did a whole safer called Carbones and we learned about the various different sacrificial offerings and you learned that these different animal sacrifices were all brought in the Bas of mish in the Holy Temple okay so I'm going to tell you something interesting the Puma the red haer which is the only antidote to impurity contracted through exposure to a corpse you would think that would be done in the temple right like it's sort of like an animal sacrif sacrifice no it's done outside of the camp why is it done outside of the camp so do you remember when we were learning Carbones when we were learning about the animal sacrifices I'm going to ask you comprehension question see if you uh still remember this what sacrifice do you bring for an intentional sin you're right that was a trick question there is no sacrifice for an intentional sin sacrifice is only a tone for unintentional sins very good okay the sacrifices can only clean up a certain amount of spiritual pollution the spiritual pollution that's caused by inadvertent accidental sins the ritual impurity contracted from exposure to a corpse represents a much more egregious much more intense level of negativity where this is a complete cut off and that represents purposeful sins so in order to rectify that you have to go outside of the temple outside of the camp outside of the Holy confines and there there is a cure even for someone who went outside so to speak of his connection to Hashem now I'll just add one more detail because it's so uh interesting there's something funny about the red heffer I mean there are a lot of things that are funny about it but paradoxical I should say but one of those things is that the people involved in preparing the ashes and administering it become impure so the impure person becomes pure and the pure people become impure which is paradoxical but there's there's another dimension to that which is self-sacrifice that in order to purify those who contracted impurity through exposure to a corpse somebody's going to have to take the hit somebody's going to have to have self-sacrifice and become impure in the course of purifying the other person this superrational dedication to sacrifice to do something for the benefit of somebody else even to the detriment of oneself that is sort of the mirror image or the very opposite of the impurity that is the purposeful sin or purposefully going outside of the domain of Holiness in other words in the negative realm going completely outside of the domain of Holiness can only be rectified by in the positive realm completely going outside of what makes sense and what is normal meaning the self- sacrifice of someone who's willing to be part of administering the red heffer antidote so that somebody else can become pure okay there are so many more insights really this this is endless but uh tomorrow God willing we're finishing Tas so just wanted to get some of these insights in there while I could okay we'll see you again tomorrow God willing