The Sin of Needing to Understand - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

so here's you know one level of the symbolism of the red heifer that spoke to my heart the midrash asks why the red heifer is a female if all the others sacrificed animals are male so the symbolic answer that the midrash gives is it's more of an allegory and so this allegory teaches that the red heifer comes to a tone for the sin of the eagle as a half the golden calf that the Israelites shamefully created and built in the absence of motion who they feared disappeared and abandoned them on the top of the mount we all remember what happened and so here's the allegory that the midrash gives it's about a young child of one of the king's maid servants who went into the palace and dirtied the Palace of the king and so the King was was angry commands let the mother of this young child come and clean up her son's mess right so in the same way the king of kings Hashem he says the young child the golden calf came and dirtied my Palace let the mother the red heifer come and clean up the mess in other words let the red heifer come in a tone for the sin of the golden calf Jeremy did you hear that before it's a beautiful teaching buterman nonetheless points out the seemingly obvious contradiction here right if indeed the Commandment of the red heifer is the Paradigm example of a hook where it says no reason given that we can understand then aren't we attributing some sort of reason to it by saying that its purpose is to atone for the golden calf all right so open your hearts well can I can I just say a word about that Ari yes I think that a way to understand the hook was actually taught to me by emunah my nine-year-old over Shabbat this Friday night and she said to me that a hoax we might be able to understand some things by piercing into it and and thinking about it but the real meaning of a Hulk is that we would never do that action had we not been commanded no one would think let's take a red cow to take its ashes put it in this kind of water do this and do that so the essence of a hoax is that like we have no idea why God is commanding us to do X but we just do it because that's what God told us to do but while we do it we might be able to extract some meaning some ideas but we would never have been able to come to it on our own had we not been commanded right right exactly that's beautiful that doesn't shock me that emuna has that sort of insights but um no but the the fact is that it's in a lot of ways it really should remain a hook we're not supposed to try to understand or attribute meaning to it so then why this midrash says that the purpose of the red heifer is to atone for the sin of the golden calf it's a nice idea in your head right and they're both cows one is the mother and one is the a baby and some male and so there's like that connection and that's a beautiful thing but aren't we giving meaning to it so that's the question so open your hearts here he explains it like this he explains yes the para aduma the red heifer is indeed such a decree we do not know the real reason for it and therefore we keep it solely because we have a Muna not Jeremy's daughter but not meaning faith we keep it because we have faith we keep it because we believe in Hashem and that is why it atones for the idolatry of the golden calf because idolatry is definitionally a lack of belief in Hashem and so the the ammuna the Faith with which we observe the decree of the red heifer is the fixing of the lack of faith that we had in our hearts which led us to worshiping the golden calf did you follow that Jeremy did you guys get that it's like it's a beautiful idea so it's not about understanding the reason it's about fixing the blemish of needing to understand the reason to begin with it's about fixing the lack of faith we had throughout the whole golden calf Episode by having exactly the faith that which we should have had there and applying it to the Commandment of the red heifer