BM Charge for Devi Meyers ~~ Parashat Chukat

Rabbi Anne Persin

We have talked a lot about your torah portion this morning but there is a, relatively big part in the beginning that we keep on skipping over: the ritual of the parah adumah, the red heifer.  In this section, the priests are told to take a perfectly red (with no blemishes at all) cow and ritually sacrifice it and then mix the ashes along with a bunch of random sweet smelling woods and spices and the whole lot is mixed with water to make a special solution for making people pure after they have been in contact with a corpse.

Fascinating, right?  Ok, maybe not.  Maybe it just sounds a little weird and outdated and well, weird.  And we are not the first generation to call this ritual weird—the ritual of the red heifer was declared centuries ago as one of the “irrational laws.”  It is a law that we don’t get what the purpose is other than to do a ritual.  But sometimes, we are irrational.  And sometimes, a ritual is exactly what we need to get out of a funk, or focus our attention, or let go of something holding us back.  Sometimes, the mot irrational rituals help us become rational again.

I once knew a rabbi who, when people came to him feeling… guilty, let’s say, he would tell them, not to feel guilty they didn’t do anything wrong.  Well that was nice and all but it didn’t actually stop them from feeling guilty.  Then one day he came up with a new plan—he started giving people assignments—rituals—to help them through their guilt.  For example, this one time, someone came to him feeling really guilty that he didn’t have the money to support the local food bank, so the rabbi told him that for the next 4 weeks he was to volunteer for the food bank 10 hours a week.  After the four weeks were up the man came back saying that he was feeling so much better—I think he even continued to volunteer for them!

Technically, the volunteering didn’t change the fact that the man didn’t have the money to donate.  But it gave him a way to turn his feelings of guilt into feelings of hope and self-worth.  

Devi, you have a presence that lights up a room—you smile big, you laugh loud and you make yourself heard.  When you are happy it is hard for the people around you to keep from smiling.  And you feel all of the other emotions big as well.  Don’t ever lose that—feeling big is one of the greatest parts of being alive.  But know, that rituals, prayer, traditions, as well as friends and family can help anchor you and guide you through both the best of the best as well as the not so best.  Just like you said in your d’var torah—trust in yourself and the people you care about.  And I add, trust in our traditions.  When life gets crazy, turn to Shabbat.  When things are too serious, hannukah and purim are just around the corner.  When life gets too confusing, the high holy days are there to help you reconnect with yourself.  Some of our traditions may seem a little weird, but, even in their weirdness they can guide us through the twists and turns of life.

And through all of those twists and turns know that your community will always be here to support you, your friends and family will always love you and the Jewish people, who welcome you as an adult on this day, we will always be by your side…