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Torah Portion -
Chukas
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Written by d fine
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THE mitzvah that we do not grasp is the parah adumah - the Torah calls it a chok, ie a mitzvah that we do not understand. The question is, though, WHY did HaShem set it up that this particular mitzvah should be the quintessential chok? The Shemen HaTov explains that parah adumah comes to purify tumah that comes from a dead person. When did death enter the world? It was as a result of Adam HaRishon's sin, when Adam and Chavah ate from the tree of knowledge. What tempted them to do so? Because the serpent told them that 'on the day you eat from it...you will be like G-D knowing good and evil' (Bereishis 3;4). In other words, the sin that caused death was based on the will to know everything. So the atonement is that we are given a mitzvah called parah adumah which purfies the impurity which results from death - and this mitzvah we do not have any knowledge of. The sin was a thirst for too much out-of-bounds knowledge, and the correction is THE 'chok' - where we have no knowledge of how the mitzvah of the parah adumah works.
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