Parashat Chukat: Red ashes, endless skies

Religion straddles the line between logic and mystery. We study God’s will and strive to fulfill it, hoping to uncover its inner logic – how it refines our personal lives and elevates the human condition. Yet no matter how deeply we probe, His ways remain beyond human reach. His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His paths are not our paths (Isaiah 55). This holds true not only in His commandments but also in His hidden hand guiding history.

Despite our best efforts to analyze and to decipher Him, God remains distant and unknowable. Religion demands that human inquiry bow before the logic of the divine.

For this reason, though many of God’s commandments are logical, others defy reason and offer no clear entry point for human logic. Among these non-rational mitzvot, the quintessential example is the parah adumah, the red heifer.

It is no coincidence that the quintessential irrational mitzvah – the chok of the parah adumah – addresses the halachic condition of tumah, the state brought about by contact with the dead. Death is the ultimate human enigma. We have no response to it and no remedy for it. It stands as an impenetrable boundary, beyond which the human imagination cannot venture and which no science will ever fully conquer. Death humbles human power and ridicules human understanding.

Only the higher will of the divine can confront the mystery of death. No human device can soften its finality. It can be transcended only through a ritual that is entirely divine in origin and utterly opaque to human logic. We cannot make sense of it – but we submit to it.

What is true within the narrow legal framework of the parah adumah is equally true in a broader, metaphorical sense. In our confrontation with death and human limitation, we seek transcendence by forging a bond with the divine. It is through our relationship with God that we touch something beyond the limits of our mortality.

Desert life grew dull and dark. A generation lived with no future, with nothing ahead but an eventual burial beneath the desert sands.

At this bleak moment, the laws of the parah adumah arrive – not as a rational command but as a divine gesture, inviting us to reconnect with a logic far above our own. In the heart of darkness, God reminded us that we are part of something larger – a transcendent reality. Though life felt bleak, we discovered that our path was still held by a higher logic – quietly unfolding and anchored in eternity.

This baffling and mysterious law of the red heifer restored some of our lost radiance, lifting us from despair by pointing toward something eternal. A divine logic, far beyond human imagination, opened a fresh interface with God – rekindling truths we once knew and reawakening a bond that had faded but was never severed. Through the laws of the parah adumah, we once again brushed against eternity.

Over the past two weeks, we have once again brushed against eternity. Our victory over Iran was not merely a stirring military victory, it was a parting of the heavens – literally and figuratively.

This wasn’t just another war against brutal enemies like Hamas or Hezbollah. Iran posed an existential threat and stood on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons – an arsenal it would not have hesitated to use.

We faced – and neutralized – an existential danger. And we did so in a manner that felt almost surreal. Forty years of terror infrastructure were dismantled in just 12 days without a single Israeli soldier being harmed. Though Iran still seeks our extinction, its capacity has been severely degraded.

Throughout those brief but dramatic days, it felt as if we were brushing up against something larger than ourselves, beyond the reach of human strategy or strength. Our courageous pilots who soared through Iranian skies, and our defenders who shielded Tel Aviv and Haifa, were equipped with something that felt like divine technology – tools to strike missiles from the heavens.

It wasn’t just a war. It felt like a celestial drama. A war in the heavens lifted us into a different dimension – grander and unmistakably touched by the hand of God.

This land was divinely promised to us. But that promise, so central to our identity, invites fierce opposition. Our presence here disturbs the world not only politically but spiritually. For religious people, the opposition to the State of Israel is more than just geopolitical friction. It is something larger. When the chosen people return to the land of God, that return cannot unfold without resistance. As long as history remains unredeemed, opposition will persist.

It may be weakened. Allies may stand with us. But the rejection of our return – both spiritual and political – will never fully vanish until redemption is complete.

Our presence in Israel was always imbued with a higher purpose. It was never merely political – it was historical and charged with destiny.

Oct. 7 shattered that narrative. That Jews could be so viciously massacred in their own homeland – while celebrating Simchat Torah – was a rupture unlike anything we had experienced since the founding of the state.

We recovered from that surprise attack and delivered decisive blows to many of our enemies. But none of those victories carried the awe or clarity of the confrontation with Iran. The battle with Hamas has dragged on for nearly two years, draining us emotionally and exacting a painful toll in lives, injuries, and psychological burden. Our powerful response to Hezbollah was significant, but it remains entrenched in Lebanon, still threatening our northern border.

The war with Iran was something else entirely. It was swift. It was decisive. It was beyond imagination. It felt branded by God Himself.

It restored the glow we lost two years ago. It revived a spirit that had been dulled and wearied by two years of grinding uncertainty. And more than anything, it reminded us that we are part of a much larger story – one that stretches beyond any moment of terror or despair. A story that will not fade and cannot be defeated.

Thousands of years ago, a scattered and wayward people were called back to manifest destiny through laws that evade human logic. This past month, we witnessed a war in the heavens – one that defied human reason and shattered earthly limits.

It was our way of reaching toward the eternal, a powerful reminder of the timeless story that binds us across generations. 