Death does not defile, neither does water purify.

            This morning I attended a wonderful virtual talk hosted by Hadar and given by one of my favorite former classmates, Dena Weiss. She spoke about this week’s Torah portion Hukkat, through the lens of commentary from the Pesikta derav Kahana 36a (to learn more about this book, ask someone else please!). One line from the commentary has stuck with me all day and, well, I’m enjoying a wild insight I’m having about it.

            First, about the parsha and the commentary: In Hukkat, we read the law of the red heifer, an animal which is sacrificed, burned to ashes, and then those ashes are used to purify those who have been made ritually impure by contact with the dead. It’s a famously bizarre law, and in the commentary, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai is asked about it. First he gives an answer that normalizes the ritual but when pressed further by his students he says:

            “Death does not defile, nor does water purify, but it is the decree of the Holy One, blessed be He, who declared, ‘I have issued an ordinance and enacted a decree, and you are not permitted to question my decree.” 

Death does not defile nor does water purify.

            What a line! I’m obsessed with this line! It’s been in my head all day. So here are some levels of significance I find in it (with my advance apologies both to Dena Weiss and Rabbi Yochanan, as I am sure that my own thoughts will be spiraling further and further away from the intentions and meanings of Rabbinic thought).

Ok, here we go:

1) On the intended level, I believe (and Dena explained to us this morning) Rabbi Yochanan is saying that ritual purity is an arbitrary thing, something that exists by decree rather than in any natural sense. Ritual purity and impurity are symbolic at best, and so if it doesn’t make sense, don’t worry, it wasn’t logical in the first place.

2) Now then, let’s approach this text more loosely. When I read “defile,” I think “ruins.” And in that sense, yeah, death defiles! It totally defiles. Closeness with death leaves an impact on us. It can certainly kill a mood, or an appetite. In a physical-experiential sense, contact with death defiles, and can leave us seeking some way to remove that feeling. And similarly, water totally purifies! In a literal sense, it cleanses, but again in a physical-experiential sense, it refreshes. I take a shower, and I feel new. So, even without “God’s” proclamations about ritual purity and impurity, I think there’s an instinctive human sense that death does defile, and water does purify. 

3) Follow me as I really co-opt this text for my own purposes. Now that we’ve established that death does defile and water does purify, what would it mean to insist that they don’t? Here’s where I go all atheist-misanthropic on you-- death doesn’t ruin life; it’s f**king built into life! Death ruins life the way that dish-washing ruins a good meal-- it’s like, sure, it ruins you if you’re spoiled. Gonna bring this rant up a notch-- death is a big deal because we make it a big deal, because, well, we are meaning-making animals, so making things into big deals is what we do. But, in terms of life as a whole, death’s a piece of it, and it doesn’t defile. The same goes for water-- it only has meaning in a human world; otherwise, it’s just another element that does its thing, and sometimes does its things with other things. Tl;dr: Death doesn’t defile because defilement is a human construct; water doesn’t purify because purity is a human construct. 

4) And now let’s return to these practices around ritual purity and impurity. If death doesn’t defile and water doesn’t purify, then why do them? If everything is meaningless, then why do meaningful acts? Well, I’ll refer you to #2 above-- whether or not there’s meaning in the universe, we seem to see/carry it anyhow! Death doesn’t defile, but it sure feels like it does. Water doesn’t purify, etc. And that’s why “God” decrees all of this.

5) Ok, one last step-- there is no God, just like there is no ultimate meaning. In that case, “God” represents our passionate attempt/insistence that life has meaning, because that’s how we work; it’s how we get by. The decrees of “God” (our projections of meaning) matter because we need meaning, whether it’s “out there” or not (it isn’t). We can navigate life better when we have narratives of defilement and purification (or your choice of two more updated terms related to downfall and redemption, etc). 

Death defiles -- death does not defile -- death defiles.

Water purifies -- water does not purify -- water purifies.

Or to put it another way: First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.