The Red Cow

All you need to know for your spiritual life lies in this one law.

The opening words of the law of the red cow, who's ashes were mixed with water and sprinkled to purify the ritually impure, are: “This is the decree of the Torah”. Meaning that this law captures the essence if all the Torah wants to teach. We therefore do not have the luxury to skip this portion and move on to the more exciting parts of the Torah. If it's the “the” decree of the Torah, then we must figure out the message of this law to us living in the twenty first century when we have no Holy Temple and no physical red cow.

All you need to know for your spiritual life lies in this one law.

The purifying waters have two ingredients that are opposites:the ashes which are produced by fire and water. In essence the law is telling us that our approach to spirituality must contain of the opposing extremes of fire - the gravity defying passion and yearning to escape the confines of the physical reality. And water – the downward flow, the “return” from the yearning to the world, imbuing the physical existence with spirituality.

Conventional wisdom teaches that to be spiritual one must escape to the Himalaya and abandon the challenges of materialism that present themselves in every day life.

“Not true!” cries the red cow, you must have the water that nourishes all life on earth. If you want to connect G-d you must find him on this earth. Yet, just as important, you must have the other essential ingredient: the ashes produced by fire. Because in order for your “bowl of water”, your material life, to become holy and not swallow up your spirit – you must mix the ashes in to the water, balancing the extremes, for only by yearning to escape the confines of the earth can we imbue are life on earth with meaning.