The red cow is "without blemish," clean and virgin. It's perfect. There can't be two black hairs on the entire cow --- signifying perfection.
So the offspring (the golden-calf according to the sages), which is a Son of this blameless virgin mother, is equally blameless. Even its feces is blameless. Every part of it must be blameless, and perfect, such that even if ----as some have proposed ----Moses is making Israel eat it as feces, still, they are eating the feces of a perfect, virgin born, God. The sages literally say the feces of a higher being is kosher food for lesser beings. The feces of a divine cow is kosher eating. The feces of the red cow is commanded to be included in the holy water that washes away sin.
In the Numbers recollection of the gold-water episode (first related in Exodus 32), the author makes it a point to point out that the gold is made extremely fine, even like powder. In other words, it's not enough for the author to say Moses grinds the gold and spreads it over the water. For some reason the author thinks it's important to point out how small Moses had to get the powder for the effect he was seeking (colloidal gold).
Anyone who appreciates the rules of exegeting the word of God knows that the emphasis on "fine as powder" isn't a redundancy of the narrative, just a verbal flourish, but is a fundamental aspect of the story. Just prior to telling us Moses grinds the gold into a colloidal solution, we're told that Moses' anger burns hot. Earlier we find that when God's anger burns hot against the Egyptians, Moses reaches out and guess what, turns their drinking water to blood. Here, again, God and Moses' anger burns hot. And guess what, Moses and God turn the Israelite's water to blood (colloidal gold).
The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.
John 6:52-58.
John
Since the waters of the
mikveh are, as Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan shows in detail, representing a purified womb (where a sanctified rebirth occurs), how on earth could the "
waters of niddah" which, like the
mikveh, represent menstrual blood, be even cleaner than the waters of a sanctified womb (a
mikveh)?
In his intro to the
Horeb, Rabbi Hirsch claimed, and I believe him, that he was willing to subject every one of his spiritual beliefs, all his exegesis, to a rational and logical scalpel. Every righteous exegete must. There's no strictly mystical or magical concept in the Bible. The only reason they seem mystical or magical is because the puzzle that hides the meaning is still puzzling us.
Using a reasonable, rational, and logical scalpel, we find three cases of menstrual blood in the Tanakh. Not three full cases per se, but three case studies.
The first case of menstrual blood represents the blood contaminated with the sin being expunged from the unfertilized ovum during meiosis and polar body. This process throws off half of the chromosomes of the ovum such that through "cross-over" the contamination associated with Adam's original sin is put onto the half of the chromosomes removed through meiosis and polar body such that the remaining ovum is the only cell in the human body not contaminated with Adam's sin nature or the evil inclination (until recontaminated at conception).
Because the contaminated chromosomes are in the blood of menstruation, the scripture considers this blood the most unclean blood in existence. The Sages go so far as to remark that this blood is contaminated by what Eve did to Adam in the Garden. -----In every way this menstrual blood is colored by, and contaminated with, the Fall in the Garden, the original sin, and the evil inclination. . . This blood is the poster-child for the Fall in the Garden.
The next case of menstrual blood is the mikveh. This blood is clean, and thus cleansing. Unlike the first case of menstrual blood, this blood has none of the taint of the Fall in the Garden, none of Adam's sin, the evil inclination, nor the suggestion that Eve murdered Adam.
Ironically, as has been pointed out in other essays, this blood is cleansed by the blood of circumcision, which, circumcision blood, represents male menstruation (Professor Eric Kline Silverman). Male menstruation, if it occurs (
brit milah), cleanses female menstruation, thus transforming the "filthy rags" into sacerdotal ornaments.
How, logically speaking, does circumcision blood cleanse menstrual blood? ---------The same way it is itself clean.
As can easily be pointed out through an examination of Jewish symbolism (and this has been pointed out many times recently in the writings of Jewish Sages and Professors), ritual "uncleanness" in its most fundamental sense comes from a corpse, and represents "death." -----All ritual uncleanness represents death. Since death is a result of uncleaness. Death is unclean, and those who are unclean die.
Since the phallus is the emblem of death, the very source of the original sin that caused the first death, it can be pointed out that ritually speaking, the death of the phallus is the death of death itself; since the phallus is the
alef and the
tav of death (the
vav in the middle symbolizing the phallus in the "sign" of the death of death:
brit milah).
Since
brit milah represents the death of the phallus, cutting down the tree illegally grafted onto a formerly perfect body, the blood of the phallus, as the blood of death, represents, in Jewish symbolism (where "blood" symbolizes "death"), the "death of death."
If the phallus is the emblem of death, and blood is the symbol of death, then the blood of the emblem of death represents the death of death itself; such that if death is unclean, so that the phallus is unclean, then the blood of the phallus, which is associated with the death of death, is, thus, clean. It's clean since it represents the very removal of the corpse's power to spread its uncleanness to the next generation.
This is not just the power to undo the uncleanness associated with contact with a particular corpse. This is the power to remove the very death a particular corpse only represents (see the
Hirsch Chumash at Numbers 19:13).
In
brit milah, ritual circumcision, the circumcised phallus represents the final corpse in the entire system of ritual cleanness and uncleanliness.
The exact same logic applies to menstrual blood after circumcision since if the phallus is not there as a corpse ready to make the ovum unclean (after its been purified through meiosis and polar body), then the sin contained in the menstrual blood (contaminated with sin come originally from the phallus), represents the last hoorah for sin and death since there's no phallus to recontaminate the ovum purified after meiosis and polar body.
In this sense female menstrual blood is the blood of the mikveh, i.e., clean blood, so long as the bride from whom it comes has a bridegroom who crushed the sapkah under the chuppah. If circumcision blood, by representing the death of death, the corpse of the generator of "uncleanness," becomes the elixir of a cleanness beyond the final corpse (the death of uncleanness itself), then post-circumcision menstrual blood represents the same thing, the final symbol of death, i.e.,. the death of death, and thus the instantiation of cleanness beyond the quintessential, and final, corpse of death.
The death of death is everlasting life; the death of the source of death is life eternal. The gestalt-shift associated with this making of the symbol of death, blood, into the elixir of life, life eternal, colors every iota of what is to follow.
If pre-circumcision menstrual blood is unclean, and post-circumcision menstrual blood is clean, then what of the "
waters of niddah" which, according to
Mishnah Parah, are cleaner than the
mikveh ----which represents post-circumcision menstrual blood?
The Jewish Sages teach that this last menstrual blood (
waters of niddah) are cleaner than the
mikveh. . . . . How can that be? How can any water be cleaner than the blood of circumcision or the menstrual blood of the bride whose groom guaranteed that her menstruation is death's final hoorah by slaying the delivery mechanism through which death and its evil inclinations passes?
What possible mechanism could there be to purify menstrual blood beyond the elimination of the corpse? --- What's
Mishnah Parah implying?
John
