A justification of Col. Thieme's statement would require delineating the meaning of the red heifer in a reasonable and rational manner that both anchors the Christian's most basic belief without in any way contradicting Jewish teaching concerning the meaning of the Torah. Should this be accomplished, it's still possible that no Jew could understand or accept the reasoning or rationale in keeping with the idea that it transcends a Jewish epistemological mooring. Nevertheless, anyone other than a Jew, perhaps to include a Gentile atheist, should be able to weigh whether or not the Christian meaning of the red heifer is rational, has a rationale, which is to say, logical and meaningful within a basic or general theological context.
Claiming the basic Christian story found in the four Gospels sets forth a meaningful rationale for the ashes of the red heifer and thus the purification that comes from them goes against the grain of the statement that's already been quoted from Nechoma Greisman:
The mitzvah of Parah Adumah is totally irrational — there is no rhyme or reason by which a person can figure out how this procedure makes any sense. Nevertheless, the Torah describes an exact procedure that a person must undergo if he wishes to rid himself of the impurity which is brought about by contact with a dead body.
To say the Gospels give a meaningful rationale for the nature of the ashes of the red heifer goes contrary to Greisman's claim that the nature of the rules concerning the ashes of the red heifer are senseless and irrational. Nevertheless, in the same article Greisman says this:
Yet another situation [beside contact with a corpse] which causes tumah [uncleanness] is birth. When a woman gives birth, she contracts a spiritual impurity called tumas yoledes. There are various other situations which the Torah describes, which also cause tumah [uncleanness]. The common denominator of all these kinds of tumah [uncleanness] is that they are all somehow related to the concept of death. Even childbirth is associated with death . . ..
On this uncleanness associated with natural childbirth we have Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz, the holy Shelah, describing this particular uncleanness as a result of the "evil-smelling drop of semen" come, from the original sin in the Garden, which the Talmud relates to the first case of sexual congress. Horowitz's take on this kind of uncleanness is close to the Christian understanding spoken of by Thomas Aquinas:
What is genetically transmitted in the semen is human nature and, together with that nature, its sickness. The newborn child shares in the guilt of the first parent inasmuch as his nature is brought into being by a reproductive movement from that parent. . . Death has spread to the whole human race inasmuch as all have sinned.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia.
Rabbi Horwitz says:
. . . nowadays the origin of man is the proverbial תפה סרוחה, the "evil-smelling drop of semen" familiar to us from the saying of Rabbi Akavyah in Avot 3:1. If Adam and Eve had not allowed themselves to be seduced into sinning [having phallic-sex], all seed would have been holy seed [clean rather than unclean]. The whole subject of the covenant, the ברית מילה [brit milah, ritual circumcision], which is performed on the reproductive organ, is designed to reconsecrate it to G-d. . . if man on earth had not failed and as a result become garbed in the pollutants emitted by the serpent, there would not have been such a thing as shame, negative aspects to the act of procreation. On the contrary, the act of procreation would have been the performance of a commandment exactly like that of putting on phylacteries and other commandments performed with one's body. The semen would have been an emission originating in the brain [rather than the biological serpent], and the person born as a result of such an emission would have come into the world with the same stature as Adam [clean rather than unclean].
Shney Luchot HaBerit, Torah Shebikhtav, Vaera, Torah Ohr, 39 and 29.
Because of the "evil-smelling drop of semen" come, from the biological serpent, procreation is unclean. Adam's sickness, eventuating in death, is passed on through the reproductive act, therein contaminating the womb, and the woman, with the Adam's sickness, which sickness is a death-sentence guaranteeing the one so conceived will eventually be, in every case where semen is part-and-parcel of the conception process, a corpse. With this in mind, we have another important statement from the holy Shelah:
A rather striking problem in the text is the description of the purifying waters as מד נדה, "waters of a menstruant," surely a very derogatory term in view of the purpose of these waters! And especially, since the Torah on occasion uses clumsy language in order to avoid describing something in derogatory terms (Rabbi Joshua ben Levi in Bamidbar Rabbah 19,2).
Shney Luchot HaBerit, Torah Shebikhtav, Chukat Torah Ohr, 4.
The very waters (manufactured from the ashes of the red heifer) that purify from the uncleanness associated with death, i.e., a corpse, are called the derogatory term "waters of niddah," which speak of the blood that comes from a womb already contaminated by Adam's sickness because the womb from whence this blood comes was itself conceived in a manner [phallic-sex] such that it contracted Adam's sickness in the womb of the mother from whence it came. Therefore, calling the concoction made from the ashes of the red heifer "waters of niddah" (menstrual blood) implies that this particular menstrual blood is clean rather than unclean, and able to purify from the death, come, from the unclean reproductive process.
John
