Our Torah portion this week (i.e., parashat Chukat) begins, zot chukat ha-Torah (זאת חֻקַּת הַתּוֹרָה), “this is the decree of Torah” (Num. 19:2). The language here is both striking and unique, suggesting that what follows, namely, the ritual of the parah adumah (פרה אדומה) or “red heifer,” is nothing less than “the seminal decree” of the entire Torah… If we think about the meaning of the mysterious decree of the red heifer, however, we will realize that its ashes were used to create the “waters of separation” (i.e., mei niddah: מֵי נִדָּה) to cleanse people from contact with death (i.e., separation). To fulfill God’s vital decree, however, required sacrificial love, since the priest who offered this service would become defiled (separated) for the sake of the healing of others… The Hebrew word for love is ahavah (אַהֲבָה), from a root verb (יָהַב) that means “to give.” Love means giving of yourself to benefit another person (John 15:13). The central decree of Torah, then, beyond our ability to rationally understand, is that God’s love is so great that it is willing to become dust and ashes on our behalf so that we might find blessing and life.
This Shavuah Tov broadcast also provides detailed discussion about the mitzvot (commandments) of the written Torah, including the subcategories of chukkim (decrees), mishpatim (rules or judgments), eidot (testimonials, holidays) with a discussion of the oral tradition’s corresponding categories of halakhah (oral law) and its subcategories of gezeirot (“fences”), takkanot (case laws), and minhagim (customs). Throughout special attention is given to how Yeshua the Messiah is the Substance and Inner Meaning of all true Torah, and how sacrificial love is the idea of the Red Heifer itself.
Chukat Podcast:
Note: For Part Two, click here.
Last week’s Torah portion (
Our Torah portion for this week, 
Shavuah Tov, chaverim! The next two weeks we will read the last two portions of the great Book of Leviticus (ספר ויקרא), namely, 
Our Torah portion for this week (
In this special “High Holiday” audio presentation, I discuss 
Our Torah reading for this week, 
In my audio podcast for 
It’s been said that modern politics operates on the basis of the so-called “Hegelian Dialectic,” a method of social engineering based on a rather dismal theory about how precious little people can actually know (or be allowed to know). This theory can be easily traced to the “critical philosophy” of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who taught that the human mind cannot transcend itself in order to apprehend ultimate reality. There are limits or boundaries to the mind’s ability to discover “things in themselves,” and at best we are left with methods (or paradigms) we devise (and imitate mimetically) by which we “manage appearances.” Even hard sciences, such as physics, can only deal with the phenomenal realm of life. The inner working of reality — the “noumenal” — is sealed off as essentially unknowable. We are left only with postulates, hypothetical constructs, models, etc., but knowledge is essentially constrained by fundamental structures of consciousness (e.g., the categories of space and time) from which we interpret any possible experience.
In our Torah reading for this week, 