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Why Do We Need A Red Heifer?
Nothing cleanses like…ash from a red heifer? Parshat Chukat starts out with instructions for how to purify someone who became tamei met, "impure through contact with a corpse." And the instructions include taking a red heifer (female cow), burning it, mixing the ash with water and sprinkling the water on the impure person. The $64,000 question is: Why?? Why on earth would this kind of ceremony make someone pure? What about it undoes contact with the dead?
In this unscripted podcast conversation, Rabbi Fohrman and Daniel Loewenstein offer some possible answers to the meaning of the red heifer sacrifice.
Rabbi David Fohrman
Founder and Lead Scholar
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