The Cow with the Beautiful Mouth

For the second week, leading up to Chanukah, we are examining Maharal’s classic, Ner Mitzvah. The tie-in with this week’s parsha is in its absence – as the kingdom of Mitzrayim is not counted among the empires in the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar and of Daniel. In fact, there are four exiles typically counted, and the first of these is Mitzrayim. But in interpreting these dreams and accounting for four empires, they only sometimes intersect. The most notable difference here is the substitution of Greece for Mitzrayim, and in a sense this probably helps to illuminate the relevance of the account to Chanukah, which seems pretty obscure for most of the book.

In brief, Mitzrayim constitutes one of the exiles but does not seem to rise to the level of being a paragon of empire. In fact, that can actually be seen as one aspect of the humiliation of the exile of Mitzrayim: that we became, as our sources sometimes attest, “the slaves of slaves.” (see esp. Kiddushin 22b and elsewhere). This process and the concomitant humiliation begin with the descent of Yosef in this week’s parsha, but with Chanukah approaching, this week we are chiefly concerned with ascent.

Still, the number four is noteworthy, and the Maharal explains that four represents the division of that which ought to be unified. So, in the physical world, the Divine Mercy is represented by the Name of four letters, but this is also a necessary refraction of the unified essence of the Infinite as it is experienced by us mortals here below. In the opening passages of Ner Mitzvah, Maharal explains how these four kings (and four exiles, for that matter) derive from the flaws in the created universe.

When everything is unified, as it should be, and when the lower realms reflect perfectly the upper, then everything is focused on that point of revelation – for our purpose, the city of Yerushalayim and the Temple Mount that is its center. But when forces begin to radiate out from the center of their own accord – when the Divine Unity is fragmented – they go out as a cross emanating from this central point, allegorically described in Jewish tradition (as well as many others) as the “four winds,” also corresponding to the four points of the compass. Thus, the pure manifestation of the Divine is in a single point, but the breakdown of order comes in fours. (Now, it is possible for us to rein in this spreading chaos and restore order, and this is one of the secrets of the Divine Name or the four cubits of halacha, but that is not the topic at hand today.)

Maharal sees the four kings alluded to in the second verse of Bereishit, which describes the “tohu va’vohu” that prevailed in the land. Specifically in the land, because the process of spiritual decadence and decay had begun. But he also sees the rectification of this dissolution in the burning of the red heifer, which reintegrates all of the fragmented parts. This is relevant to our discussion because the last of the beasts seen by Daniel is consumed in flame, in a manner and in language that are evocative of the ritual of burning the entirety of the red heifer in flames. In fact, this fate does not befall any of the other beasts in Daniel’s dreams.

But the cow also symbolizes Egypt, described by Yirmiyahu (46:20) as a cow with a beautiful mouth. The various aspects of the cow connect with the four empires, so that the cow itself becomes essentially the substrate for the spiritual decadence that the ritual of the red heifer must remedy. For Yosef to go to Mitzrayim, setting the stage for the first exile of all the Children of Israel, was a reduction of the spiritual qualities of Israel from the highest to the basest levels of pure subsistence and abject prostration. This process, which begins in our parsha, reaches its culmination only in the ascent of the new Pharaoh, who would not know Yosef, at the beginning of Shemot.

But in the ritual of the para adumah, the red heifer, the opposite is true: The physical material of the cow (and the other ingredients – the ezov and the cedar plank and the scarlet wool – totaling four again) is reduced to ash and unified with the “living water” to produce the only substance that can cure the impurity of death. This impurity is the one thing in the universe that can never be rectified by any other means. This perhaps is also why Shlomo described it as beyond his comprehension. In any event, the ritual of the para adumah is indispensable to the eventual, inevitable rectification of the world and its return to the unity which is a suitable reflection of the unity of its Creator.

Next week, G-d willing, we will see what all of this has to do with Chanukah and also what Maharal has to say about the unique challenges of the Greek Empire.