"Death is very good!"

 Much is written on the mysterious operation of the parah adumah, the red heifer whose ashes are so important for the restoration of ritual purity--but much less is said about the condition that triggers a need for the parah adumah in the first place: death. Inspired by an apparently cryptic comment in Rabbi Meir's sefer Torah, our member Rabbi Steven Ettinger offers a fascinating insight into a topic that so many are reluctant to address. This is what he has to say:

The purification ritual involving the “Red Heifer” is one that has baffled the wisest of men and the deepest religious thinkers throughout the ages. Somehow, burning a cow, mixing its ashes with water and a few other ingredients and then sprinkling the concoction on an individual who has contracted ritual impurity via contact with a corpse can, following the proper procedure, purify him.

The aspect that has perplexed many, including King Solomon, is the fact that the one who is “sprinkled” becomes pure and the “sprinkler” is rendered impure. Perhaps a more interesting question is this: why does the Torah require a different ritual to cleanse this taint in contrast with the procedure to remove other ritual impurities from an individual (mikveh or mikveh plus korban)? The answer is because this taint involves human death.

When God created the world, for six days He affirms existence by declaring His own work “good.” In so doing, creation “remains in a pure, untouchable beyond” (Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption). The final time that God comments, He does not observe that the result of His handiwork at that moment of time is “good” (tov). Instead, God describes the “all that He made” as “very good” (tov me’od).

The Midrash Rabba, on Genesis 1:31, brings various opinions regarding the statement “very good”: “In the sefer Torah of Rabbi Meir they found, where the words “and behold it was very good” should be, the words “and behold death was good”. Rashi comments on Rabbi Meir’s teaching that death is good because, once dead, man can no longer sin.

Ramban on Genesis 1:31 parses the verse because he finds the word “very” to be superfluous. His initial observation is that God “added this word because He is speaking of creation in general, which contains evil in some part of it.” Thus, He said that it was very good, meaning its me’od is good [thus conveying the thought that even the small part of it which is evil is basically also good]. For Ramban, me’od refers to evil, but he does not yet identify or quantify that evil until he quotes Rabbi Meir’s statement that it is death. However, he qualifies this by commenting:

“[S]imilarly, the Rabbis mentioned, ‘this means the evil inclination in man,’ and ‘this means the dispensation of punishment.’”

Thus, it seems that Ramban, likewise views death as an external environmental force.

Rambam effectively divorces death from the Man-God relationship altogether. In commenting on the words vehinei tov me’od (Look! It was very good), he writes:

“Even death, which appears to constitute a return to nothingness, God considered as something positive, constructive, seeing it is only a prelude to rebirth, albeit sometimes in a different guise than that the previous incarnation. Death is perceived as the result of the ‘nothingness’ which had preceded the universe having become an integral part of this universe. Hence it had become a necessary phenomenon.” (Moreh Nevuchim 3:10).

In other words, God created death so that there could be an ongoing creation. One might perhaps term this as circular reasoning (if God did not terminate the world, there would be no need for a rebirth).  However, this is not circular reasoning; this is God logic – beyond our human comprehension. Regardless, this is universal death and not Man’s or human death. Thus, according to Maimonides, death is likewise a force without a direct relationship with Man. Thus, it is external to Man.

According to Rabbi Dr Norman Lamm, 

“Tov implies efficient functioning.  The creator saw every step in His developing universe ki tov, that it was functioning efficiently, carrying out the telos which He had assigned to it.” (“Good and Very Good’ Moderation and Extremism in the Scheme of Creation” in Tradition, 45:2, 2012).  

According to Lamm, if each component of creation functioned at its maximum efficiency or full potential, chaos would ensue:

 “This is so because the world is an interdependent system rather than a conglomeration of independent parts and a system requires the synergistic coordination of all of its constituent elements.”

Thus, only when each element functions with restraint (tov) can the whole be considered tov me’od.

Lamm explains that an immortal Man, with freedom of will, has the power to exploit any part of creation to its full potential. Death represents a limit and limits are necessary. The analogy he gives is the human body, itself. If cells multiply unchecked, man dies of cancer. Thus, for Lamm, death/mortality is the me’od, the required limit on the effective functioning, the tov, of every other creation. Thus, in this construct death is an integrated component of man and the functioning of the system, but not a part of the God-Man relationship. 

The sources surveyed, from the earliest to the more recent, seem to perceive death as a device or tool used by God, whether to influence later actions (Midrash), or to provide creative or spiritual counter-balance against good (Ramban), or to set up a system of constant creation and recreation (Rambam), or to sustain systemic balance (Lamm). The image that emerges from these Rabbinic sources of the initial conceptualization of death/mortality in Creation, is that of an instrument or process, something detached from Man, one that influences his environment/world, but that impacts him indirectly.

The impure man, tainted by contact with death, is purified by a bare and minimal contact with an external agent – the ashes of the Red Heifer – bound together with “mayim chayim” waters of life. Death influences him, it taints him by contact, and it will eventually claim him. However, the intrinsic message of this elaborate ritual, that stretches over a week, is that he should NOT be consumed by it – he should not become fully submerged in his own mortality.