Parshas Chukas 5785
Absent the number of a Christian theologian saved on my phone, the extent of my research was an AI-generated response on Google. Still, the assessment resonates, at least for this relative layman. The question: What is the difference between Catholic and Jewish guilt?
The answer:
Catholic guilt is often associated with a pervasive sense of wrongdoing and sin, stemming from the concept of original sin and the need for atonement. Jewish guilt, in contrast, is often described as a feeling of not doing enough, or falling short of expectations, and is linked to the emphasis on personal responsibility and mitzvah (good deeds) in Jewish tradition.
Seems largely right to me.
Or, to sum it up perhaps more succinctly, a comment I read to the same question posed on Reddit:
Catholic guilt comes from your priest. Jewish guilt comes from your mother.
In introducing us to the mitzvah of Parah Adumah, Parshas Chukas presents us with what is generally considered the most baffling of all mitzvos, the one that lies even further beyond the limits of human reasoning than any others. The pasuk even presents this mitzvah as “זאת חקת התורה—This is the chok of the Torah”, referencing the category of mitzvos that transcend human logic, and speaking of this law as the quintessential example thereof.
Rashi, quoting the Gemara in Yoma 67, speaks of a conversation between us and the foreign nations surrounding this mitzvah, that never really gets off the ground. The Gemara tells of the nations antagonizing the Jews, demanding a reason for the Parah Adumah, effectively mocking our inability to explain it. So the Torah reminds us it’s not ours to explain. It lays in a realm beyond explanation. It’s a chok. Period.
And yet this very statement appears undermined by Rashi’s own comments on the very same pasuk. Quoting from the Midrash Tanchuma, Rashi actually provides a window into understanding this otherwise enigmatic mitzvah. The Midrash offers a mashal of a boy who sneaks into the king’s palace and makes a mess. Upon discovering the mischief, they summon the boy’s mother to clean up after him. It is only fair, after all, that she should be held responsible for the misdeed of her own son.
The Parah Adumah—an adult female cow—functions in a similar manner. A baby calf was front and center during perhaps the greatest sin ever committed, that of the Egel HaZahav. Hence, it is the mother cow that must now come and provide atonement for the sin of the child.
A beautiful bit of symbolism, and not nearly the sort of explanation that transcends all logic and rational thought. So why, when the other nations come knocking, do we not reach for this mashal, answering the question head-on with insight and reason?
Rav Yechiel Michel of Zlotschov explained that, in reality, it is precisely this mashal that the other nations have in mind when they come to antagonize us, needling us for an explanation of the mitzvah. Knowing that Parah Adumah is linked to the Egel HaZahav, it is their intention to accost us, demanding an interpretation of a mitzvah that they know will only dredge up our past foibles. It is to this that we are given the gift of the label “chok,” providing us with the opportunity to shut down the conversation, to deny that human logic can at all be applied to an understanding of Parah Adumah.
But why beat around the bush? Why not just reply head on? Perhaps because there is so fundamental a difference in our understanding of guilt—its origin and how it functions—that no satisfactory conclusion to the conversation with the other nations can ever be arrived at.
Our guilt—as the quip above so aptly puts it—comes from our mothers, not from our priests. Jewish guilt is not a theological axiom of human existence. A guilty conscience is not inherent. It emanates, rather, from a deep-seated understanding of just how much we’re capable of, of the gadlus ha’adam, the innate greatness of a human being. The sort of guilt that would come from a Jewish mother, because of boundless potential her children are endowed with.
Which means we need not live forever beneath a dark cloud. We need only be better, inch ever closer to the fulfillment of the potential our mothers—or whomever—may recognize within us.
Or, to put it in other terms, the escape from Jewish guilt is teshuva, the process whereby we shed sins of the past in favor of a more virtuous future. But to do so, we must process those sins, not hide from them. If guilt, sin, or a stain on our soul is unavoidable—simply part of the human condition—we would certainly bury our heads in the sand. But if we can transcend all that, then there is no sense in cowering in fear of previous errors. We would far prefer to tackle them head on and to emerge better for it.
The nations ponder Parah Adumah, trying to bait us into a humiliating admission of sins past. Too late. We’re already doing it.
I don’t actually know which of the foreign nations is being referenced in the conversation about the Parah Adumah that Chazal describe. Only that it is a decidedly foreign one. One that, because it so vastly differs from the Jewish understanding, makes a conversation about the subject of sin, guilt, and the possible emergence from both, a conversation that cannot possibly go anywhere.
In Jewish thought, there is no fear in confronting sins of the past. Because they are rectifiable. And in rectifying our sins, we emerge not only unscathed, but even better than we were before. As the Gemara famously notes in Berachos 34b, “מָקוֹם שֶׁבַּעֲלֵי תְשׁוּבָה עוֹמְדִין — צַדִּיקִים גְּמוּרִים אֵינָם עוֹמְדִין—Where those who have repented stand, not even wholly righteous people stand.”
The stain of sin is not inherent to the human being. Quite the opposite. Judaism sees man as being fully capable of transcending past errors and emerging holy and pure. Jews should talk about sin, strategize ways to overcome it, and laud the virtues of those who do. We just may need to have such conversations amongst ourselves.