From Rabbi Shlomo Katz on Parshat Chukat, “Death is not only a physical state of being”. If you ever opened up your heart or expressed your passion and there was no one there to feel it and receive your emotions – you more or less were contaminated by a spiritual state of death… a place which is void of life, void of feeling. In this week’s video, we learn the deeper meaning as to why we begin our portion of Chukat receiving clear instructions as to how one purifies themselves from death. Click “more” for this video and a wonderful video on “The Role of The Snake” from Rabbi Chaim Richman.
From Rabbi Chaim Richman on Parshat Chukat, “The Role of The Snake”. Going through all these things twice: The generation of the desert, like Adam, the first man, failed to appreciate the gifts that G-d gives us. Adam blamed the woman G-d gave him for his own eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and the Israelites in the desert complained about the spiritually refined nourishment known as manna, with which G-d kept them fed for forty years. Is it any wonder that the evil-tongued snake made an appearance in both cases, here being used by G-d as an instrument to exact from Israel a price for their flagrant disregard?