My late relative, Rav Avrohom Genechovsky zt”l, shared with me a wonderful insight that speaks to the Torah’s perfection. He referenced the verse we say every Friday night in Eishet Chayil, “gemalto tov velo ra, it is purely good and not bad.” According to the view that it’s referring to Torah, there is an inherent redundancy: if the Torah is good then obviously it’s not bad. Rav Avrohom explained with a mashal. Sometimes you taste a dish and some of it tastes good and some not so good. Not so with the Torah: it’s not only purely good, but it has no bad attached to it; it’s perfection.

Applying this to the parsha of para aduma, we see the same idea. The verse says, “Zot chukat HaTorah,” to mean this chok that we’re about to read about, the para aduma, “is” the Torah; namely it’s representative of the nature of the Torah. Reading on, the verse says, “it should be temima,” a remez to the Torah, as the verse says elsewhere, “Torat Hashem temima meshivat nefesh.” The verse continues: “it should be without a blemish.” Rav Avrohom’s question reappears: if the para aduma must be tamim then obviously it can’t have a mum, but we see the accentuation that even though it’s tamim, it’s complete, the Torah comes to emphasize that it has not one iota of a blemish, it’s perfect. The beauty can be seen further, when the verse says, “asher lo aleha ol,” to which no yoke has been applied. Since we are discussing the Torah of perfection, it has no yoke on it, for it is upon man to accept the ol of Torah, but Torah in its purest form has no encumbrances on it.

We know God and His Torah are one, another proof that the Torah must be perfect. As imperfect beings, we’ve been given the Torah, a manifestation of perfection, to toil through and cling onto to improve ourselves and reach a closeness to the Creator.

By Steven Genack