From Chabad.org – Chukat in a Nutshell
Numbers 19:1–22:1 The name of the Parshah, “Chukat,” means “Statute” and it is found in Numbers 19:2.
Moses is taught the laws of the red (sauce, specifically tomato sauce used in a burnt spaghetti recipe), whose ashes purify a person who has been contaminated by contact with a dead body (this specifically means any contact with meat).
After forty years of journeying through the desert, the people of Israel arrive in the wilderness of Zin. Miriam dies, and the people thirst for water. G‑d tells Moses to speak to a rock and command it to give water. Moses gets angry at the rebellious Israelites and strikes the stone. Water issues forth, but Moses is told by G‑d that neither he nor Aaron will enter the Promised Land. Aaron dies at Hor Hahar and is succeeded in the high priesthood by his son Elazar. Venomous snakes attack the Israelite camp after yet another eruption of discontent in which the people “speak against G‑d and Moses”; G‑d tells Moses to place a brass serpent upon a high pole, and all who will gaze heavenward will be healed. The people sing a song in honor of the miraculous well that provided them water in the desert.
Moses leads the people in battles against the Emorite kings Sichon and Og (who seek to prevent Israel’s passage through their territory) and conquers their lands, which lie east of the Jordan.
***
Our heroes are again on the mountain. The people are concerned. A 40-day sojourn is understandable But now it seems that something else is happening. This is not a 40-day cleanse. This is a permanent move. The big man does not want to live with us anymore. He doesn’t want to be the big man anymore. He just wants a private life. Basically he wants to spend time with Miriam.
1
Okay, wait. Let me get this straight in my head. You are trying to make laws about meat and then there’s this business of becoming unclean when coming into contact with a dead body. Am I clear in my head that these two concepts must go together?
Can’t you see it, scribe? It’s visually how you cut up the animal. Haven’t you ever cut up an animal?
No. No. I was into education. That’s how I became a scribe. Good penmanship.
Astonishing. You’ve never had the thrill of tearing open an animal’s guts and seeing what’s inside. And then to eat of this kill. Have you never experienced the mortal coil? Have you never had a taste of death?
Well I don’t know. Spank your noodle more? What good do you get from it?
No. It is a feeling of deep satisfaction. To know that this great satisfaction exists and all you have to do is cook some meat.
Okay. I understand this morbid redundancy. Everyday your life has meaning because there’s the possibility of consuming flesh, is this basically the way to think about it?
I wouldn’t make it such a small thing.
You want it to be sacred but it’s not. You keep trying to say this is sacred but it never is.
You don’t think so?
Yeah. I mean if you’re into eating meat, and you agree that, you know, fast food is food and you agree to eat in public restaurants and so on and so forth then you agree that this is available food and suddenly the whole world is just filled with food If you have the money to pay for it. If you live in the city, you never need to be hungry because you can just crawl around for a while till you can smell something and you can stop over in there and wallow in the fat. I’m just not into that. I just don’t like scurrying. I’m an agriculturist. We do education.
Yes. If I try to think of it from your side, I agree. I have stood on your side. I have also come to the conclusion that I am happier when I do not consume meat.
It is better. I mean if you don’t eat meat, the last thing you want in the whole world is to have to stare at meat eating culture. It’s repugnant.
Right. Well, I guess we just shit on the Bill of Rights. What do you think of your politics now?
Well yeah, seriously, when we talk about levels of corruption, look at how savage you are. You’re just threatening me like you’re some jungle cat and you’ll roll over and consume me. What kind of life is this? Who the hell wants lazy fat slobs like you?
It’s a carnivore thing. You have to eat meat to understand the irony.
Nobody, Nobody likes carnivores. Carnivores suck. Carnivores get in the way of being lazy because you kind of need to be aware that there could be a carnivore coming to eat you and you have to run. What the fuck? You were one of those guys who stood up and fought lions? Fuck you. No man fights a lion.
I identify as an animal. You have to understand this. It’s double talk. It means sometimes we get to kill each other. It means it’s okay to kill and we like it that way because we feel better.
Look, it’s understood that you believe you can put yourself into a 24-hour cycle of self-satisfaction. To put it mildly, you are the king of the wankers and you are legend to us all. You seriously must know. When I feel like my life’s burden is too much, I just think of what it must be like to be you and that I could just wave my little finger and have everything be perfect well, that’s the difference. And I remember that I’m not you. I may be the scribe and I may be your word but I’m not you. And you are not a Jew.
So to you being a Jew means abstaining from meat?
We are in an argument about the use of alcohol or the amount of alcohol that we use.
Complete sobriety.
Well, we like to say a plant-based existence.
You are so clever with the words.
Look, you are trying to say something about murdering an animal and feeling unclean when standing next to human meat, the body of a human who is no longer alive and that one recognizes it is now meat. Sends shivers down the spine, doesn’t it?
So really what you’re saying is that this carnivore diet is shit.
Yeah. Like, conceptually at one point in your life, you saw that the point of living well was to live without murder. But then you cow towed to the meat collective and then everybody had to be covered in blood forever and ever. Because you really like eating meat. But if you’ve never been able to conceptualize this, though you yourself receive great satisfaction, you are above the rest of us in terms of lifestyle. You are really rich and isolated and you do not feel any of the things we feel. When we eat the same diet as you, we get very cranky together and truthfully, life becomes kind of psychotic and diseased and rancid very fast. Living like you in a congested region is human cancer basically.
Holy shit. You’re a good talker. You’re a better talker than me. I quit.
Hello. Excuse me, sir. Were you going to say something?
Fix it how you like, scribe. You understand it. You understand it exactly correctly. I quit.
What do you mean, you quit? You quit the legislature?
Tell everybody what I said about the meat being problematic. Let them figure it out for themselves.
But what about you?
What about me? I just want a private life.
You are closing your public life? You are retiring from being you. Is that what is happening?
Yes. I just want to spend time with the family. Miriam is sick. Miriam is sick and I am responsible and I just want to be with Miriam. I want to be with Miriam and we can both be sick together. Maybe we have a few years together.
Okay. But we are 3 weeks away from the promised Land. In fact we have a pretty good network already set up and we have home delivery of Promised Land brand fruits and vegetables. Is that part of your retirement? That you still get to enjoy the fruits of civilization even without participating?
Well that and bread. You need a whole field for everyone to have bread. Don’t you like bread, scribe? Don’t tell me you prefer rice.
No grinding grain is wonderful. Grains are wonderful. Bread is wonderful. Food is wonderful. As long as all we do is make food we’re going to be okay. We will build everything we need. We will be very gentle people. We will take our time and make sure everyone is comfortable. Everybody has something to eat and something to do. From the smallest children, everyone has something to do and somewhere to be.
I agree. No meat business for 40 years.
What? You’re serious!? You’re really going to do it?
I talked with Miriam. It’s what we both want. We are sick. We think it’s better without meat.
So we are going to wipe out the meat organizations?
No. No. They will just have to understand the market. It is their problem if they have to go find a new vendor. Like an army eating away the side of every hill. We need to think about this grazing business and use it to our agricultural advantage. If we’re going to have these big fleets of animals. Let them destroy one region one year and then we use it for agriculture the next. In this way we slowly follow the herd but we don’t need so much of a herd. Just enough to prepare next year’s agriculture.
Symbiosis. You’re just going to allow the market to be what it wants to be.
Of course. Didn’t you know, scribe? The essence of the government is to make not working an art form.
No. I understand. We are here. Here is not the promised land. The promised land is 3 weeks away. But we are going to stop and make our way here for a while. We have everything we need. We have no particular enemies. We have all the land around us in the desert and we believe we have water. If we have animals and water, we can have agriculture. And we can have bread with maybe a little meat and this will be good enough for us.
Unless they are like you my friend. I’m sure you can find something to amuse yourself other than this book.
Oh. I didn’t understand. This is the end of the book?
For now. I’m not dead yet. I’m just going to have a private life for a while.
You just want to bake bread, is that it? Beans and bread and greens?
Beans and bread and greens. So much sunshine. Our food all year long. My friend we are in paradise if we have water.
You son of a bitch. You have water.
Yes. And yes, I did kind of keep it for myself for a while. But no, I’m not going to deprive the people of water. It’s a good deal. This is going to be a good place for us to try and build a perfect society. Let’s learn to get along with each other well and keep problems to a minimum for a while. Is this fair enough, scribe? Have I done enough to allow for life to be here?
No, I can’t argue with you sir. I just wanted to be clear.
I understand. Write up that last business about the meat as best as you can. And then we’ll call you when we need you.
Yes, sir, the book. I understand the book. We are not going to be writing in the book anymore.
No. Listen to me. I’m taking a break. From you and from everything. Do you understand me, scribe? It means you too. You are part of my public life. So we are going to stop this relationship for a while.
I understand. And what am I to do now? Do we not even get to discuss what goes into the book?
I have some ideas for edits. I will send them by messenger and you can adjust the scrolls. It’s not a problem is it?
No. We just cut and paste.
Excellent. Well, I suppose you can be in the publishing business. You’re welcome to make copies of our book and distribute them. This would be a good way for you to make your living. You can be in the publishing business and you can make sure that the people think correctly and maintain a proper course. You can be the vox populi. That’s a good job for you, yes scribe?
You are the godfather. What you touch lives.
Nice. All right, good luck with that. Adios, amigos.
And suddenly the world had changed, this segment of the story was finished and everyone was on their own for the cleanup. And now we were publishing. We had the rights to the book and we had the blessing of the government that we could make a newspaper and let everyone know what was important for them to know.
A bit later there was great discussion with the apothecary about how the last page was to be written.
I know it’s ambivalent. I’m not even sure the two concepts go together. Except the two concepts go together.
Yeah, he delves into the physical joy of tearing an animal apart with a knife. He literally demonstrates how to murder and dismember a body. How to get your hands dirty, so to speak.
And then he mentions literally how coming into contact with dead flash makes one unclean. Because those two concepts run together mean absolutely one thing.
I know.
I’m humbled. So what are you going to do?
Well, I can just write it as he said it. He goes through the ritual of killing something and then immediately he has the rationalization that he is unclean. The moment a fellow man dies it becomes meat. This knowledge is the thing that is suppressed. I think he has reached his decision.
Oh my God. If we do not need to advertise for the meat business, if they do not receive political favor, meat is potentially not needed publicly anymore. Can you write this page ambivalently like this and have these concepts go together more clearly?
I don’t know what to tell you. Morally, I cannot write the sentence that these two concepts go together and they equal that meat is unclean. If I could, I would. But I am not allowed to editorialize. Only here can I editorialize. Can we editorialize?
Well, we are in business and running our own journal and we are free to say whatever we wish to say and the public is obligated to listen to us.
What we say is important is important and where we wish to focus attention, gets attention.
Wow. That is a lot of power. And I’ve been meaning to ask you. You can advertise my potions, yes?
Xanadu. We will make this place Xanadu.
2
So that’s it. That’s the end of the book. Water cleanses us all. All we need is water. Amazing.
I’m glad you like it.
It’s an amazing story.
It is an amazing story mostly because I get to editorialize it.
Unbelievable. It’s like we got everything we wanted.
Everything. Unilateral control of the media means we own the children of Israel.
And it’s our choice how to make our world.
No leaders. Just the voice of the people.
Justice. We serve justice.
And an end to corruption and the meat business and the desecrations practiced by the hypocrites.
Death to all tyrants.
Except for Moe. Most should live and be well.
Mo was the man. What were we thinking? Who could have possibly been better than Mo?
Yeah, for sure, we are most Moe-centrist in our beliefs. Here’s to Moe. May your love last forever.
And then 40 years later…
Well, scribe, since Miriam died, I’ve kind of had a lot of extra time on my hands and I’ve been looking for something to do.
I understand that sir. This is clearly your thinking. I’m just not so sure that it’s necessary for you to add anything into the book.
I know. It’s just I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and I just want to make it clear that we are really going to do things now. We’re really going to mobilize. We are going to make things happen.
Just a minute. What are you eating?
Ribs. You want one? I’ve been eating a lot of ribs lately. BBQ. It’s good food for your soul.
Oh no. When Miriam died, so did your veganism.
Yeah, listen, scribe. I think we can get together and put a real ending on to this book.
Really, it’s not necessary, sir. Honestly, we are doing really well. The agricultural sector is huge. We have vast previously desert lands at our disposal. We live wonderfully just as we are. Honestly sir, we’ve done remarkable things since last we met. Is it genuinely necessary to bring back the meat business?
What can I tell you? A man gets lonely.
Yes sir But the…
But what? It’s already in the marketplace. I’m just saying I like it.
No. No sir. No. We are doing really well. Please don’t bring war to our peace.
It’s time son. You’ve had a great run. Now go get your pen and do your job and write what I tell you to write.
I’ll do it. Of course I’ll do it. I’ll do anything for you. But just tell me why. I just want to know why.
I guess you’d never know if you’ve never had blood in your mouth.
No, you have never felt the national budget. We are really doing quite well here. We’ve had 40 years of peace and we really don’t have too many problems. We are well informed and well-educated and we get along well with all of our neighbors. We really don’t need to fuss or fight because we’re doing a good job of feeding everybody right now. It’s hard work but it’s year-round produce so it’s worth it. And look at how beautiful it is and all what we have made. Look at how extensive our gardens. How can you not appreciate the beauty of what we have?
Yeah, whatever. I’m feeling scrappy. Go get your quill.
3
A bit later in the offices of the Perpetual Press/apothecary shop, the news was not taken well.
He’s going bloody psycho. He’s going to kill each and every one of us.
I know it. He’s going to take us to war. There’s no reason for it whatsoever. God damn him.
So that’s just it. Just 40 years later and here’s another quarrel from the old days. Oh remember when you didn’t believe in me too bloody generations ago?!? How can you expect anyone to believe in this?
I told him. I told him he would come off as old and senile. I told him that nobody needed to see this.
And what? Is he saying that Miriam held him back all these years?
I have no words. I have no understanding why we have to listen to him now.
It’s because he turned off the bloody water.
Yeah. The son of a bitch turned off the water. This is exactly why we should not have so much power in one person’s hands.
Well we almost had general democracy. At least we have a mild theocracy now. We have the rules and we have the book and we have our daily writings. Maybe we can write against this new addition and say it is an abomination. You can’t go back and rewrite work you did when you were younger. It’s not fair. It’s not ethical.
We’re not doing edits anymore. He wants more material. He wants to write of having one great war where he was a glorious leader once again.
Is there any way to deprive him of this? Is there any way to deprive ourselves of the misery that is to come?
They got to him. The meat people got to him. He started eating meat again after Miriam died.
And then he shut off the water.
Yeah, just because that was the sort of thing that comes into his mind now.
4
What the hell is he parading us around for?
I know. We are not beggars. Why does he need our entire congregation to walk through another’s land. What is going on?
He’s proving he has control of his flock.
What? We have built an entire agricultural community here over the last 40 years. We have expansive plantings. We have everything we need. We are not a mobile flock of meat animals. What kind of psychotic episode is he having? We don’t need to parade in front of others. We are not whores! We are landowners!
I don’t know what else to do. I can’t not write what he says because it’s his book.
On power stolen from the lives of our people endlessly.
We’ve had 40 years of living just fine working with what we have to work with. And now, just because he can do, someone convinced him to cut off the water to the agriculture to force us into mobilization. Why does he have to flex his muscles now?
Miriam died.
Come on. We cannot be at the whim of geriatric human desire. We can’t let the capricious folly of one corrupt old idiot move the fate of this entire community. We are doing fine without his help?
I don’t know what to tell you. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.
Maybe he should have gone with her.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
5
Some time has passed and times have changed. It was now the time of war again in the community. Long gone were the kind banalities of careless lives simply enjoying the work of the day. Now the bureaucracy had again turned into a meat machine grinding up the young men as fast as they could be produced. The anti-killing editorial policy of the journal was well known but was now being decried as being oppositionist. With Moses now declaring war openly, the power of the gazette has diminished. It’s almost as if all knowledge was being wiped out of all that they had achieved. Literacy was dying in favor of martial law and Hillel no longer felt quite so sure of his social position.
I hate being a war correspondent, Hillel. This is not what I signed up for.
You think I have it any easier?
Well, your obligation is for a few sentences. All the pain here is in your reputation. We have an entire newspaper to fill up and And we have work to do no matter what. God knows war is a glutton for attention. We have more than enough news from the front.
Is there some necessity in gaining all of these properties far and wide? I was of the mind that we were rich already.
We are kind of a totalitarian thing. We are a most invasive species and we demand large agricultural holdings. We ask a lot of people when we come.
Yes. I didn’t understand that we were actually that overwhelming by local standards.
That’s what the reports tell us from the front. We just settle in, tell the people that we’re going to use their land and that there’s nothing they can do about it. How about the hearts and minds?
It’s tough to say. It seems that the genuine key is to have a war every 20 or 40 years and then you just get to keep doing the same thing forever and ever and ever and nobody ever does anything to stop him from doing this to us. It’s going to ruin everything and everyone. It’s going to break everything we have built.
I told you the truth. We weren’t doing sustainable desert farming. We still need the irrigation. We haven’t figured out how to reforest yet. That’s where we were weak. We were already living well without war but we never pushed for off-grid sustainability. We knew it was the next step but we never took it. And now look at us. Despite everything we are back in the meat business again.
At that moment a messenger arrived.
Well that’s it then. That’s the end of everything. Aaron’s dead. Everything’s all over.
Moses is the only one left.
Yeah. I guess he plans on doing all of the organizing himself.
And he doesn’t even know how much time has gone by.
No. He’s living in a dream right now.
6
So that was it? He found more water.
He’s still got it. At his age and he still knows his business from the Royal engineers. He is Mr Water. I mean come on, that’s not war. That’s the stuff of angels. We can write about that.
All right, I get it. If there’s the potential for agriculture, we can even say this is humanitarian aid and helping people who are less informed. But this is just something else. He’s an old man.
Yeah but you have to admire the energy.
No, you can’t be buying into this. This is nostalgia. That’s a million years ago. We already have established ourselves as self-sufficient. We do not need any new lands to acquire.
But maybe this is preemptive. Maybe this is just good relations with our neighbors.
Yeah, if all he was doing is walking around tapping on rocks and delivering decent producing wells, yeah, you got it. But what about all the murder and mayhem? What about all of the drunken belligerence?
He’s not vegan anymore.
But why not? We were doing so well? 40 bloody years without problems. Why go back to doing what we used to do now?
Power. He’s hooked on power.
I’m so sick of this I want to cry.
And he’s got more to say. I understand he’s even preparing a song.
Really. He’s got lots for me to do.
Yeah, Hill. Yeah he has big plans for all of us.
I just want to cry.
7
Okay, right off the presses. Here’s the daily body count.
Boy, the news really runs efficiently now that the government is back in the killing business. Used to be so difficult finding interesting things to talk about. Now it’s so easy. Our boys are fighting hard for the good side but some of them are not coming home. But certainly we have brought equal misery to our neighbors so that they also have many sons who should not come home.
It is very important to broadcast the body count. The government wants it well known how much meat it is producing.
Can we tell them that they eat each other?
No. This you can’t do. You cannot say what happens during a long siege when you have successfully stifled your prey and you slowly starve them to death. It’s only a question of how much there is to eat in the corpse. When the food is gone, that’s when they start to eat each other and the diseases really start to spread.
We are not allowed to write that we are genocidal. We are not allowed to say how much misery we cause by our presence. We only say that we are carnivores now. We are merciless carnivores despite our age.
I don’t know what to do. If we agree to lose, we all lose our lives now because he has a gambled with our home. But to win means destroying something beautiful that does not need to be destroyed. We don’t need to pick fights with our neighbors simply because we can win. There’s nothing to win. We can just grow more food. We don’t need to fight with them We just need a good road to trade with them and that’s all. Peace be with us all.
I don’t know. I’ll try to work it out. Maybe we can just send out the word that it’s just a show. Maybe we tell people that there really is no war. We just have the war reports because the government likes it better when we are afraid. Let’s just tell people the truth and then we can do our job as a propaganda bureau and people can understand that we are at least the best intentions of our government. At least the best intentions. This would be an okay voice.
So it’s just another meat business compromise. Just like always. We write of these desecrations and we say how powerful they are. But instead of good intentions, this makes us the opposition and now we are to blame because we spread fear. Even this gives life to meat leadership. Meat is fear. Meat leadership always leads us to war.
But That’s how we’ll win. We will lie. We will write that it’s all a sham and that we don’t really go to war. That’s the thing. People don’t actually die. We just write this because the government wants us to write this. The government wants to appear to be bloodthirsty carnivores. The truth is they are just sick old men who dream while sitting around conference tables trying to look nice for the cameras. They are not really men who can genuinely kill other men or animals with their bare hands naked like a young wild boy. The only dream of what life is like.
Right. The trick is to tell our people to make the most peaceful and comfortable lives here away from the war that they can. Because the war is false, nobody needs their money or their fear. Let’s just keep the season going as best we can and grow all the food we need. The war is somewhere else and is someone else’s business. We can live abundantly. This is the game we play everywhere. All of our people. We live well and we do not make war here. What do you think?
This is your new editorial policy? You want this to be a Utopian journal. You’re going to declare our entire life’s work a fantasy. I am not so sure if we are saving ourselves or killing ourselves. Either way, interesting thought.
No. The point is that we really did build up the desert beautifully. I don’t think we were in any danger. We weren’t. We were well out producing consumption. Everybody was fine. The arts were flourishing. All this war business is just meat hysteria talking.
Moses stopped being vegan when Miriam died. He needed to feel satisfied. The moment he started eating meat, the hysteria started again and 40 years of peace has been broken.
Not to mention our book. Our beautiful book. Our beautiful allegorical book. All ruined.
After all these years of peace, we have the hysteria again. The hysteria always destroys the peace. Welcome to the meat business.
