—or: when desire departs from HaShem—
By Yisrael Yitzchak Rosenfeld
There is a commandment in the Torah that even the wisest of all men could not grasp. Regarding the Parah Adumah, the red heifer, King Solomon said:
“I said: I will become wise—but it remained far from me.”
It purifies the impure, yet at the same time renders the pure impure. It is the ultimate chok (a supra-rational decree): a divine law whose reason is beyond human comprehension.
Over more than a thousand years, barely nine such cows were ever prepared.
Almost everyone regards it as the great enigma of the Torah. Scholars have written volumes about its hidden meaning.
And yet, says Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, the Netziv of Volozhin (of blessed memory), its deepest message is not first and foremost mystical, but a warning—a warning much closer to us than we would like.
We encounter this phenomenon outside the Torah as well.
Someone says a single inappropriate word, and immediately a swarm of people descends upon him—often precisely those from his own circle—claiming he is not pure enough.
Every community, religious or secular, eventually asks the same question:
“Who is pure enough?”
And that circle keeps shrinking, until it ultimately turns against its own members.
We have all seen it: how outrage becomes a virtue; how the loudest accuser presents himself as the purest; until zeal itself becomes the measure—not truth anymore.
The Torah described this illness long before the internet existed.
And its name is surprising.
It is not the sin of one who does too little.
It is the sin of one who wishes to be holier than the Torah allows.
Think of Korach.
We remember the rebel, the man who sought power, and the earth that opened to swallow him.
But the Netziv draws our attention specifically to the 250 men who appeared before the Sanctuary with their fire pans.
They were not cynics.
On the contrary.
He calls them Gedolei Yisrael, truly great men of Israel in every respect—including their fear of Heaven.
What drove them was not arrogance, but love.
Their desire was to come as close to HaShem as the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest; to burn with closeness to Him.
They were willing to die for it.
As it is written: “Love is as strong as death.”
Anyone who would have met them then would likely have envied them.
And precisely this desire—the most beautiful desire imaginable—became their downfall.
The Torah describes them with their fire pans as “those who sinned against their own souls.”
Not because they desired too little.
But because they desired too much.
Here the Netziv touches an idea that is repeatedly developed in Chassidic thought.
The highest desire of the soul is not even to serve HaShem.
The deepest desire of the soul is to be completely absorbed within HaShem.
Every soul carries, deep within itself, a memory of its origin.
It comes from a world of perfect unity and carries an indescribable longing to return there.
The Zohar describes the soul as a flame yearning for its source, like a candle flame stretching upward toward the great fire from which it came.
But precisely there lies the danger.
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (of blessed memory) teaches that perfection is not found in ratzo—the soul’s rushing forward toward HaShem—but in ratzo vashov: running forward and returning.
The soul must ascend.
But it must also return.
It must burn.
But it must remain within the body.
It must touch heaven—and then stand again firmly on earth.
The 250 men desired only ratzo.
They wanted closeness to HaShem at any cost.
They wanted to lose themselves in the fire of holiness.
But HaShem did not create man as an angel.
An angel may only burn.
A human being must return.
Therefore they died.
Not because their love was wrong.
But because their love exceeded obedience.
They loved closeness to HaShem more than His will.
And the will of HaShem was:
“Remain below.”
At Mount Sinai, He Himself drew a boundary around the mountain:
“Until here—and no further.”
The 250 attempted to cross that boundary to draw closer to HaShem.
But crossing that boundary—even in order to approach Him—becomes precisely the fall.
And this is not an isolated incident.
The Netziv traces this theme throughout the Torah.
The Nazirite, who voluntarily abstains from wine in order to achieve higher spirituality, must ultimately bring a sin offering.
Why?
Because one who afflicts himself in order to reach a spiritual level for which he was not created ultimately sins against himself.
The Rambam even codifies this as halacha.
One who deprives himself beyond what the Torah requires deviates from the straight path.
As King Solomon says:
“Be not overly righteous.”
(Ecclesiastes 7:16)
Nadav and Avihu, the two pure sons of Aaron, also entered the Sanctuary out of the burning fire of their love for HaShem.
And the Torah seems to say:
Yes, this love is dear to Me.
But not in this way.
The fire of love they brought became the fire that consumed them.
The Netziv explicitly connects these cases:
Shimon and Levi.
Nadav and Avihu.
The 250 men.
All were driven by the same force:
“A desire that exceeded its proper measure.”
The Red Heifer – Parah Adumah
And now everything falls into place.
The Parah Adumah exists solely to restore purity.
Not to create extra holiness.
The Sadducees could not accept this.
They insisted that the ritual be performed only by someone completely pure.
In other words:
They wanted to make it holier than the Torah itself required.
Once, such a “perfectly pure” priest indeed presented himself.
Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai forced him, in public, to immerse again so that he would perform the service in a less-than-perfect state of purity.
Why?
To demonstrate publicly that the Torah does not demand stringencies it did not prescribe.
And when the Parah Adumah was once prepared according to the Sadducees’ view, the Sages did something almost incomprehensible.
They destroyed its ashes.
They discarded the rarest and holiest substance in the world.
Not because it was impure.
But because it came from a distorted understanding of holiness.
The Netziv calls this: “the destruction of the ways of Torah.”
The greatest danger is not always open sin.
Sometimes the greatest destruction arises precisely when people try to be holier than HaShem Himself demands.
Perhaps here lies the deepest secret of the Parah Adumah.
The red heifer restores impurity that comes from contact with death.
But what is death in the language of Kabbalah?
Death is separation.
The moment when light and vessel break apart.
The divine light remains, but the vessel meant to contain it is gone.
The 250 men sought light without vessels.
- The Sadducees sought purity without humanity.
- The zealots sought truth without peace.
All desired the light.
But HaShem does not dwell in light alone.
The Arizal teaches that the world shattered because the vessels could not contain the divine light.
Therefore, the holiness of Torah is not about constantly drawing in more light.
It is about becoming a vessel oneself.
- A vessel is patience.
- A vessel is humility.
- A vessel is self-restraint.
A vessel is the ability to allow another Jew to walk his own path, even when he does not live as I live.
Where this mindset ultimately leads
We see where this attitude leads to: the destruction of the Second Temple.
During the siege of Jerusalem, food supplies were stored that could have sustained the city for twenty-one years.
But it was precisely the zealots—
the uncompromising ones,
those who saw themselves as the pure,
who burned these supplies to force the population into war.
Anyone who sought peace was labeled a traitor.
It was not Rome that destroyed Jerusalem from within.
It was the fanatical “purity” of its own zealots that brought about its downfall.
The deeper analysis of the Netziv
The Netziv goes further.
About the generation of the Second Temple he writes:
“They were tzaddikim and chassidim. They devoted themselves wholeheartedly to Torah study. But they were not upright in their dealings with one another.”
Through sinat chinam—baseless hatred—they began to suspect anyone who served HaShem differently.
Anyone who did not follow their exact path was considered a heretic.
And then comes one of the Netziv’s most striking statements.
He writes:
The Holy One, blessed be He, cannot tolerate such tzaddikim—even when they act for the sake of Heaven.
We must pause here.
The Netziv did not write this about social media.
Not about “the other side.”
Not about the secular world.
He was the Rosh Yeshiva of Volozhin.
He wrote this about amelei Torah—people immersed day and night in Torah.
In other words:
He wrote this about people like us.
For one who grows spiritually, the real temptation is rarely doing too little.
The temptation is far more subtle.
Slowly looking down at those who are less strict.
At those who are more modern.
At those who do not share my personal stringencies.
That quiet judgment.
That chumra that becomes a wall between Jews.
That refined contempt disguised as seriousness.
That distance that calls itself “loyalty to HaShem.”
And precisely at the moment one thinks:
“Now I am truly pious,”
the Netziv says:
That is the tzaddik whom HaShem cannot tolerate.
Therefore our Sages call the first book of the Torah, Bereishit, the Book of the Upright (Sefer HaYesharim).
Not the Book of the Righteous.
But the Book of the Upright.
That is significant.
The Torah could have called it the Book of the Tzaddikim.
But it chooses another term:
Yesharim—straight, honest, upright people.
Why?
Because Avraham our father even prayed for Sodom.
He desired goodness even for those who rejected everything he stood for.
There lies perhaps the highest level of Torah.
Not holiness that stands against humanity.
But holiness revealed precisely in how one treats the human being next to him.
Perhaps this is the deepest form of deveikut, attachment to HaShem.
Not disappearing into HaShem.
But loving Him so deeply that one remains exactly where He placed him.
The 250 men tried to reach heaven.
Avraham opened his tent.
The first were consumed by fire.
The second became the father of humanity.
Thus the circle of the Parah Adumah closes.
True purity is not recognized in someone who rises above others.
But in someone who walks honestly among people.
Not because Avraham was less holy than the 250 men.
On the contrary.
His holiness was greater.
Because his holiness sought the other, rather than judging him.
Therefore the real question is not:
Am I pious enough?
The real question is:
Am I sincere?
Am I holy in a way that elevates the person next to me…
…or diminishes him?
That is the holiness HaShem can tolerate.
And perhaps that is the holiness that will ultimately bring about the Third Temple.
Epilogue
This essay by Yisrael Yitzchak Rosenfeld is largely based on the view of the Netziv of Volozhin in his Ha’amek Davar (especially on Bamidbar 16–17 and his famous introduction to Sefer Bereishit), supplemented with ideas from Chassidic and Kabbalistic tradition (including Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, the Zohar, and the Arizal).
The central message is both piercing and timeless: the greatest spiritual danger is not a lack of holiness, but holiness detached from humility, humanity, and obedience to the will of HaShem.
The true yeshar, the upright person, is therefore higher than one who merely imposes ever stricter religious demands on himself and others.
As Avraham Avinu demonstrates, the highest form of holiness ultimately reveals itself in love, compassion, and respect for one’s fellow human being.
