Define "mystery". In Torah terms, the answer is: Para Aduma. The ritual of the Red Heifer is so mystifying that even the wise Solomon was stumped.



Particularly puzzling is the fact that the kohen who administers the elaborate rite, which helps to make others tahor (spiritually pure), will himself become tamei (spiritually impure), at least until evening. Why is this?



Far be it from me to try to understand what Shlomo could not, but one lesson clearly emerges from this mitzvah: If you want to purify someone else, you had better be prepared to endure some "tum'ah" yourself.



Wow! What a message! How often do we encounter so-called "righteous" people who refuse to "dirty their hands" by associating with those they deem less learned, less observant, less pure than they? They shield themselves from the masses, fearing they will be "contaminated" by others.



Alas, they just don't get it.



I suggest that the Red Heifer's enigma helps to explain the strange behavior exhibited in the last two Sedrot. In Shlach, the meraglim (spies) reject Hashem's promise and spurn Eretz Yisrael. How could such noble people, who had seen G-d in all His glory, do this?



Because these were people who had lived a 100% pristine spiritual existence: fed manna from heaven; protected by divine clouds; taught by Moshe himself; treated to a daily dose of miracles. And now they should get their hands filthy by engaging in politics, commerce, military service and all the everyday trappings of national life? No way!



And Korach, for his part, suffered from the same paranoia. He could not bear to think of himself as anything but leader. "After all, look at the high-class stock I come from! I am royalty!" he boasts. "And I should be treated like some common commoner? The cheek of it all!"



Oy, what a tzadik....



To be a Jewish leader and purify the nation, one has to be prepared to go into the trenches with "amcha", as Moshe did, as Avraham did, as Moshiach will do. The tragic approach of so many in high places who look down (literally and figuratively) at others and say, "Come up here, to me!" will never succeed. They need to climb down from their ivory towers and pull the people up to them.



Yes, it takes guts to get down and dirty, but then, Geulah is not for cow-ards.