It makes no sense!

Hershele comes to the Rabbi with an unusual request: he wants to become a Kohen. The Rabbi refuses. Hershele offers a hundred dollars; the Rabbi refuses. A thousand – no, a regular Jew cannot become a kohen. The title is hereditary, not earned. We don’t sell Torah fo money!. Ten thousand, no. On hundred thousand, still no. A million!!! This is starting to sound interesting… The Rabbi decides to investigate the motives.
“Tell me, why do you want to become a Kohen?” he asks kindly.
Hershele: “Well, my father was a Kohen, my grandfather was a kohen… so I also want to be a kohen!”
The Rabbi’s eyes light up: “You mentioned a million!? We’ve got a deal!”

***

Weird. That’s probably the first reaction when we encounter some of the Torah’s laws – like the one in this week’s Parsha. I’m talking about the commandment of the red calf. Ever heard of it? I’ll give you a hint. It has to do with spraying blood and screaming “pure, pure, pure.” Ah, now you remember… but let’s refresh our memory anyway.
After death, the body that has experienced the exodus of the soul causes one who is in close contact with body to become impure, or spiritually unclean.
How can this unlucky fellow be rid of this spiritual “dirt”? To make it short, we take a totally red cow, slaughter it, burn it to ashes, mix the ashes with a bunch of other goodies and a Kohen (priest) sprays this mixture on the impure guy twice over the course of a week, screams “pure” three times… And, lo and behold, he becomes pure. It’s strange, to say the least.
Oh and one more thing: Guess what happens to the Kohen-sprayer after he finishes his job? He now becomes impure and has to go through the whole above procedure himself!
Makes no sense? There’s no logic? Doesn’t fit with your sense of justice or rational thought? Well, that’s the point: We don’t keep Mitzvot because we understand the logic behind Hashem’s will. We keep them because He said so. We know He is the Creator of the entire universe, and it’s to Him we owe everything. If we manage to understand the logic, that’s wonderful. If not, we do it anyway.
There are many Mitzvot that seem to be rather obvious, and we may assume that, as moral individuals, we might have followed them even without a Divine command. Yet Hashem also gave a few laws whose rationale we cannot comprehend at all, in order to teach us a lesson.
The Torah is, essentially, Hashem Himself. Just as He is Unlimited, so are His thoughts and commands. Torah is supra-rational. Jews are supra-rational. And Mitzvot are supra-rational.
And we don’t have to understand before we do. After all, did we not all say at the foot of Mount Sinai, “We will do and (then) we’ll understand”?