“Then came the children of Yisrael, the whole congregation, into the desert of Żin in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh, and Miryam died there, and was buried there.”  (Bamidbar 20:1)

Rashi quotes Chazal on this verse, explaining that the death of Miriam was placed adjacent to the parsha of the red heifer to teach us that the death of righteous people atones just as an offering atones. The obvious question is, “Does this atonement come automatically, or is it just a catalyst for people to repent?” It is clear that death brings atonement for the person who died, but can it be that we get a “freebie”? When a righteous person dies, do we get off scot free?

There are those who explain that the death of a righteous person is a wake-up call, and even if we don’t repent, it still heightens our awareness as to what is important in life. A similar idea can be seen on the highways. Drivers tend to slow down on a slippery highway immediately after passing a serious collision! While most will resume their normal speed after a minute or two, they will still continue to pay just a bit more attention to the road. That is not considered repentance, but it does at least “reset” the person to a certain degree.

However, when a righteous person dies, it seems to imply that the whole generation receives atonement – even those who didn’t even know the deceased. How can this be?

I heard from someone who told me that while walking back from the funeral of the Brisker Rav, he heard one of his students say, “I feel that I have lost a level of limud hatorah.” I heard this statement and understood that the implication was that the world with the Brisker Rav was a holier place, and in that world, a person could achieve a greater level of clarity in Torah. However, at a different time it was pointed out to me by my Rosh Yeshiva that Choni HaMe’agel slept for 70 years, after which he woke up, walked into the Beis Medrash, and he heard the students proclaim, “The learning is so great, it is like at the times of Choni HaMe’agel!” This means that his mere presence in the world affected the level of Torah learning, even to those who didn’t know him. Certainly, with his demise, the world would be lacking.

I would like to suggest the following: Chazal tell us that every pain that a person feels can be an atonement. When life gets more difficult, that too can be an atonement. So when a Tzadik dies, life in the world becomes generally worse, and therefore there is an atonement given to everyone.

The amount of atonement achieved will certainly depend upon how much a person relates to the death as an atonement (just as by any pain, it is an atonement if we realize that it is from Hashem). The Chofetz Chaim writes in a letter that each catastrophe that happens in the world is a lesson for us. With that thought in mind, if one would read a newspaper, there would probably be some spiritual lesson to be learnt from the goings on in the world.

As we read the parsha and we think about the bad things that happen in the Torah, it should start our own introspection. We learn about the sin of the golden calf and how klal Yisrael still suffers because of it, that contemplation alone can be a merit for us – definitely if it moves us to repent! So too, contemplation is needed when we learn about the ultimate “chok” of the red heifer. We need to learn from this “chok” to strengthen our doing the things that Hashem wants, even if we don’t understand them. This will bring us closer to our ultimate goal of performing mitzvohs for their own sake.