In this season (not series!) finale of Common Sense Halakha, Rav Elisha walks us through the pragmatics of the Para Aduma, the Red Heifer, about which we'll read this Shabbat.

Source sheet available at www.sefaria.org/sheets/470200

--------------------------------

https://eng.beithillel.org.il/parshat-chukat-living-death-mortality-loss-guilt/

https://www.academia.edu/15427253/_Wise_Hukkim_and_the_Byzantine_Sermonic_Ideology_of_a_Divine_Fiat_in_Curtis_Hutt_Halla_Kim_and_Berel_Lerner_eds_Jewish_Religious_and_Philosophical_Ethics_Routledge

https://www.thetorah.com/article/red-heifer-a-soap-ritual

Dr. Weinstein's additions to the discussion not addressed in the two pieces by Rav Elisha are that while fat is a potential part of soapmaking, the ash alone from the burning of the wood, mixed with water, would produce an alkaline cleaning solution. Rav Elisha objects that we simply did not have the technology to burn bone to ash as Dr. Weinstein suggests, in the Biblical era. Given that cedarwood, which isn't necessarily the only wood involved, burns at 200C, and bone at 800C, and the reality that this conflagration happened outside means that there was certainly drippings of fat (which begins to melt around 40-60C) in addition to the ashes from the wood.