Two Minute Torah Podcast

Shemini (Parashat Parah) 5771 by Rabbi Marci Jacobs

Shalom, this is Rabbi Marci Jacobs, from Temple Emunah in Lexington, MA.  Welcome to KOACH's Two-Minute Torah, a project of the College Department of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

Sometimes, what we read in the Torah is just plain perplexing.  While the sweeping narratives of Genesis and Exodus provide us with easy inspiration, the laws about sacrifices can leave us with more questions than answers. 

This week, we get a double dose of sacrificial details: Parashat Shemini and Parashat Parah, the special section we read every year in the weeks leading up to Pesah, telling of the elaborate procedure for removing the ritual impurity one incurs through contact with a dead body.  Originally, this section was read as a reminder for people to be ritually pure in time to participate fully in the Passover offering.  Even though the Pesah sacrifice has been transformed into the Seder rituals, and even though matters of ritual purity have taken a back seat in modern Judaism, we still read this section each year as Passover approaches. 

This gives us our first question: Why do we still add this special reading?

Our next question comes from looking at the section itself.  Numbers, chapter 19, instructs that a person who becomes impure through contact with a dead body must undergo a purification ritual in order to return to full participation in the community.   Here's what you do (the short version): take a red heifer, slaughter it, and burn it to ashes on the altar.  Take those ashes and store them to be used for purification.  When the need arises, take some of the ashes and mix them with fresh, running water.  Take a branch of hyssop and use it to sprinkle the mixture on the affected people and property.  Got that?  Now, our second question: What is this ritual about?

To answer the second question first: We're really not so sure.  Mountains of Midrashim and other commentaries see this ritual as the epitome of a hok, a law from the Torah with no discernible reason behind it. 

However, I think there's something here we can really relate to.  When you encounter death, you are taken out of the community; your normal way of being is disrupted.  Finding your way back after suffering a loss takes time - and action.  This bizarre ritual is the Torah's suggested action.  It's no accident that the vehicle for delivering the red heifer's ashes is mayyim hayyim, flowing water, literally, water of life.  Water from a natural source symbolizes life's passages, including death.  But its perpetual motion and constant replenishment also represent the way back into connection, back into life. 

In our contemporary society, death isn't the only thing that might pull us away from the Jewish community.  Some of us may have drifted away, pulled by other interests, some of us may never have found connection and meaning in the Jewish community.  Whatever the reason, finding our way back to the vibrancy of Judaism takes action. 

Like with the red heifer, mayyim hayyim, water of life, can bring us to reconnect.  Our waters of life come not from a spring, but from the wellspring of opportunities in the Jewish community.  Exciting learning, delicious Shabbat meals, Israel experiences, literature, music, and culture - each of these may be a source of renewed life for someone seeking connection.

Back to our first question: this is why we read this passage before Pesah.  At this time of year, when the world around us is being reborn, Jews from all over gather to celebrate the birth of our people.  We read of this life-renewing ritual now precisely to encourage us all to find our own mayyim hayyim, to make this time of year one that reconnects us with the community, for Pesah - and beyond.

Shabbat Shalom, and a zissen Pesah - a sweet Passover.