Vayakhel-Pekudei: How Should We Purify Ourselves for Pesach? Don't Ash Me!

We are right now in the middle of a period known as the Four Special Shabbatot before Pesach (and, of course, there are five of them...).

This week is Shabbat Parah, the Shabbat of the Cow. Ah yes, it makes perfect sense. We talk about cows leading up to Pesach because on the Seder Plate we include the shank bone of a... lamb? Hm, well then it must be because at the end of the Seder we sing about Chad Gadya, a song focusing on a baby... goat? Ok, I give up. What's the deal with the cow, and how does it relate to Passover?

The answer, you see, is that Shabbat Parah focuses on a strange, ancient purifying ritual involving the ashes of a Red Heifer. I wrote about this Burgundy Bovine last year, so rather than repeat myself, I invite you to click here and be magically whisked away to the bygone year of 2011. Instead, I would now like to point out something that recently caught my eye regarding this ritual. In short, it only purifies you from contact with a dead body. The Red Heifer is often elevated

to the stuff of myth and lore; an ancient, long-lost ritual that would purify you of ANYTHING! When in reality, it 'only' affected people who dealt with the deceased. To be fair, in the Ancient World, most people died at home (or on the battlefield), and not in a hospital or in hospice care. So it was relevant to most people in a way that we can't fully appreciate. Nevertheless, the Red Heifer is NOT a magical cure-all. In an article written for JTS, Rabbi Len Sharzer writes, "there is no way to cleanse ourselves of the contamination of contact with the slavery of discrimination, of unfairness, of inequality." In fact, Rabbi Sharzer even argues that there NEVER was such a thing as a Red Heifer, even in the Bible! It was always just a hypothetical scenario; it certainly didn't purify you of everything and anything.

But we do this, don't we? We look for magic bullets and potions, quick fixes and easy solutions. How great it would be if you could mix the ashes of a dead cow with water, dip a hyssop branch in it, sprinkle it on yourself, and be free of sin. 

(If I had a nickle for every time I've tried to reenact this ceremony...) That just isn't how life works. The 'contamination' of sin - whether it involves mistreating other people, bullying, lying, fudging a little on your taxes, or even talking about people behind their backs - none of these can just be washed away. Rabbi Sharzer reminds us, painfully: "The only way to be free of the taint of complicity is to be proactive in eliminating the source."

It is very appropriate that Shabbat Parah is one of the four (five?) weekends leading up to Pesach, because it moves us along in our preparations. Pesach teaches us about our history, how we were slaves who were freed from bondage. We were oppressed and we

were beaten down, and others were apathetic in the face of our suffering. Is that not also a sin? Does indifference not also 'stain' our lives? This is the season of cleaning our homes, our fridges, and our souls; and none of these comes with a miracle cleaner that purifies everything. Shabbat Parah reminds us of our tendency to wish away our problems, to look for simple answers to complex problems. That's why Shabbat Parah isn't the culmination of the season; Pesach is. Let us use this time, these weeks leading up to Passover, to think about what it might mean to truly purify ourselves. And then, let's get mooh-ving!

Photos in this blog post:

1. CC image courtesy of Robert Couse-Baker on Flickr

2. CC image courtesy of zeevveez on Flickr

3. CC image courtesy of bjorn.watland on Flickr  

4. CC image courtesy of Greencolander on Flickr