Tag Archives: confronting death

Shabbat Parah : the red heifer ritual and our own mortality

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The temple system of ritual purity and impurity continues to have an effect on Jews even though the Jerusalem Temple itself is long gone, replaced by synagogues, and prayers have taken the place of sacrifices.

Rooted in biblical texts, and greatly expanded in rabbinic ones, Jewish daily life continues to play out the concepts of tahor and tamei, of ritual cleanness and ritual uncleanness, of our appropriateness or not to enter the Temple courtyards to bring sacrifices – a paradigm of supreme practical futility given that we have lived in diaspora for over two thousand years and have had no Temple in which to take such offerings.

Be it the kashrut system and our attitudes to the food we eat, of blessing God before eating or drinking, be it the use of mikveh after menstruation or giving birth, or before the festivals, or be it the practice of Cohanim not to enter the Ohel of a cemetery or come too close to either the dead or their graves, everyone washing hands after leaving a cemetery, the system of tahor and tamei continues to be quietly yet powerfully expressed.

While there is an enormous and complex rabbinic explication of the system – almost entirely long after it has ceased to be of use in the Temple, there is relatively little actual explanation about its purpose beyond being fit or unfit for Temple activities. Yet the concepts are critical to understanding Jewish life across the millennia.

To begin, the words tahor and tamei, usually translated as to do with purity or cleanliness, express ideas that do not exist in other languages or cultures. Samson Raphael Hirsch suggests they are words expressing a blockage of (tamei) or a freedom for (tahor) the transmission of holiness. Someone who is tahor is able to be a conduit for God’s will in the world, someone who is tamei is not. The words are certainly nothing to do with physical cleanliness, even though one way to remove most states of “tumah” is mikveh – immersion in living waters. 

Essentially when we talk about these states, we are in the world of moral concepts, in particular the world of kedushah, of holiness, and of the efforts we make to express God’s will in the world by our mundane and quotidian actions.

The Parah Adamah, the second reading torah reading that is read on the shabbat before shabbat haChodesh, the shabbat before Pesach, and which gives this shabbat its name (Shabbat Parah) is placed here in our liturgical calendar in order to remind the people to make themselves ready to offer the Pesach sacrifice. The “impurity” caused by contact with the dead is unlike any other impurity – it cannot be solved by time, washing and mikveh alone, but only by this arcane and opaque ritual of the ashes of a red heifer. Since the impurity can be passed on to others who did not have contact with a dead body, the chances are high that at any one time we are all in this state of tumah -of ritual impurity. While we cannot resolve this state without the ritual of the ashes which no longer exist, and in any case will not be offering the Korban Pesach, it seems at first glance odd that the tradition has insisted that it be read. There must be another reason for us to keep it so prominently in our liturgical calendar.

One reason is a may be a reminder that death is a disrupter of the importance of bringing holiness into the world. Judaism is a religion of life, we can only perform mitzvot in our lifetime (the reason why a Jew who is buried in tallit will have the symbolic knotted threads on each corner cut before burial), the dead do not praise God says the psalmist. While death is normal and natural, we do not look forward to it as the gateway to heaven. Our focus is on living a life that allows us to bring God and holiness into the world, not on a life whose meaning is particular only to ourselves or one that is a precursor to some “real life” in the afterlife.

Yet death is always around us, it can create fear in us and the deaths of others can destabilise us. The death of one we love can cause us to reject life, or to reject God. Death rarely comes at the right time, we all want more life if we can.

So the idea of death causing this highest form of tumah, of impurity, a form that requires a special and esoteric ritual, is a reminder that while we recognise our own mortality in theory, we find ourselves blocked or in denial about what this might really mean for us – our lives and our selves too will end.

Yet there is a way to resolve this that is held out to us on shabbat Parah – we have the almost fantastical ritual of the Parah Adamah – and some way in some time this ritual will be available to us once more, the conduit between us and the divine caused by our own mortality and the mortality of those we love, can become cleared. Death will not be the end.

Another reason we read of the Parah Adamah is that the rabbis who mandated it and who built the complex and enormous system of theoretical ritual purity and impurity were focused not on any physical state but on our spiritual state. The second torah reading this shabbat is paired with a special haftarah. In the book of Ezekiel we read that “I will sprinkle “mayim tehorim” – ( pure water) on you and you shall be tahor (pure). From all your tumah (impurities) I will purify you.” (Ezekiel 36:25). It is an echo of the ritual of the red heifer, but it takes the ideas of purification further and explicitly moves the arena to the spiritual rather than the physical and ritual purification.

Ezekiel continues

 “נָתַתִּ֤י לָכֶם֙ לֵ֣ב חָדָ֔שׁ וְר֥וּחַ חֲדָשָׁ֖ה אֶתֵּ֣ן בְּקִרְבְּכֶ֑ם וַהֲסִ֨רֹתִ֜י אֶת־לֵ֤ב הָאֶ֙בֶן֙ מִבְּשַׂרְכֶ֔ם וְנָתַתִּ֥י לָכֶ֖ם לֵ֥ב בָּשָֽׂר׃

And I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit into you: I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh;

וְאֶת־רוּחִ֖י אֶתֵּ֣ן בְּקִרְבְּכֶ֑ם וְעָשִׂ֗יתִי אֵ֤ת אֲשֶׁר־בְּחֻקַּי֙ תֵּלֵ֔כוּ וּמִשְׁפָּטַ֥י תִּשְׁמְר֖וּ וַעֲשִׂיתֶֽם׃

and I will put My spirit into you. Thus I will cause you to follow My laws and faithfully to observe My rules.

God says “I will give you a new heart (Lev Chadash) and a new spirit (Ruach Chadasha)… and cause you to follow my laws etc

The purification here is one of a moral flaw – the heart of stone we have demonstrated in our lives so far, a heart that has been unable to hear the needs of others, unwilling to respond with compassion and thoughtfulness, that heart will be replaced by God with one of flesh – a heart of humanity, of openness to others, a heart that sustains life.

Rabbi Jacob Milgrom teaches that the ritual of the red heifer is a ceremony of ethical cleansing for the self and for the community.  He writes “Ancient Jews believed that acts of immorality affected more than just those involved in them. There are consequences of wrongdoing that infect and pollute the entire community. … [the sins] have a contaminating effect, not only upon the guilty individuals but also upon the community and sanctuary. Asking forgiveness through sacrifices and prayers, even repairing the wrong through apology or restitution, is not enough to purify what is soiled by wrongdoing.

“For the ancients, the ritual of the parah adumah alone has the power to remove or exorcise such sinfulness. ‘By daubing the altar with blood or by bringing it inside the sanctuary, the priest purges the most sacred objects and areas of the sanctuary on behalf of the person who caused their contamination by physical impurity or inadvertent offense.’ The person and the community corrupted by wrongdoing are restored to a state of purity and can then go on without the burden of guilt.” Jacob Milgrom, JPS Torah Commentary ad loc)

Reading this extra piece of torah within days of celebrating Pesach functions not only as a prompt for us to examine ourselves and our lives half a year after the period of teshuvah of Elul and Kippur, it also reminds us that our lives have value and meaning, that we must live them the best way we can, renewing ourselves and behaving with greater humanity and renewed spirit in the world. It reminds us that lives are finite, that each one of us is a conduit for holiness, that the world is mysterious and while we cannot understand everything, we can understand the importance of a life searching for the divine.

And finally, why did the rabbis spend so much time and thought on a system that no longer existed? It is I think an act of hope, a belief in redemption and the forging of an identity that would be clearly and powerfully based on the activities of everyone’s daily life. The majority of the Jewish world were no longer living in Eretz Yisrael. There was no temple extant. But what better way to keep a people and a religious and cultural system alive and connected than the system of ritual purity they created. Every moment of this system is a reminder of our covenant relationship with God. Every tiny detail ensured that the Jewish world stayed focused on that, on the Land, on God, and on our peoplehood we would not be lost while in exile, the fate of so many peoples displaced at the whim of great empires.

It was, I  think, a religious act and a political one too. The Jews, wherever they find themselves, are part of a system designed to bring us closer to God in a specific and unique way. The system kept us from merging with the cultures surrounding us, yet allowed permeability so that we could absorb enough to live and survive in them. It gave us the flexibility to live in diaspora yet with our eyes towards Jerusalem, and the structure to retain our particularity and act out and understand our covenant relationship with God.

The ritual of the red heifer may continue to be mysterious and inexplicable, a law of God with no obvious rationale, but the system within which it sits is the air that we breathe. It is an imperative towards life, an imperative towards holiness, a reminder to check ourselves and repair what we can in timely fashion. A reminder of our mortality, and of the life we want to live.

Chayei Sarah: confronting the reality of death, make preparations, do the work

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death pic

Confronting the reality of death is always hard, and for Abraham this is no exception. The text that begins with the phrase “the life of Sarah was one hundred and twenty and seven years, these were the years of the life of Sarah, and Sarah died…” is the introduction to a protracted negotiation for her burial place.

In the twenty verses of the narrative, only three touch on Abraham’s emotional state “Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her. And Abraham rose up from before his dead, and spoke unto the children of Heth, saying: I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a burying-place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.’ In the story as first presented we see that he seems to quickly move from mourning and weeping to making the practical arrangements so that the body of his wife can be buried and removed from before him.

Sarah’s is the first documented burial in bible – up until now the narrative has dispassionately informed us of the death of individuals without much more detail. Yet clearly this burial he is arranging is not an unknown rite. The children of Heth recognise his need and open the negotiations with the offer that he may take his choice from their sepulchres, telling him that no one would withhold their own plot from him should he want to use it. So clearly there was already a well- established proactive structure in place of prepared graves by the time Sarah died, not surprising given the need to quickly dispose of the bodies of the dead. Yet our foundational family did not seem to have made this provision. Was it because as an immigrant family they had not got a sense of ‘owning’ the land they had come to? Or because they had not quite struck roots in the land of Canaan and were still travelling? It is odd that Sarah died in Hebron when Abraham was clearly in Be’er sheva. Were they living separately? The midrash tells of Sarah’s death being caused by her horror that her husband would be prepared to sacrifice their son so had she left Abraham in order to strike out alone? Was any previous plan to have a grave left behind in the tangle of confusion that this relationship trauma had caused, and Sarah’s new place of abode forced Abraham into making new arrangements?

It does seem odd that they had not made plans for their deaths. They were a long way from the graves of their ancestors, (and indeed Terach the father of Abraham had also died in Haran away from his homeland of Ur Chasdim) so they would have had to innovate in their new lives in the new country. Were they hoping for some guidance in the moment? Were they wondering if they would be staying in the land or moving onwards again? What was behind the need for Abraham to have to negotiate for a family plot while in the grief of immediate bereavement? If as a Jewish community we have learned one thing, we have learned of the importance of community support in times of death and bereavement. The chevra kadisha (holy fellowship) which is appointed by every Jewish community to care for the dead, goes back at least to the time of Rabbi Hamnuna (3rd Century CE). The Talmud (Mo’ed Katan 27b) tells us “This also said Rav Judah as reporting Rav: When a person dies in town, all the townspeople are forbidden from doing work. R. Hamnuna once came to Daru-matha, he heard the sound of the funerary-bugle [and] seeing some people carrying on their work, he said: Let the people be under the shammetha [ban]! Is there not a person dead in town? They told him that there was an Association (chevra kadisha) in the town. If so, said he to them, it is allowed you [to work].”

It provides a fascinating insight into the way the whole community was responsible for taking these practical arrangements from the mourners, and for arranging the dignified care and disposal of the body of the dead. This mitzvah took over from the need to work for everyone in town. There was a notifying sound when someone had died so that everyone would know of the death, and clearly in some places that R.Hamnuna knew, this sound was the prompt to everyone to down tools and go to help. Yet in Daru-matha they were even more organised, having deputed the responsibility to a group of skilled volunteers, much as we do to this day.

This leaves time for the mourner to use more than the 15 percent of time that Abraham was able to give in the narrative, to their grief. They can focus entirely on their loss, on the person they loved, on evaluating and processing and making sense of what has happened. And here Abraham has something very powerful to teach us.

We are told וַיָּבֹא֙ אַבְרָהָ֔ם לִסְפֹּ֥ד לְשָׂרָ֖ה וְלִבְכֹּתָֽהּ:

Abraham came ‘lispod´ for Sarah and livkotah’

Lispod is the word we use for giving the hesped – for speaking of the dead and telling the story of their life, from where they had come and how the journey had been, assessing and evaluating the real life that was lived, rather than eulogising or praising the person- at least not paying fulsome tribute unrealistically or without the fuller context of the way they lived their life. ‘Hesped’ means to cause to cry – in other words to really understand who we have lost and so to really feel the cost and pain of the death. Only after Abraham has done this, comprehended the full meaning of the life of Sarah, and thus the full extent of his loss, does he cry/mourn.

Sometimes when people die we like only to say good things about them – even unrealistic and unbelievable good things, instead of focussing on who they were, on why they had the damage or the pain or the anger they carried, on how they did or did not deal with the hurts and disappointments every life brings. There is a tendency to quote another midrashic gloss taken from the names of three sidrot in the book of Leviticus – “Acharei Mot Kedoshim Emor – After death speak holiness”. And this is a good maxim, but it is not the way of true mourning if we think the holiness /kedoshim means to tell ‘white lies’ or gloss over the reality of the complexity of every lived life.

To truly speak holiness of the dead is to recognise them in their full humanity. To see the flaws as well as the wonders, the spectrum of attributes they held and the way they allowed themselves to be. We need to see the fights they fought, the pain they felt, the love they gave, the achievements they realised, the relationships they worked on, the memories they embodied, the losses and the gains. Whatever the story behind the separation of Sarah and Abraham at her death and the lack of dignified burial space planned for earlier, Abraham teaches us something very powerful. See the person who died, give them their full rights as full human beings who lived fully human lives, and only then cry for yourself and for the loss of them. Confront the reality of them and their deaths, and go on to live your life in the light of that understanding.hevra kadisha(images from Czech republic: Hevra Kadisha building in Prague)