Seeing - and Seeking - Red

 

Have you heard of the “Cattlemen of the Apocalypse?”

Gershon Gorenberg, an American-born Israeli historian and writer, devotes a chapter in his book, The End of Days, to these zealous Christian ranchers and rabbis from The Temple Institute working together to engineer the birth of a parah adumah, a completely red heifer. Huge sums of money have been raised by Christians for this undertaking, and there have been a number of “almost” red cows born. Each time, the color changed or black hairs also grew in.

In September 2022, hundreds of people arrived at Ben Gurion Airport to welcome five completely red cows. They were donated by an Evangelical Christian farmer from Texas and were sent to live on a farm in the Bet She’an region in the hopes they would remain red (they didn’t) or be used to breed a parah adumah. (I haven’t heard of any success yet.)

Why all the excitement? There is a tradition that the birth of a parah adumah augurs the coming of Mashiach. As the Rambam excitedly writes (Parah Adumah 3:4):

“Nine red heifers were offered from the time that they were commanded to fulfill this mitzvah until the time when the Temple was destroyed a second time… And the tenth will be brought by the king Mashiach; may he speedily be revealed. Amen, so may it be God's will.”

Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, in his Mishnah Berurah (685:1), notes that our annual reading of Parshat Parah is also a prayer that we get to experience the ritual ourselves: “We read Parshat Parah in prayer before God that we merit to have sprinkled upon us speedily in our day the purifying waters of the parah adumah.”

Why does the parah adumah capture the religious imagination? It provides a catalyst for grappling with difficult challenges and emotions, inspires us to think bigger, and provides with a reassuring message that we can come home again.

1)  The parah adumah is a response to death.

Death is sad, sometimes tragic. Death can leave us with an empty or angry feeling. These are the emotional manifestations of tum’at meit, the ritual impurity that affects anyone who encounters death. What is the Torah’s response to death? How do we move beyond tum’at meit? The parah adumah. We can’t explain how or why it works, but it just does. There is a mitzvah or meaningful course of action that is the Jewish response to death or any difficult situation.

2)  The parah adumah is a reminder that life is bigger than what we know.

Rabbi Norman Lamm, in a 1976 sermon, noted that the parah adumah “re-inculcates in us a sense of wonder at the fundamental mystery of existence.” In modern times, we know a lot about the physical world around us, but the parah adumah defies logic or usual categories. It presents us with an awareness of the grandeur that exists beyond our technical knowledge of things. “It reminds us that life is more than biochemistry, that man is more than machine or computer, that religion is more than dogma, that Torah is even more than moral conduct.”

3)  The parah adumah is a way back to God.

The ritual was one of purification, facilitating the individual to visit the Beit Hamikdash and other holy areas. Despite exposure to the most serious form of religious impurity, there is a way out. Rabbi Herschel Cohen, the late longtime Associate Rabbi of Lincoln Square Synagogue, would comment each Parshat Parah that God is always looking for ways to ease our way back to a connection with God. No matter how impure we get, the Jewish people have a parah adumah to help us find our way home.

These days, it can be easy to be distracted or deflated by tragic headlines, a sense that things will always be the same, and feelings of distance, dissonance, and discord. The parah adumah is a bright, inexplicable, yet very powerful reminder that things can and will get better.