The entire “Red Heifer” ceremony, which we read about from the second scroll (Numbers 19:1-22), is puzzling – even the rabbis of the Talmud understood that. However, when the Israelites offered the Pesach sacrifice in the Temple, the need for the ceremony was clear. Before droves of pilgrims arrived, it was necessary to ensure a sufficient supply of solution for spraying on all those who were impure. It is less clear what the significance of this reading is today. Even thinkers who understand pre-Passover cleaning as a purification process will admit that chametz is not impure, and therefore the ashes of a red heifer will not remove it.
What were the Rabbis thinking when they established this call even after the destruction? They m\y have left a hint in the haftara. When Ezekiel prophesies about the defilement of the land caused by the Israelites’ sins, he doesn’t mention menstrual impurity or contact with a corpse or a grave – these are inevitable parts of life – but rather bloodshed and “gilulim.” “Gilulim,” sometimes translated “fetishes,” is a derogatory word for idol worship that Ezekiel uses frequently; out of 48 instances in the Bible, 39 are found in the book of Ezekiel.
Midrash Numbers Rabba (19:8) supports the possibility that Parashat Parah is intended as a warning against idolatry, when it connects this ceremony to the golden calf we read about last week. In response to the question of why a red heifer is needed, rather than an ox, sheep or goat, Rabbi Ivo proposes that is a parable about child who dirtied the king’s palace, and therefore the king insisted that the child’s mother be the one to clean up: “Thus says the Holy Blessed One, a cow is needed to and atone for the golden calf.”
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| Red Heifer, from the British Library |
Moreover, repudiating idolatry was an essential prerequisite for the Exodus from Egypt. The Passover sacrifice was intended to prove the willingness of the Israelites to break away from idolatrous Egyptian culture by slaughtering a lamb – a pagan symbol – where Egyptians could watch. Anyone who didn’t participate, didn’t leave.
The annual reading about the red heifer before Passover is intended to shake us with the question: Have we severed our connection with today's cultural idols?
Who and what are these idols? The time of Marduk, Osiris, Athena, and their colleagues has passed, but they do have replacements. Prof. Asa Kasher, in his Hebrew book Judaism and Paganism, defined modern idolatry as follows: “Paganism is expressed in an extreme positive attitude, an attitude of absolute loyalty, an attitude of devotion at all costs, an attitude of unconditional devotion” to a single aspect of a person’s life (p. 34, my translation).
Our lives have many aspects and pressures. Some of them are extremely important. The effort required to balance them is enormous. There is a temptation to make it easier for ourselves and resolve the difficulty by elevating one thing and making it the supreme value. One “aspect of life” that Professor Kasher gives as an example is work, in the sense of a job or profession. Such work is certainly very important, but it becomes an idol, according to Kasher, when a person says, “My work is my entire life.” Kasher is careful to distinguish between someone person who is devoted to work as an idol and “a person who bears the burden of work, laboring day and night to bring food and comfort to his family” or toils to create some other benefit for the world (p. 60). Working, earning a livelihood, creativity are important – very important – values but should not the sole value in a person’s life.
I would venture to say that in the majority of cases, work is a means rather than an end, and a means that becomes an end may also become an idol.
Another thinker who dealt with the question of idolatry in the modern era was Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel, a leader of the Mizrachi movement in Europe and Israel, and the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv from 1935 until his death in 1945. Rabbi Amiel is less interested in idolatry as a category and more in specific instances that he saw gaining power: nationalism and admiration for aggressors.*
In a pamphlet on The Ideological Foundations of Mizrahi, he explains, “Nationalism, in the way it is typically understood by other nations, is rooted in a spirit of coarse narcissism… in the idolatry of antiquity when each nation had its own idolatrous god… Therefore, the essence of nationalism rests on materialistic aggression, on the mighty hand and the ‘great fist.’” Conversely, “our nationalism [Zionism] draws its strength from the one God, and the love of Israel for God and for all those created in the image of God.” He expressed concern that Zionism was bringing about a Copernican revolution in the Jewish world, by focusing on the Jewish people and the Land of Israel, instead of God, Torah and value of all humans created in the Divine image.
Similar to work in Kasher’s thought, in Rabbi Amiel’s eyes, Zionism and the state – despite their great importance – must be means, not ends in themselves
What is the end, the goal? In a column published in the newspaper HaTzofeh, Rabbi Amiel reminds his readers, “Our Torah does not begin with the history of the Jewish people, rather with the history of humanity, from Primordial Adam. Our final goal is not only to have a “majority of Jews” in the Land of Israel but rather its goal is the ‘end of days,’ ‘to repair the world into the kingdom of God’… manifesting the holiness of the divine Image in human beings is the main ideal of the Torah and the Jewish people.
When Moshe confronted Pharaoh, he demanded, “Let my people go that they may serve me,” not merely “let my people go.” The journey to that the goal began by breaking with Egyptian idolatry. Are we be able to distinguish between means and ends, and disconnect from cultural idolatry here and now?
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| Rabbi Moshe Amiel speaking at the dedication of the Yeshiva of the New Yishuv |
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