Parshas parah is the antidote to tumas meis. When you have no chiyus of your own, when you have no energy and no life left in you, you need parshas parah. The Sefas Emes explains that the ashes are the ultimate nothingness. Water is also a symbol of humility -- Chazal tell us that Torah is like water in that it flows down to the lowest point, to the person who is truly humble. The taharah of parah involved mixing ashes and water together -- a double-done of nothingness and humility. If you are mevateil yourself to Hashem, says the Sefas Emes, then you don't need to worry about your own chiyus -- Hashem will give you the chiyus you need. "V'es ruchi e'tein b'kirbichem," as we read in the haftarah. Hashem says, "I will give you my ruach" so you don't need to worry anymore about your own lacking.
Shlomo haMelech said that the more he tried to understand parah, the further away from it's truth he got. That doesn't mean that there is no reason for parshas parah. The Midrash writes that Hashem revealed the reason to Moshe Rabeinu. Rashi even gives a reason from R' Moshe haDarshan. So why couldn't Shlomo understand it?
The Ishbitzer explains, as we learned last week, that drinking on Purim "ad d'lo yada" means that we appreciate the difference between Haman and Mordechai, between Esther and Vashti, not because of empirical data or rational chakira, i.e. "da'as," but rather it's something that we know in our hearts.
Shlomo haMelech was telling us that the more he tries to translate the sugya of parah adumah into chochma and da'as, into logical terms and sevaros, the more elusive the parsha becomes. Not because there is no reason, but because chochma is not the right vehicle to get to that reason.
Much as parah itself is paradoxical -- it is metaheir those who are tamei but is m'tamei those who are tahor -- the reason for the mitzvah if paradoxical as well. The more one uses reason to try to arrive at it's secret, the less success one has of getting there. And the more one accepts the limits of one's own mind, the more comprehensible the parsha becomes.
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Offering someone $5 to stop thinking about elephants is also paradoxical. If they were already driving you crazy with their elephant talk, you are motivating them to take their thoughts in another direction. But if they had no reason to be thinking about elephants until now, you just introduced the topic.
ReplyDeleteI think parah adumah is the same paradox. The person who already encountered a meis is given a means to turn the page. And for someone who was busy trying to help them turn that page, it means introducing the topic of misah.
why doesn't a kohen daubing the blood of a chatas on the horns of the altar (to help an individual turn the page by atonement) become thereby tainted with sin?
Delete"If you are mevateil yourself to Hashem"..."Hashem says, 'I will give you [M]y ruach'"
ReplyDeletedid the Jews of the haftorah mevateil themselves, or will Hashem grab them by the scruff of their collective neck and haul them back to town?
"something that we know in our hearts"
is that to suggest that we recognize cedar wood, hyssop, and crimson wool (Bamidbar 19:6) in our hearts? "not the right vehicle", but the right ventricle?
"elusive"
cannot all "logical terms and sevaros" be why? why? why-ed? the way back to Hashem's [currently] inscrutable Will? and must He answer to reason? and must He make everything clear? to put a word in prolific Picasso's mouth, '[A]rt washes from the soul the [tamei] dust* of everyday death**': the parah adumah, the arcane procedures, the cedar wood and the hyssop and the crimson wool, be but added daubs of paint from His One Creative Will...
*from dust were you taken...
**Pablo used here the antipodal word 'life'
"why couldn't Shlomo understand it?"
ReplyDeletehe gave up after making a kal v'chomer: if many waters can't quench love (Shir ha'Shirim 8:7), love that's strong as death* (8:6), how then can a few sprinkled drops of it dispel tzalmaves?
in other words, flinging into his passionate mix elements very similar to parshas parah -- cedar and spices (like unto parah's eizov) and scarlet thread (4:3, like unto crimson wool) -- Shlomo thought to reach an understanding of death's aftercure via insight into a promising antidote [impassioned love]. but the 'logic' broke down: a man could give all the wealth of his house, and rather than capture an answer to desire, simply play the fool (8:7, eem...)**
*thus death as strong as love
**looking at his hundreds of wives wrapped twice around the palace walls, waiting one-by-one for a speed greeting [like speed dating, but quicker], and at his countless concubines swinging from the sagging rafters, who can disagree?
"the ashes are the ultimate nothingness"
ReplyDeletewas Moshe's "nothingness" (v'nachnu ma? Shemos 16:7-8) that of the heifer's ash, such that Hashem "revealed the reason" for parshas parah to him? add to his nothingness his "humility" (Bam. 12:3), and we have "a double-do[s]e" that explains Moshe's undiminished vigor, his youthful "chiyus", at one-hundred-and-twenty years old (Dev. 34:7)
{Avraham double-doses too: after his admission of dust (humility) and [human] ash (nothingness), Hashem makes up for his "own lacking" of five tzadikim in S'dom (...yach's'rune..., 18:27-28)}
Rav Chaim Volozhiner says on "va'anokhi afar va'eifer" that they are different kinds of nothingness.
DeleteAfar is what keilim are made out of. Think of the role of earthenware in Avraham's day. (Or Chazal's.) Afar is nothing, yet -- it can have a future.
Eifer was something, but reduced to nothing. It may have had a past, but it's done.
So, when we say on Yom Kippur, in Vidui, "afar ani bechayai, qal vachomer bemisasi", we are saying: I haven't made anything of my potential [yet] in life, all the more so if I were to die. So, if You want to give me a chance to turn that afar into a keli, please let me live.