The heifer and the thugs

Shabbat Parah 5770

I believe that many of you already know the new guidelines with which we hope to contain the Coronavirus epidemic in our communities. Just before Shabbat an email was sent out from our office; those who do not have access to email will receive it in a printed form. Today, and moving forward, we need to be cautious and learn to refrain from otherwise instinctive gestures, such as kissing, embracing or handshaking. I, of course, hope the emergency will pass and we will return to be physically effusive as after all, we are Jewish! But somewhere, in the back of my mind, I wonder how many of these changes of our habits will be permanent and stay with us when, as we all hope, the emergency will be over.

Many contemporary habits and gestures in our daily life seem natural to us, but they have an origin. They have been introduced at a specific point in history, for specific reasons, and then have stayed, even after the context changed.

The military salute in its present form of the right hand on the forehead, originated in Medieval times when knights greeted each other by raising their visors to show their faces, and be identified as friends and not the enemy. Some scholars maintain that the left-hand traffic, the way people drive their cars on the road in England, dates back to Medieval times when knights and pedestrians needed to keep their swords in the right hand and pass on the left for self-defence.

As you see, the origins of these habits date back in the time of war, when lives were in danger and threatened, like today with the coronavirus epidemic, so I wonder if the habit of handshaking is doomed and the future generations of humanity will greet each other in a different way.

A similar kind of evolution can be tracked for many of the rules for purification that are listed in the Torah. A good example is the parah adumah, the red heifer, which we have read today, to kick off our spiritual preparation for Pesach. Its core rule is the need for purification after having touched a corpse. A quite understandable need and a matter of public health, especially in the warm climate where our faith comes from. Corpses are contaminating and can pose serious threats to public health. Hence the need for quick burial, so typical of our faith.

Let me digress for a moment by mentioning the mass graves in Iran, where the victims of the Coronavirus are currently buried. There are plenty of photos taken from satellites, yet the Iranians deny the evidence. The media, as we know, prefer not to criticise too openly the Iranian despots, and so people (usually members of religious minorities) have to continue to live in the proximity of these mass graves. So much for the Iranian regime that, so we are told, is gradually evolving towards democracy.

Anyway, back to our Torah portion. In Middle Eastern climates, corpses are dangerous, so a quick burial is requested because of health reasons, and whoever touches a dead body must go through a procedure of purification. This is the visible core, the most ancient element of the whole ritual described in this paragraph. The process of purification requires spending days in isolation, bathing in running water, and being sprinkled with “water of separation”, which is water with hyssop, a plant which was a well known antiseptic. All of this makes sense if we consider the procedure as a way to be sanitised. It includes seven days of isolation which is understandable because it is what we do, even today, to protect our communities from contamination.

But in the ceremony, there is another element, which is a bit mysterious. The “water of separation” meant to purify those who have touched a dead body, including the ashes of a very rare animal, a completely red heifer born from a completely red cow. This has nothing to do with hygiene and public health. It has more to do with religion and spirituality, than keeping people safe from contact with dead bodies. Why a heifer and why a red one? There is not a straightforward answer and even Rambam, who is very fond of rational explanations, could not find a proper answer.

Rabbis and commentators have of course provided their own, and there are plenty. Which is not surprising: it is a mysterious subject, literally related to life and death. We are dealing with a process of purification from the contact with death, with dead bodies, and this process involves the ashes of a dead animal. That is to teach that absolute purity, absolute purification is not possible. Exactly when you want to purify yourself from death, from illness, or from weakness, you have to remember that death is still there, it is part of the process and it is part of life.

Absolute purity is impossible.

Which brings me to this consideration. A few days ago a group of extremists, who call themselves Jews and radicals, violently disrupted a talk at the Jewish Book Week. They did not like the two authors who were giving the talk, Douglas Murray and Melanie Philips. The two speakers were accused of being racist and Islamophobic plus some other -phobic which is fashionable to accuse people nowadays.

Admittedly, they are not my favourites either, although Melanie Philips wrote a wonderful passage on bereavement that can be found in our prayerbook on page 532 (and I hope no one will suggest to MRJ that we have to purify our prayerbook). But certainly, both Philips and Murray must be allowed the chance to defend themselves from these hateful accusations, especially in a country where even the most rabid antisemite is allowed to address the public and call himself “anti-Zionist”.

The bullies and the thugs who disrupted the debate (and were rightly booed from the audience) must be asked: What do you want? Which kind of ideological purity do you want to dictate to the Jewish community? Do you want to turn the Jewish community into a place for purity, and to forbid any kind of contamination with ideas you don’t like?

I am not arguing that these folks are “bad Jews”. They probably think they are not, and that the “bad Jews” are those who contaminate themselves by listening to and perhaps questioning, Douglas Murray and Melanie Philips. Well, they are not. The majority of the Jewish community does not regard Melanie Philips or Douglas Murray, with whom perhaps we disagree, as some kind of contaminating dead bodies from whom we are supposed to keep at a distance. That is because Judaism teaches that a complete distance is impossible to achieve and even when we think we have become absolutely pure, guess what, impurity is still around. Those Jewish radicals are not good, neither bad Jews. They simply must do their Jewish homework better!

Brighton and Hove Reform Synagogue, 19 Adar 5770–14 March 2020, Shabbat Parah

Originally published at https://www.facebook.com.