Haftorah Parashat Parah
Parshat Ki Tissa, Parshat Parah—Yehezkel 36;16-38
Becoming Impure As a Nation
The haftarah relates to this week’s special Torah reading, in which we are told of the ceremony of the Parah Adumah, the red heifer whose ashes were mixed with water. That solution was then sprinkled on those rendered ritually impure by virtue of contact with a corpse; it was that sprinkling that removed the status and once again allowed the person to enter the Beit haMikdash.
Our translating “tumah” as ritual impurity points us in the direction of central questions that underlie our haftarah as well. When the Torah assigns such ritual impurity to a person because they have engaged in certain acts, had some types of contact, or underwent a particular bodily experience, Jewish sources are of two minds as to whether the Torah’s rules reflect some metaphysical reality of contamination (or other negative status) or whether the Torah simply didn’t want such people to enter the Beit haMikdash during their time of impurity (for reasons we could only discover by analyzing each case on its own).
While my sympathies lie with the second position, our haftarah is most easily explained by following the first. The haftarah speaks of the Jews as having defiled the Land with their sins, seeing them as having introduced a type of niddah-impurity to the Land. That may be because the sin in question was murder, which the navi refers to as shedding of blood, but it is certainly easier to say that the navi was assuming that a niddah is defiled by her menstrual blood, and the Jews have introduced something similar to the Land.
The comparison of ritual impurity to sin, with the Parah Adumah water seen as cleansing, is the source for a famous Mishnah at the end of Yoma, in which R. Akiva celebrates our having the right/ability to have God cleanse us, either by serving as our Mikvah or by sprinkling waters of purity upon us.
Passive Cleansing
Our haftarah mentions only the second of those, God’s cleansing us by sprinkling waters of purity on us, an image which stresses our passivity in the process. We do not bring about our purity, God does. That image both matches the predictions of the haftarah as well as explaining why the navi takes little pleasure in informing us about that cleansing.
The navi stresses that Hashem will do all this only because our continued exile and servitude is an embarrassment to Him (as it were); having linked His Name with us as a people, our abject and continuing failure to act as we are supposed to necessarily affects how God is seen in the world.
The positive message is heavily outweighed by the not-so-positive. We might celebrate that our people is so eternally linked with Hashem’s Name that our times of trouble are, as it were, so problematic for Hashem that He will “need” to end our exile before we perhaps deserve it, but we cannot ignore Yehezkel’s assumption that we will never actually learn the lessons Hashem has been trying to teach us. Whenever the end of history comes, for Yehezkel, we will still have failed to rid ourselves of our sinful ways! In the end, Hashem will step in to cleanse us.
Becoming Purified, Becoming Changed
When the Jews come back, in this version, the Return is purely geographical, without any change of their internal workings or religiosity (sound familiar?). Yehezkel’s vision also does not tell us how soon after the Return we will be purified, nor how that purification will look.
Translating the process of having “para adumah” water sprinkled on a person to a national purification would seem to require an extended period of time (parallel to the week that the Parah Adumah water took, where sprinkling occurred on the fourth and seventh day), with different stages of purification (two sprinklings) and some kind of parallel care for with whom we have contact during that week, to avoid being re-contaminated by contact with impurity.
Connecting Spiritual Change to Economic
However it will happen, Hashem then says, in the same verse, that He will save us from our impurities and call out to the grain, so that we no longer have famine. Aside from reminding us how prevalent famine was in the navi’s time (a blessing of our own time we should always appreciate), the navi assumes a fact we should well know from our recitation of Shema, that the quality of our service of God affects our financial circumstances, at least in the Land of Israel. Sin is a problem not only because of how it damages us spiritually, but also because it complicates our ordinary physical lives.
A Meritless Teshuvah
The verse only refers to the Jews as remembering and being embarrassed of their sins after they have been returned from exile and purified. In contrast to many other ways in which teshuvah can occur, this teshuvah depends almost wholly on outside circumstances. As a result of being brought back from exile, of being externally changed and purified, of experiencing the economic goods that come out of a properly lived life, the Jews will look back on their sins with embarrassment.
The navi’s immediately saying that Hashem will not bring any of this about for our merits stresses that this kind of teshuvah has little merit to it. The person becomes more religious, a good result, but garners no reward for that change, since the change had none of his or her input. Salvation can come without our either earning it or even gaining reward from having been part of it.
Our minimal contribution to this version of redemption—and other nevi’im offer other pictures; perhaps they are different possibilities, or perhaps the final redemption will incorporate pieces of them all—perhaps also explains Hashem’s referring to us as sheep in the last two verses, sheep of sacrifice.
Sheep contribute to the Temple service passively; so do the Jews of this haftarah. The haftarah thus tells us that we can and ought to use this week’s Torah reading to remind ourselves that, just like ritual corpse-impurity, the cleansing prior to Redemption might be taken out of our hands. Implied, I think, is the hope that we will use the vision as a spur to act well enough to avoid being in that group of people, meriting instead a Redemption where we can be active participants in inaugurating a world that recognizes the true Kingdom of God.
Yehezkel 36
[16] Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
[17] Son of man, when the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by their own way and by their doings: their way was before me as the uncleanness of a removed woman.
[18] Wherefore I poured my fury upon them for the blood that they had shed upon the land, and for their idols wherewith they had polluted it:
[19] And I scattered them among the heathen, and they were dispersed through the countries: according to their way and according to their doings I judged them.
[20] And when they entered unto the heathen, whither they went, they profaned my holy name, when they said to them, These are the people of the LORD, and are gone forth out of his land.
[21] But I had pity for mine holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the heathen, whither they went.
[22] Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name’s sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went.
[23] And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, saith the Lord GOD, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.
[24] For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.
[25] Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.
[26] A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
[27] And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.
[28] And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.
[29] I will also save you from all your uncleannesses: and I will call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you.
[30] And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen.
[31] Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall lothe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations.
[32] Not for your sakes do I this, saith the Lord GOD, be it known unto you: be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of Israel.
[33] Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded.
[34] And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by.
[35] And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited.
[36] Then the heathen that are left round about you shall know that I the LORD build the ruined places, and plant that that was desolate: I the LORD have spoken it, and I will do it.
[37] Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them; I will increase them with men like a flock.
[38] As the holy flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men: and they shall know that I am the LORD.