Tzav & Parah - For Tomorrow We Die
Recognizing the inevitability of death can lead us to give up and live materialistically, or to invest and live with alacrity - the choice is ours.
This year is a leap year, when we add an extra month to the calendar, which causes some unusual juxtapositions between the weekly Parsha and calendar events. For example, this week’s parshat Tzav, is ordinarily associated with Shabbat Hagadol, the Shabbat preceding Passover . However, this year Parshat Tzav is paired instead with the extra portion of Parshat Parah which discusses the Parah Aduma, the Red Heifer, whose ashes were used to purify anyone who came in contact with a corpse.
The reading of Parshat Parah serves to remind us that Pesach is approaching, and anyone who came into contact with a corpse during this time of year must purify with the Parah Aduma ritual. But what is the significance of this year’s atypical pairing of Tzav and Parah?
I think the answer lies in the peculiar nature of the Parah Aduma ritual. Parah Aduma is considered by the Sages to be one of the classic chukim, the class of mitzvot we don’t understand, in contrast to mishpatim, which are mitzvot with obvious logic, such as prohibitions against stealing and murder.
The process of Parah Aduma itself is so perplexing it provokes a question that even the wisest of people, King Solomon, could not answer: in the process of purifying someone else, why does the person who sprinkles the ashes become impure? Wouldn’t that be a contradiction? Why would the person making someone else pure become impure himself?
I think the reason this mitzvah is intentionally illogical and therefore a classic chok is because it represents the all encompassing mystery of death, a phenomenon that also defies our comprehension. We wonder when we will die, why we must die, what transpires during death, and what happens afterwards. And I think that the inscrutable nature of death is a prime example of our most troubling existential question: why do bad things happen to good people; why is life so unfair? We have no answer, and so we search for a way to live with this anxiety-provoking dilemma. At Mount Sinai, the Jewish people coped with their fears of the unknown by committing the sin of the Golden Calf. As Tosefot explains in the Talmud Mesechet Shabbat 116, this was an attempt to create distance from God and enjoy life hedonistically. It was an attempt to live the famous adage quoted in the name of Epicurus (and Kohelet) which states, “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
But the Torah provides us with another approach to the dilemma of death. We are told that when Moshe prayed to seek atonement for the Golden Calf, he asked God about this very problem. Why do bad things happen to good people?
אָמַר לְפָנָיו: רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם! מִפְּנֵי מָה יֵשׁ צַדִּיק וְטוֹב לוֹ, וְיֵשׁ צַדִּיק וְרַע לוֹ, יֵשׁ רָשָׁע וְטוֹב לוֹ, וְיֵשׁ רָשָׁע וְרַע לוֹ? אָמַר לוֹ
Moses said before God: Master of the Universe. Why is it that the righteous prosper, the righteous suffer, the wicked prosper, the wicked suffer? [Berachot 7a]
God replied that we will never be able to discern the reason during our lifetime in this world. Similar to a chok, a law we can’t understand, death and injustice are also concepts we won’t understand in this world.
It’s interesting to note that the Parah Aduma is considered a kapara/atonement for the sin of the Golden Calf. The Midrash Tanchuma tells us that the Parah Aduma which is an adult calf, atones for the sin of the Egel. It is as if the “mother” is cleaning up her calf’s mess, so to speak. In this way, the Parah Aduma symbolizes an alternative perspective on coping with the inevitability of death: whereas the Egel represented the urge to live hedonistically, the Parah Aduma encourages us to view the certainty of death as our motivation to take advantage of every moment of life, “for tomorrow we die.”
And that is a primary theme of Parshat Tzav. The very title of the parsha derives from the word command, to get up and go. Rashi teaches that Tzav refers to the alacrity with which the kohanim approached their service to God.
צו את אהרן. אֵין צַו אֶלָּא לְשׁוֹן זֵרוּז מִיָּד וּלְדוֹרוֹת
The expression “Command …!” always implies urging on to carry out a command [Rashi, Leviticus, 6:2]
The kohanim wished to be productive and use every moment wisely. I think that this is the connection between Tzav and Parshat Parah: if we become preoccupied with our perceptions of death, of evil, of injustice, it will only serve to bring us down. We’ll be wasting precious time, because we will never find satisfactory explanations. But if we accept the reality of death even without understanding it, as we do with the mystery of Parah Aduma ritual, then we will be able to experience God’s willingness to come down to us, as He did in response to Moshe’s request after the Egel, making Himself present in our midst with the building of the Mishkan/Tabernacle.
I think this message can help us cope with the ever present reality of tragedy in our midst. This lesson is even more relevant with the current war in Israel, a terrible predicament forced on us by those who seek to annihilate the Jewish people. We’re being defamed in the press for defending ourselves in this existential struggle against an enemy that hides behind women and children preferring them to die so that they can gain the sympathy of public opinion. It’s only natural to ask why God puts us in these intractable and terrible situations.
The lesson of Tzav and Parah is that we must accept that we will never understand why God has surrounded us with so much injustice and death in this world. We must put our heads down and shift our focus to making the best decisions we can and to summoning the strength to prudently fulfill our responsibilities to our loved ones and to defend ourselves from the constant threat of annihilation. That is the path we must take so that God will come down to us (so to speak) and help us in our time of need. It is the only path to fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham – His blessing that we will truly, without contest, inherit our land of Israel.
Shabbat Shalom
Eliezer Hirsch