At first glance the messages of Parshat Zachor and Parshat Parah—this week’s parsha—seem to be unconnected. Parshat Zachor deals with the age-old enemy of the Jewish people, Amalek. In every generation Amalek assumes different guises but he is always there, threatening the very existence of Israel and the Jewish people. His threat is real and very palpable and he minces no words in declaring his goal: the annihilation of Jews. Parshat Parah deals with a completely esoteric spiritual matter, the laws and rituals of the purification of people who became tamei (ritually impure) and may not therefore participate in certain activities, including Temple worship and sacrifices.
Amalek and ritual purification appear to be entirely
unconnected, being no more than part of the preparations for Purim and Pesach
respectively. But there are no mere coincidences in Jewish lore. The Torah,
Jewish tradition and custom are so multilayered that everything contained in
them requires study, analysis and additional insight.
Study of the Torah makes one realize that every subject and
custom is truly interlinked one with another at its deepest
level. Superficial understanding is dangerous: it leads to wrong
conclusions and false theories. Just as in modern medicine the physician relies
on CT scans and MRI imaging to make a correct diagnosis, so too does the Jew
have to search for the underlying principles that unite the Torah and Jewish
life and make it an indivisible whole.
It is by now clear that all the peace-making efforts here in
the Middle East over the past many decades were based on a single error:
reliance on rationality and practicality. They deal with a reality that can be
rationally explained and thus confronted, compromised and eventually solved.
But the Amalek conundrum is an irrational one. It is not given to explanation
or reasoning. From the first unprovoked attack by Amalek on the Jews in
the Sinai desert through the Holocaust and now the terrible threats and words
of Hezbollah and Hamas, it is all simply insanity and irrationality. But that is
the reality of an irrational world. And the Torah wishes us to realize that
there are many things that are beyond our rational abilities to control. The
Torah tells us to remember this lesson at all times.
Parshat Parah is also based upon an irrationality. The
Talmud points out that the ritual laws regarding purity and impurity, the power
of the ashes of the red heifer to contaminate the pure and simultaneously
purify the impure, are irrational. We have no explanation for them. They are
the exception to the otherwise generally rational and well-reasoned structure
of Torah life and ritual. The Torah purposely introduces into the
structure of Judaism an element that lies beyond human comprehension. It does
so with intent to impress on us the fact that Torah and its attendant halachic
principles are not always capable of being fully comprehended by the human
mind. There is always an area of faith that is beyond our reach and
understanding.
The Torah points out our human limitations; the finite can
never quite reach an understanding of the infinite. Rationality is, as it must
be, the basis for human actions and behavior. However, part of rationality is
the realization that there is much that exists beyond our powers of rational
thought. And the Torah emphasizes this by teaching us Parshat Parah. It
also does so by linking Parshat Parah to Parshat Zachor it as examples of the
underlying irrationalities that govern our world, society and even our faith
and beliefs. Thus do these disparate parshiyot become linked in purpose and
thought.
Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Berel Wein
