Kaparah Aleicha! – Haftarah Parah

Ezekiel 36:16-38 (Reform begins at 22)

Continuing our tour of the Pre-Pessach Haftarot, we come to Shabbat Parah. This week we recall the ceremony of the Red Heifer, whose ashes are used to make impure pure. After coming into contact with the dead, a person is tamei, or ritually unclean for seven days. On the third day and seventh day, they are sprinkled with water in which have been placed the ashes of the Red Heifer and only then are they Tahor, or ritually pure, and allowed to enter the camp.

Now, that’s a ritual!

The haftarah, likewise goes back and forth between clean and unclean, good and bad. It begins with Ezekiel listening to God rant about the unclean ways of the people. God tells Ezekiel that the people have been scattered as punishment. Their unclean ways, read idolatry, have angered God and caused God to send them away.

But that’s not the end of it. The people, having been banished, don’t seem to get the point that this is a punishment. In their new lands, they continue to profane God’s name, so that the locals see God as weak.

God continues with the following declaration in verse 22:

לָכֵן אֱמֹר לְבֵית-יִשְׂרָאֵל, כֹּה אָמַר אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה, לֹא לְמַעַנְכֶם אֲנִי עֹשֶׂה, בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל: כִּי אִם-לְשֵׁם-קָדְשִׁי אֲשֶׁר חִלַּלְתֶּם, בַּגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר-בָּאתֶם שָׁם.
Say to the House of Israel: Thus says Adonai the Lord, it was not for your sake that I will act, O House of Israel, but for My holy Name, which you have caused to be profaned among the nations!

Fishbane tells us of God’s concern that other nations will see God as powerless, in that God cannot even keep God’s people in their land. In response to that, God promises an ingathering of exiles. Where God will cleanse the people and, as verse 26 tells us, sprinkle clean water upon them, give them a new heart and put into them a new spirit. (here’s our connection to the Red Heifer, btw) All this for the sake of God’s holy name.

So, God does not do it for the people because they need it, but because of ego? God is concerned with self-image? Can we ascribe to God an ego like that? I mean we already know that God has an entourage of angels and the great PR firm of the Prophets, but this seems to be taking things too far.

Why is it God’s concern that the other nations see God’s power? Why is God so concerned with what others think? And, if God is so concerned, why banish the people in the first place?

I try hard not to make too much sense out of the contradictory nature of God in the Bible. A colleague recently described God as bipolar in a sermon. But, what can be learned here, in the midst of contradictions between clean and unclean, pure and impure, powerful and weak, exiled and ingathered?
I believe that we can learn that God’s contradictory nature is reflected in the nature of the world around us. The priests attempted to put everything into neat categories of clean/unclean, etc. But in reality, the world is much more than a dichotomy. God can have an ego, because we also know that part of God’s nature is to be selfless for the people, giving and kind even when seemingly undeserved. God’s infinite facets reflect the complexities we see all around us. When we see an extreme in one place or another, we are jarred because we know that there has to be more than just the one way.

God has to be more than ego. God is more than ego.

When we allow the ego, or any other aspect of ourselves to completely take over our lives, we throw things out of alignment. We may not have sacred waters imbued with the spirit of a dead red cow on our hands, but we can always attempt to cleanse ourselves of excess ego, selfishness, greed, envy, indifference, intolerance, etc., etc. As we approach Passover, the idea that we can become purified from an overabundance of a character trait can bring a new meaning and importance to the word redemption, for all of us.