Shabbat Parah

Mark Podwal (b. 1945)
Digitial archival pigment print on paper
7 7/16 x 7 9/16″
USA, 2020
© Mark Podwal

Shabbat Parah, the “Shabbat of the Red Heifer,” is the third of four special Shabbats during the month or so before Passover. Shabbat Parah’s special Torah reading, Numbers: 19:1–22, describes a ceremony of purification which uses the ashes of a red heifer. The public reading of portion Parah before Passover was a reminder to those who had become impure to be purified before making the Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The ritual, commanded to be “for all time,” purifies those who have been defiled by contact with a human corpse.  A midrash, or commentary, relates that even King Solomon, the wisest of men, was baffled by the paradox that the ashes of the red heifer “purified the defiled and defiled the pure.” The ritual is considered a prime example of a h. ok, a biblical commandment that must be observed though there is no apparent logic. Nonetheless, numerous commentaries attempt to find some rationale for the ritual. An early midrashic tradition views the red heifer as an atoning rite for the sin committed by the Israelites in worshipping the Golden Calf, reflected in Podwal’s interpretation with the insertion of a staff surmounted by the Golden Calf.