Perashat Parah – Red Heifer
The Torah portion about the red Heifer discusses how a person purifies himself after coming into contact with the dead.
The Haftarah alludes to a symbolic meaning of becoming pure through the Red Heifer ashes.
Just as a dead person makes you impure unethical, anti- Torah actions make you impure. Our sins made us Tameh – Impure. The Land of Israel did not tolerate such sins and we were twice expelled from the land.
The Prophet Yechezkel (36) goes on to say that while in the Diaspora we continued to sin. This was the greatest desecration of G-d’s name:
They went to the nations which they went to and the desecrated my name by saying to them, ‘This is the nation of G-d and from his land they came.
Because of this desecration G-d decided to bring us back to The Land of Israel. The prophet says that G-d brought us back to Israel to make his name look better and definitely not because we did anything special.
Yechezkel at this point has the most amazing prophecy which is more miraculous than the parting of the sea:
I will throw on you pure water and you will be purified from all of your impurities all you false beliefs, I will purify you. And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will I will put in your midst, and I will remove your stone heart and I will give you a heart of flesh.
The stubborn love of disgusting false beliefs will no longer exist. All of the people who froth at the mouth when Judaism is discussed will see that the Torah is great. This requires an incredible miracle because many are totally blind and hard hearted that they can not possibly see redeeming value in the Torah.
After G-d gives us a new heart we will look back at what we used to consider important and be embarrassed that we did not follow the Torah earlier.
This Haftarah finishes off by saying that G-d will make the deserted Land of Israel into a very fertile place where there will be no hunger. All the destroyed cities will be rebuilt. We will no longer need to rely on the gentile nations for economic support.
While studying this Haftara I realized that in our times almost all of this prophecy has taken place. We can live in Israel which is today very fertile and far from hunger. The Economic outlook is very good for Israel and cities which have not been occupied for thousand of years have thousands of Jews living in them.
The only thing missing is the miraculous heart transplant which will give us a flesh heart has not yet happened. Let us hope and try to manually fix our attitudes.