Parshat Ki Tisa - 5764

Parshat “Parah” – 5764 - The Color Red

Of the various puzzling and paradoxical aspects of the "Parah Adumah," the "Red Heifer" (or the "Red Cow"), I would like to discuss the significance of the color red.

The Planet Mars has been in the news recently, because of the incredible events taking place there, due to the American ingenuity involved in sending a robot explorer millions of miles from Earth, to actually land on the surface of the planet, take and transmit photographs and perform scientific experiments, mainly designed to probe for the existence, now or in the past, of water, a primary substance of life. Mars is known as the "Red Planet", and has therefore long been a symbol of war, because red is the color of blood. When Pharaoh said to Moshe, "Behold an evil Heavenly Messenger rising against you," (Shemot 10:10) RASHI explains this as a reference to the planet of blood, presumably or possibly, a reference to Mars.

The greatest enemies of the Jewish People have been associated with the color red. At the birth of Esav "ha-rasha," "the wicked," the Torah describes his complexion as "admoni," "ruddy." When Yaakov prepares a meal of lentils, Esav, coming exhausted from the field, asks that Yaakov give him "min ha-adom, ha-adom ha-zeh," "from this very red food" (Bereshit 25:30); the Bible remarks that this is the reason Esav is called "Edom."

"Edom" is also the name associated with the nation and religion that did and that has done the most damage to the Jewish People; namely, the Romans, representing Christianity and the Western world. In the "family tree" of Esav, Rome destroyed the Second Temple and, after the Romans’ national conversion to Christianity, in the time of the Emperor Constantine, the Church continued to persecute the Jews throughout the Jewish Exile and throughout the Ages, well into our own century. They have been on the whole the unworthy descendants of Esav about whom one opinion among the Sages states that "it is a 'Halachah l'Moshe MiSinai,' " "a law given unto Moshe at Sinai," that, with rare exceptions, "Esav soneh l'Yaakov," "Esav hates Yaakov."

Even at this very moment, with the screening of Mel Gibson’s movie, it appears that again the false charge of deicide, the spilling of the blood of Jesus, that is responsible for the spilling of rivers of Jewish blood, is about to rise from the grave and be laid again on the doorstep of the Jewish People. Unless HaShem intervenes again, as He did by striking the principal actor and one of the assistant directors during production with bolts of lightning – which unfortunately were laughed off by Gibson and his foolish staff.

Yet, there were many conversions to Judaism at the time of the ascendancy of the early Roman Empire and, paradoxically, one of our greatest national heroes, "David Melech Yisrael," "David King of Israel," is also described as "ruddy, with fair eyes, and with a nice appearance" (I Shmuel 16:12). He brought into the Jewish People the finest characteristics of the Moabite People in the person of Ruth the Moabitess, who had learned the Jewish ideals of "tzeniut," "modesty," and "chesed," "kindness," until they sank "into her bones," from her mother-in-law, Naomi.

Blood is forbidden to Jews to eat possibly because murder, the wanton spilling of blood, is a capital crime; neither is the blood of animals to be spilled lightly. The blood of the "chayah," the "undomesticated animal," and of the "ohf," the "bird," have to be covered after their slaughter. Reddish gold was the color of the "Egel Ha-Zahav," the "Golden Calf," the great sin against G-d described in today’s parashah of Ki-Tisa, in which the Jewish People added sexual immorality and murder to the basic betrayal of G-d represented by that sin.

Yet, red has a very different aspect. It is an intense, beautiful color, with a long wavelength placing it at the very opposite end of the spectrum from the blue of the heavens; namely, the color of earth. The Hebrew word for "earth" is "adama," from which "Original Man," "Adam Ha-Rishon," was created. Red is indeed the color of blood, but it is "blood, which is the basis of life."

It is the color of the setting sun, of beautiful flowers with which the "Tzayar Ha-Olamim," the "Artist of the Universe," filled the world, such as the "Chavaztelet Ha-Sharon," the Rose of Sharon," of "Shir Ha-Shirim," the "Song of Songs."

It was the color of some of the hides used to cover the "Mishkan," the "Holy Tabernacle," which preceded the Temple. It is the color of the blood which, when sprinkled in the Temple on the Day of Atonement, brought "Kapporah," "Atonement," to the Jewish People. And it is the color of the Red Heifer whose very essence is to atone for the Egel and for all manner of impurity attaching to individual Jews.

We are fortunate that a number of Red Heifers are currently being raised in Eretz Yisrael, in preparation for the Restoration of the Temple, may that blessed event come speedily, and in our time.

Rabbi Pinchas Frankel

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