Ki Tissa - Shabbat Parah

The Calf, The Cow, and The Symbolism of Symbols

Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan

Today we read Parshat Ki Tissa, in which the Israelites, impatient for Moshe to return from Mount Sinai, make an idol in the shape of a golden calf. Moshe talks God out of killing them all and punishes them himself. The ringleaders are executed, all the people drink the ground-up ashes of the idol, and then their relationship with God is reaffirmed.

Today we also read about the Parah Adumah, the red heifer, a sacrifice whose ashes have the power to ritually purify a person after they have come into contact with someone else's death. Some readers have understood the heifer's ashes as a reminder of the Golden Calf story - that we can return from the brink of death and reaffirm our faith in God. Others have suggested that the ashes of the red heifer recognize the finality of death and thus acknowledge the bereavement of a mourner. Still others link the ashes with ancient Canaanite religious rites acknowledging the sacredness of life's cycles.

Traditional Jewish commentary labels the ritual of the red heifer's ashes a chok, an incomprehensible ritual practice commanded by God, the obedient doing of which develops spiritual commitment. In contemporary psycho-spiritual language, perhaps a chok refers to a symbol so powerful its meaning cannot be reduced to a single interpretation. As scholar Lawrence Hoffman says, "symbols symbolize" - but they don't symbolize any one thing. Rather they open our minds and hearts to a journey into ideas, feelings, questions, memories, meanings - right where we need to be at times of loss and change.

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