The Red Helper

A great Rabbanit once told me, “Sometimes we don’t know and we will never know why.” There are moments in life where we realize we could’ve done better and are able to recognize this; and there are moments that we are clueless why things happened, and that’s okay.

The mitzvah of Parah, of the Red Heifer, teaches us to accept and observe that which we don’t understand. It’s a chok, a law that has no rationale of why burning a red cow and throwing its ashes over someone relieves him of his impurity. Yet we are told to keep this mitzvah in its entirety!

When I was looking at the Parsha tonight, I remembered a deeply meaningful chapter I once read in Dr. Edith Eger’s The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life, a book written by a Holocaust survivor on her experience in freeing herself post-Holocaust, intertwined with the helpful stories of the patients in her practice over the years. (This work of beauty is part-self help, part-memoir and exquisitely so!) One of the chapters details a grieving woman, who came to Dr. Eger for help after her mother had died, complaining of her unresolved feelings towards her mother.

In one of their sessions, the woman went back fifty years to a time when she was a little girl and her mother lined her up in front of the stovetop in their kitchen in front of both mother and father, asking her—demanding her, really—to choose whom she loved more. The woman recounted with tears welling up in her eyes how her younger self just cried, unsure how to respond. She was conflicted because she undoubtedly loved her father so much yet knew her honesty would cost her, so she replied, “I love you more.”

The woman remembered, out of deep pain, how ashamed she felt as her gentle father, her own best friend, looked down at his lap right after.

After she finished her memory, Dr. Eger prompted her, “Now take this little girl’s hand. You’re an adult now. Show her the way and comfort her.” So the woman closed her eyes and proceeded to do so in the recess of her own mind, taking this precious girl by the hand and walking her through the kitchen.

“Now go to your father,” Dr. Eger continued. “Give him a hug and tell him that you loved him more than anything in the world.” The woman nodded her head, tears trickling down her cheeks.

But there was more: “Continue to hold that little girl’s hand and now walk over to your mother. Give her a hug too. She really needs it.” At this point, the woman of sixty immediately broke down, sobbing. “Tell her that everything’s okay.”

When I read this moving passage, I immediately cried myself. I was shocked why this woman’s mother needed a hug when she was the one who had hurt her so deeply. However, in her wisdom, Dr. Eger was showing her distressed patient—and also the reader—that even though we don’t understand why the mother acted so cruelly, she was the one who needed the hug the most.

And part of the healing of this grown woman, Dr. Eger explained, was not only letting herself feel the anger she had towards her mother but also finding a way to feel compassion for her.

I cried from the beauty of this lesson, how we can help those who have hurt us so deeply—family, friends, neighbors—and how it can be so healing.

I always found it disturbing how people say, Daven for your enemies. One time, when I was in high school and I suffered a lot from bullies, a teacher told me to pray for one girl in particular who was causing me a lot of pain. I looked at her like she was crazy.

While the teacher was coming more from a religious perspective, I remember this approach now in the context of emotional healing, of how lending a helping hand, a small favor or even a hug during troubling times can really help a person who has hurt you while also giving you more freedom of mind.

Dr. Eger’s whole thesis of her book was how we live in the prisons of our own minds years after our jailers have left us, and it’s really up to us—our own proactivity and mindset—to break free and really develop ourselves fully.

Part of healing is not only feeling the anger and pain and frustration in not getting apologies or recognition; healing’s about moving beyond the limitations of our fears and anguish and setting ourselves free through a higher level of being.

I think the Red Heifer truly underscores this message, letting us know that it’s okay if we don’t and all the while, demonstrating how the redemptive power of its ashes can set someone free from the impurity of the dead—from loss, from pain and from grief.

The Red Heifer teaches how something so rare as itself, perhaps symbolizing the rarity of kindness to someone who’s pained you, can bring a person from sin to atonement, as themes of impurity and purity in the Torah generally reflect iniquity and forgiveness.

Let’s use this Parsha as an opportunity to let go of old-time pains and perhaps transcend these aged and withered limitations with the freedom of a new perspective of giving and letting go. After all, Pesach is around the corner and we hope for many long-awaited redemptions both for ourselves and our people.