Parshas Parah - "Zos Chukas HaTorah" from the word "chakikah" (engraving) - a Jew and the Torah are one - Rabbi Asher Perkash

00:01 Chassidim tell a story from the days of the Frierdiker Rebbe, in the first years after he arrived in America. The Frierdiker Rebbe called in a group of older chassidim—two or three of the older chassidim then living in New York, Reb Shmuel Vitin, Reb Shlomo Kazanovsky, and one other—and asked them to go on a mission to Chicago. In those years, the trip from New York to Chicago took quite a few hours. They had to travel by train, and it was not easy, especially since they were no longer young men. But the Frierdiker Rebbe asked them to carry out this mission for him. What was the mission? He told them that in Chicago there was a Jew whose last name was Lishner, and that he had a story he wanted to tell him so he would know where he came from. The story was that in the days of the Alter Rebbe, there had been a deeply devoted chossid, a fervent chossid attached to the Alter Rebbe with all his heart and soul. So much so that when he had to choose a family name—a decree had been issued in those days requiring everyone to have one—he chose the name Liazner, after the town where the Alter Rebbe lived at the time. The Alter Rebbe was known as the Maggid of Liozna, and this chossid gave his family the name Liazner, a name that over

01:30 the years became Lishner. And that was this man’s family: he was a grandson, a great-grandson of that chossid. The Frierdiker Rebbe also told them that when the Alter Rebbe was imprisoned, and the chassidim prayed, fasted, and subjected themselves to hardship, in a time of the gravest danger—they knew the Alter Rebbe was in immense danger—the chassidim did everything they could to have the decree overturned and secure the Rebbe’s release from prison. This chossid’s attachment went so far that he literally gave himself over, gave his life, gave his life for the Rebbe, and passed away. He passed away before 19 Kislev. There is much more to this story, but I will not go into all the details. The Frierdiker Rebbe told them the whole story about the man’s ancestor and asked the chassidim to pass it on to him. Whether it was written in a letter or conveyed orally, [unclear]. The older chassidim traveled to Chicago and decided to meet with the rabbi. They knew where this Jew was and where to find him. They went to the synagogue there and met with the rabbi. He was not a Chabad rabbi, but he was a rabbi, an American rabbi, an observant, G-d-fearing Jew. They told him they were looking for a Jew by that name. He went

02:52 to look for him, and they found him in his store, where he ran his business. They met with him. When the man saw several rabbis come in, he assumed they had come to ask for a charitable donation. He immediately took out his checkbook and said of his own accord, “I’ll write you a check. I’ll give you a donation.” They told him, “No, we didn’t come for money. We came on a mission.” “What mission?” They told him that the Lubavitcher Rebbe—at that time, the Frierdiker Rebbe—the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York had sent them to tell him about his roots, where his family came from. When the man heard this, he was deeply moved. He sat down and said, “Tell me the story. Who was my ancestor? What is my family’s story through the generations? Where did they come from?” The man was deeply moved because he was, you know, a simple person. Not especially learned in Torah and mitzvos—I don’t know to what extent he observed Torah and mitzvos in the American Midwest in those years—and he was not at all used to things like this. After they told him the whole story, he asked, “What am I supposed to do with it?” And they said, “[unclear] the Rebbe sent us to tell you the story to awaken your connection…”

04:19 to your family, to the place you came from, so that you would see your roots and grow stronger in purity and Yiddishkeit, so that you would know who you are and where you came from. Well, the rabbi was very impressed and deeply moved. The rabbi asked himself: I don’t understand. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, a great Rebbe, a great tzaddik, a G-d-fearing man, sends shluchim all the way to Chicago just to tell a story? What is this all about? He could not understand what had happened here or the purpose of the mission the Rebbe had sent them on. The rabbi who was there—not the Chabad rabbi who had accompanied them—said, “I’ll explain it to you.” He said that the Lubavitcher Rebbe was saying this: There is a Sefer Torah. A Sefer Torah has many letters. Great care must be taken with the ink, so that every letter is as it should be. There must be no erased letters at all; everything must be in order. Every few years the Sefer Torah is checked, and whatever needs repair is repaired, particularly letters whose ink has worn away. Why do we do this to a Sefer Torah every few years? It is written in the seforim that the Jewish people are compared to a Sefer Torah. As you know, there is the teaching, “There are six hundred thousand letters in the Torah”; the Jewish people are the meaning of those six

05:49 hundred thousand letters in the Torah. There is no need to go into an extended explanation of what that means, but in any case, the Jewish people are like one great Sefer Torah. Every Jew is a letter. And when it sometimes happens that a letter is erased, that its ink wears away and disappears, there is a scribe for that. The tzaddik, the Rebbe, is a scribe. He sends his shluchim, and they seek out Jews and repair the letters, thereby restoring the souls, by strengthening them once again in Yiddishkeit and in Torah and mitzvos. The rabbi was deeply impressed, and it did indeed lead him to become much stronger in his observance. From then on, he began practicing Yiddishkeit, Torah, and mitzvos with greater vitality and greater consistency. That was the story. Afterward, they returned to New York, went in to the Frierdiker Rebbe, and told him how they had carried out the mission. The Frierdiker Rebbe wanted to hear the details: What happened? How did it happen? They told him how they had gone to that rabbi, how they had met with him, and all the details, and how moved he had been, and so on. Then he asked what the idea had been, what explanation had been given. They told him how that rabbi had explained that the Rebbe was the scribe, and gave him all the details. When they told the Frierdiker Rebbe this part of the story, they noticed that he was not—the Rebbe was not

07:08 pleased. They could see on his face that he was not pleased with the explanation. When they noticed this, they asked, “Why is the Rebbe not pleased?” The Rebbe told them, “That is a serious mistake. To say that a Jew is like a Sefer Torah written in ink is a serious mistake. There is a Sefer Torah, and there are the Tablets. A Sefer Torah is ink on parchment. With ink on parchment, the ink is something added to the parchment. It can be erased. And that is why it wears away: there is no true unity here. The ink and the parchment are two things joined together, so over time the ink wears away. But there are also the Tablets. On the Tablets, the letters are engraved. The letters on the Tablets are engraved, and not only engraved, but cut all the way through. The point of engraved letters is that they are one with the stone; you cannot separate the letters from the stone. And engraved letters cannot be erased. It is very difficult to erase them. But what happens? Sometimes a little earth, a little dust, sand, and things like that collect on them, preventing us from seeing the letters clearly. You need to wipe that away, and then the letters are revealed again.” The Rebbe said: That is what a Jew is. Jews are not

08:50 written letters. A Jew’s soul is like engraved letters. In other words, a Jew and his soul, his Yiddishkeit, are one thing, one essence. The purpose of the tzaddik, of the tzaddik’s shluchim, of Jews who go on his mission, is to remove the earth, the dust, and the sand that have collected. Then the engraving is revealed—the true permanence, the true connection a Jew has with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and a Jew’s connection with Torah and mitzvos. All of these are, in essence, truly one and the same thing. This was the lesson the Frierdiker Rebbe gave about how to look at a Jew. A Jew is not like written letters that might flake off and leave him without the letters, G-d forbid. A Jew is like engraved letters. A Jew’s connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is an essential connection; they are truly one. Sometimes it can be covered and soiled. The dirt, the earth, and the dust need to be removed. But a Jew has an eternal connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And that is the goal: to remove the dust. That is what must be done; that is the work. And this is the central point of the passage about the red heifer that we read this week, Parshas Chukas. In the passage about the red heifer it says, “Hashem spoke to Moshe: This is the statute of the Torah.” It says there, “This is the statute of the Torah,” and everyone asks: What does that mean here?

10:19 “This is the statute of the Torah”? About what is it said, “This is the statute of the Torah”? More broadly, even if we are speaking here about chukim—mitzvos of which it is said, “I have decreed a statute,” mitzvos that do not make sense to us—there is also the matter of the Tablets. The Tablets have engraved letters. The letters on the Tablets are engraved, and not merely engraved, but cut all the way through. So engraved letters are one with the stone; you cannot separate the letters from the stone. And engraved letters cannot be erased. What can happen? Sometimes a little dirt, a little dust, sand, and things like that collect on them and prevent us from seeing the letters. You have to wipe it away, and then the letters are revealed again. The Rebbe says: this is what a Jew is. A Jew is not like written letters. A Jew’s soul is like engraved letters. In other words, a Jew and his soul, his Jewishness, are one thing, one essence. The purpose of the tzaddik, of the tzaddik’s shluchim, of Jews carrying out his mission, is to remove the dirt, the dust, and the sand that have collected. Then the engraving is revealed—the true permanence, the true bond a Jew has with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and a Jew’s bond with Torah and mitzvos. All these are really one and the same thing. And this was

11:46 a lesson the Frierdiker Rebbe gave about how to look at a Jew. A Jew is not like written letters, which can peel away and leave the parchment without them, G-d forbid. A Jew is like engraved letters. A Jew’s bond with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is an essential bond; they are truly one. Sometimes it may be covered, soiled. The dirt and dust have to be removed. But a Jew has an eternal bond with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And that is the purpose: to remove the dust. That is what we need to do; that is the work. This is the point of the passage about the red heifer that we read this week, in Parshas Chukas. It says there: “Hashem spoke to Moshe: This is the statute of the Torah.” The passage about the red heifer says, “This is the statute of the Torah.” Chukah also conveys permanence. “He set them a fixed law and time”—a lasting law. It is always there, fixed and eternal; that is what a chok is. What connects all these meanings? The Alter Rebbe explains this in his maamarim on Chukas, and after him the Rebbe, the leader of our generation, explains that this is “the statute of the Torah”: this mitzvah contains the idea of engraving. In other words, the mitzvah of the red heifer comes to reveal the engraving—that a Jew is one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. As we said earlier, there is writing and there is engraving. Writing involves something added on. A Torah scroll has letters and parchment, and the letters are on the parchment, joined to it, forming one thing, one Torah scroll. But they are something added; they are

13:18 not the same thing. In serving Hashem, what does it mean to serve Him in a way that is like writing? There is the Jew: I am a person, and I have my own life, my personal life, who I am; and I observe Torah and mitzvos. I do things, I learn, I daven, but my learning and davening are something separate. They are, so to speak, attached to me, as letters are attached to paper, but they are two things that have been joined. I have my personal life, my time for myself, the times when I sleep and eat, and then I have the times when I learn and daven to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is service in the manner of writing—something added on. In general, as Chassidus explains, this is service based on reason and understanding. Service in the manner of writing is when a Jew serves Hakadosh Boruch Hu because he understands. I understand it, it makes sense to me, and when it makes sense to me, I feel warmth and love. Then I do the mitzvah with love, with awe, with inspiration and pleasure, because it makes sense to me intellectually. That is service in the manner of writing. Then comes the message of the passage about the red heifer: “This is the statute of the Torah.” A Jew must know that his connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is deeper than that. The truth is that a Jew’s connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not need to rest on intellect, feelings, love, warmth, or understanding. A Jew’s true connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is that he is one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The Jew is “the yechidah that is one with You.” He is one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is the idea of engraving. And when a Jew hears about his Jewishness, it is his essence, his very being, who he himself is; it is not something added on. Then his service of Hashem and his soul

15:17 are beyond reason and understanding. I do not need to understand everything; I do not need to feel love for everything. On the contrary: the more completely I devote myself to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, with dedication and self-giving, the more this is my essence, my very being, who I am. Then everything falls into place for me. “I have decreed a statute, I have issued a decree; you have no permission to question it.” This does not mean that one has to struggle and say: I see no reason for this, I do not like it, I do not want to learn, I do not want to daven, but I have no choice, I have to do it—a poor, unfortunate Jew. That is not the point. Quite the opposite. The point is that Torah and mitzvos become engraved in a Jew: they are his very being, who he himself is, his essence. The essence of his soul and his connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu are one thing, not two. And through this, the mitzvos become a complete process of purification. It becomes his whole life. This is what connects all the meanings: chukah is related to engraving. When Hashem’s will is engraved in the soul and becomes one with a person’s very being, with his entire soul, with his life—that is his Jewishness. And so, “I have decreed a statute, I have issued a decree; you have no permission to question it.” There are no intellectual reasons, but it encompasses his entire intellect as well. And when it takes effect as a chukah, “He set them a fixed law and time, so that they would not change their appointed role”—[unclear]. When a Jew learns and understands, and it appeals to him, he feels: Good, this is a good thing—even that can change. After all, it depends on what he understands. What he does not understand depends on his [unclear] vitality.

17:08 Which is a vitality [unclear]. What he learns, what he understands, what his mind grasps. But when it comes from engraving, when Torah and mitzvos are an eternal matter for him, change is out of the question. And here we come to the passage about the red heifer. It explains to a Jew that he and his Jewishness are one and the same. This is what the red heifer is about. This is the connection between these ideas. And it finds expression in the mitzvah of the red heifer. The red heifer comes to purify those who are impure, even someone in a state of impurity from contact with the dead. This is the most severe form of impurity. In a number of areas of halachah, impurity from the dead is considered the most severe form, especially when we speak of the inner dimension of purity. Impurity from the dead—every form of impurity is something particular, connected with particular details; this is an impurity that takes away vitality. Impurity from the dead means that it touches on death, the opposite of life. When a Jew comes into contact with death, something deathlike enters him. Especially when we look at the details. The essence of Jewishness is: “You who cleave to Hashem your G-d are all alive today.” A Jew is a living being. When he cleaves to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, he is alive. To be cut off from that vitality—that is impurity from the dead: the opposite of vitality, the opposite of life, the complete opposite of warmth and liveliness. Impurity from the dead. And when there is impurity from the dead, what can be done? The Midrash says that when Hakadosh Boruch Hu taught Moshe Rabbeinu the laws of impurity and purity, He explained how to become pure from each form of impurity. This impurity, the impurity of a niddah,

19:01 for every form of impurity Hakadosh Boruch Hu said: this is the impurity, and this is how one becomes pure. That is how it is in the portions of Shemini, Tazria, and all those portions of the Chumash. With each form of impurity, one immediately understands what to do and how to become pure. But when they reached impurity from the dead, in Parshas Emor, Moshe Rabbeinu suddenly did not understand what could be done to become pure. The Midrash says, “Moshe’s face darkened.” Moshe Rabbeinu could not understand how there could be purification from such impurity. “How will he be purified?” When there is death, and a person has been cut off from the source of life—how will he be purified? How can he become pure? Then comes the passage about the red heifer, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu says: Ah, you remember the question, “How will he be purified”? “They shall take for the impure person some of the ashes of the burnt purification offering,” “living water”—the mitzvah of the red heifer. This is the foundation: the red heifer reveals the essential bond. The mitzvah of the red heifer reveals that the bond is a chukah in the sense of engraving, that a Jew is essentially one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So no impurity in the world can sever that bond. Even if he has stumbled and fallen, sunk into the lowest things, and is truly in the depths, purification comes and says: This is a chukah; this is engraving. You can reconnect, you can draw close again. How does that actually happen? How is the connection made? The verse tells us: “They shall take for you.” “They shall take for you a perfectly red heifer.” The verse says explicitly: “They shall take for you a perfectly red heifer.” Moshe Rabbeinu,

20:56 Parshas Parah. “To you”—the Midrashim say this refers specifically to Moshe Rabbeinu. And there’s a question everyone asks, which the Midrashim ask too: Why the red heifer? What is its connection to Moshe? The red heifer was entrusted to Aharon or to Elazar the Kohen. Why is it connected to Moshe Rabbeinu? Why does it say, “They shall take it to you”? Chassidus explains—and there is a rich sicha of the Rebbe on this—that with Moshe Rabbeinu, the essential bond, the yechidah, the connection, was revealed. The essence shone within him: a Jew is never separate. And this is really what the Midrash means when it says, “To you I reveal the reason for the heifer.” Moshe Rabbeinu—what does “To you I reveal the reason for the heifer” mean? Hakadosh Boruch Hu said: I will reveal the reason for the heifer to you. What does that mean? As Chassidus explains, the very essence of a Jew shone within Moshe Rabbeinu—the yechidah, the essential bond between the very essence of a Jew and the Essence of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is why the Gemara says in Sotah, “Moshe Rabbeinu did not die.” In other words, Moshe is in a state beyond death. So how does Moshe ask about the nature of purification? After all, the heifer represents life. There are explanations for this, but in any case, Moshe Rabbeinu’s very essence is life. When “they shall take it to you” is fulfilled, and a Jew connects to Moshe—a Jew connects to Moshe Rabbeinu, connects

22:25 to the tzaddik—then the situation can be transformed. Then the engraving within the soul is revealed; it becomes engraved within him. And then the situation can be transformed: he can be refined from impurity to purity, even from the impurity of contact with the dead. Through “living water into a vessel,” he becomes a new being, something alive. And here we come to a wonderful idea in Parshas Parah, a wonderful idea concerning Rashi. There is a Rashi here that everyone dwells on. In Rashi on today’s reading, concerning the red heifer, after explaining the plain meaning, he quotes Rabbi Moshe Hadarshan. Rashi cites his words: “The nations of the world taunt Israel”—the non-Jews press the Jews and ask them about the red heifer: “What reason is there for it?” “Therefore, Scripture calls it a statute: It is a decree from before Me, and you have no permission to question it.” That is what a statute means. “And the nations of the world taunt Israel,” Rashi says. In that same commentary, Rashi brings another explanation from Rabbi Moshe Hadarshan for the red heifer: It is like a mother whose child has gotten dirty. They say, “Let his mother come and clean up her child’s mess.” Let the mother come and clean up the child’s filth, his dirt. Similarly, the Jewish people sinned with the Golden Calf. A calf is the offspring of a cow, a little calf.

24:19 And that was a terrible sin. The children—the Jewish people—became soiled by the sin of the Golden Calf. “Let the red heifer come” and make amends, cleaning up her child’s mess. Now the question arises: Isn’t this a contradiction in terms? Here Rashi says, “I have instituted a statute, I have issued a decree, and you have no permission to question it,” yet here Rashi gives a reason. He says that the reason for the red heifer is to make amends: “Let his mother come and clean up her child’s mess.” There are a number of explanations for this. One explanation, a seemingly wonderful one, is brought in Kedushas Levi. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, the holy Berditchever, says something wonderful. He explains: What does this mean? There is no contradiction here. He says, “The nations of the world taunt Israel.” The non-Jews want to pick on the Jews. What does that mean? “Taunt” means to distress the Jews. The nations want to bring accusations against them; that is their whole aim. Bilam the wicked—“Hashem your G-d turned the curse into a blessing for you.” There is Bilam the wicked, the non-Jew who wants to accuse the Jews and looks for a way to do so. And they know that the sin of the Golden Calf provides grounds for accusation. So the nations come, press the Jews, and ask them: Well, what is the reason for the heifer? What is the story with the red heifer? Can you explain to me what’s going on here? They want...

25:56 to hear the Jew explain the reason for the red heifer—the sin of the Golden Calf. That way they will bring up the sin again and arouse an accusation against Israel. To that we say to the non-Jew: “I have instituted a statute and issued a decree, and you have no permission to question it.” The red heifer is “This is the statute of the Torah.” Nothing remains of the sin of the Golden Calf; there is no trace of it. It has been rectified. The reason there is a red heifer is that “I have instituted a statute and issued a decree.” Those traces have been erased, as the Kedushas Levi says. They have been erased completely; nothing remains of them. So now there is only “I have instituted a statute and issued a decree.” A Jew fulfills the mitzvah of the red heifer, and in doing so, the accusation is nullified. The Noam Elimelech adds a deeper layer. Rabbi Elimelech says something else along the same lines, but adds a somewhat higher point. He says: What does this mean? The Gemara asks how there can be no contradiction between the reason for the red heifer—that it atones for the sin of the Golden Calf—and the statement “I have instituted a statute and issued a decree.” That is the question. The Noam Elimelech says something wonderful. The Gemara says in Avodah Zarah that “Israel was not fit for that deed.” The whole sin of the Golden Calf was completely out of character for them. How could it be? Forty days

27:33 earlier, the Jews had received the Torah. They had seen all those miracles—the Exodus from Egypt, the Splitting of the Sea, the Giving of the Torah, all of it. And forty days later they begin to commit the sin of the Golden Calf. It doesn’t add up, the Gemara says. So what does the Gemara say? “Rather, it was to teach the many the way of teshuvah.” The whole reason Hakadosh Boruch Hu allowed the sin of the Golden Calf to occur among the Jewish people was so Jews would have, for all time, a path to teshuvah—to know how every sin can be rectified through teshuvah. So, says the Noam Elimelech, this is the meaning of Rashi’s words: “The nations of the world taunt Israel.” The nations come and ask: What happened? Why is there a red heifer? Ah, they want to bring up the sin of the Golden Calf for the Jew. Because of that sin, the nations come to use the red heifer as grounds for accusation, as the Kedushas Levi says. But the Gemara comes and says: Wait—the whole sin of the Golden Calf was not supposed to happen. In truth, when it comes to that sin, “Israel was not fit for that deed.” The sin of the Golden Calf could not have happened on its own. It happened only to teach the way of teshuvah. So that itself is “I have instituted a statute and issued a decree.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu allowed the sin of the Golden Calf to occur; that itself was “I have instituted a statute and issued a decree,” so that Jews would be able to do teshuvah. And that is precisely what the red heifer is about: how, through the red heifer, a Jew can rectify and turn his [unclear] into a merit, and how a person becomes alive again even if he has fallen into the impurity of contact with the dead, [unclear] sin. That is the meaning of the red heifer in serving Hashem.

28:55 And there is something wonderful here that brings this whole idea of “I have instituted a statute” together. The Rebbe once said something wonderful at a farbrengen. It was a farbrengen, [unclear] at the farbrengen. It was Parshas Parah or Parshas Chukas. I don’t remember right now, but it was a farbrengen that dealt with these matters [unclear]. These words were said on a Shabbos that involved [unclear], connected to a gathering in America. The Rebbe apparently spoke about it at a Shabbos farbrengen. And in connection with Parshas Parah, the Rebbe said something wonderful. What does it mean? What do Rashi’s words mean? The Rebbe cites a Midrash: “Let the mother come and clean up her child’s mess.” The sin of the Golden Calf was a transgression, and the Jews became soiled, so the red heifer came. But then a sort of [unclear] arises, a question about this explanation: Is that a reason? Is that an explanation? Because the red heifer is the mother and the calf is the child?

30:28 So the red heifer is a mother who cleans up the dirt. What is that? A parable, a nice parable—but where is the reason here? And the Rebbe says something deeper, which is this idea of engraving that we’ve been discussing. The accuser comes, the Satan comes, the nations of the world come and accuse Israel. A Jew committed a transgression, a serious mistake. He committed a transgression; it’s terrible. He stumbled; it’s not a good thing. And think about what happens after you stumble in a transgression: the yetzer hara comes and magnifies it, saying, “You’re a coarse fellow, you’re repulsive, [unclear]. You’ll never be able to do teshuvah for something like that.” It’s a terrible thing. And then the mother comes. There is a Jewish mother in this world. A child once did something and felt bad about it. He did something wrong, broke something, knocked something over, damaged something, and felt he had been a little insolent. Yes, that happens sometimes. What did he do? [unclear]. The mother comes and says, “He didn’t do anything. Why are you making such a big deal out of it? It’s something you can just wipe away. It’s a little dirt. A small child got dirty

31:51 “A little.” Is the world over because of that? It got a little dirty. Clean it and move on. “Let the mother come and wipe away her son’s excrement.” That is the point. The Satan wants to turn a transgression into your reality, to tell you that you are a piece of filth. And consequently [unclear]. The Torah comes and says exactly the opposite: “Let the mother come.” The Jewish mother comes, the Torah comes, and says, “And wipe away her son’s excrement.” Even if he has fallen into the impurity of contact with the dead, that is not who he is. It is something that has been added to him. Who is he? He is engraved; he is a Jew. That is his essence. His essence is pure, his essence is alive, his essence is rich. His essence—that is who he is. [unclear]. And this is Parshas Parah, which, as the Gemara says, is the purification of the Jewish people. Parshas Parah, as it says in the holy books and as the Sfas Emes cites, comes to prepare us for Parshas Hachodesh. Chassidus also explains that this is the order of the special readings: first Parshas Shekalim, the half-shekel—we see the pintele Yid, the Jewish spark, in the half-shekel. This is the Jew’s defining quality, the half; it is the very core of his Jewishness. Then came Amalek, the coldness—yes, the materialism and coldness of Amalek. And afterward comes the matter of impurity from contact with the dead, and the purification of the Jewish people.

33:27 So even the impurity of contact with the dead, when a Jew has reached the lowest point—even that is transformed, bringing about the purification of the Jewish people. We bring the fire, the perpetual fire, the blazing fire, [unclear]—that is the fire with which the cow is burned. Then there is living water, which is Torah: fire and water. And from these they make [unclear], and that is the purification of the red heifer. Then we reach Parshas Hachodesh. The Jew becomes new; he is renewed, and that is Geulah. This is how it becomes a month of Geulah, and we enter the month of Nissan. In Nissan they were redeemed; in Nissan they are destined to be redeemed. And indeed, as it says [unclear], this falls out in the parsha, on Shabbos Mevarchim for the month of Nissan. May “in Nissan they are destined to be redeemed” indeed be fulfilled this very year. Amen, may it be His will.