The Shabbat which immediately precedes Shabbat HaChodesh is שַׁבַּת פָּרָה, Shabbat Parah – the Shabbat of the [Red] Cow. Since Shabbat HaChodesh is the Shabbat which either coincides with or immediately precedes Rosh Chodesh Nissan, Shabbat Parah is either the final or the penultimate Shabbat in the month of Adar (or Adar 2 in a leap year).

The Maftir (the concluding Torah-reading) for this Shabbat, instead of being a repetition of the final several verses (as is usual), is the intriguing and puzzling Mitzvah of the sacrifice of the Red Cow (Numbers 19).

The Red Cow was not sacrificed to atone for any sin. Its function was not forgiveness, but cleansing; specifically, cleansing from the ritual uncleanness of death.

A Jew who had come into physical contact with a dead body, or who had been under the same roof as a dead body, was thereby contaminated by ritual uncleanness. There was no sin involved – indeed burying the dead is among the greatest of all Mitzvot. Nevertheless, the Jew who had come into contact with a dead body was ritually impure.

Now this ritual impurity did not affect the Jew’s life in any way most of the time: a Jew who was ritually unclean by death was forbidden to enter the Holy Temple, which obviously this impacted the Kohanim [Priests] and Levites, whose function was to minister in the Holy Temple; but for everyone else, it had no impact.

The exception was on Pesach: a Jew who was ritually impure by death was forbidden to eat of the Pesach Sacrifice (vide Numbers 9:6-7), so any Jew who had contracted טוּמְאַת מֵת, the uncleanness caused by contact with a corpse, had to cleanse him- or herself in time for Pesach.

Hence the Torah-reading for this Shabbat, reminding all Jews of the necessity to purify themselves in readiness for Pesach.

The Haftarah (the Reading from the Prophets which follows the Torah-reading) for Shabbat Parah constitutes Ezekiel 36:16-38:

“Then Hashem’s Word came to me [Ezekiel], saying: Son of Adam, when the House of Israel dwelt on their Land and defiled it with their ways and their plots, their way became as the uncleanness of a menstruant woman before Me; so I poured out My fury upon them, because of the blood they shed on the Land and the idols with which they had defiled it, and I scattered them among the nations…”

At first blush, this seems puzzling: there seems to be no connexion between this and the Red Cow which purifies from contamination cause by contact with a dead body. So why did our sages select this as the Haftarah for Shabbat Parah?

– This entire passage is the Prophet Ezekiel’s castigation of Israel, his explanation for the exile into which G-d cast them: because they defiled the Land of Israel with their idolatry and unrighteousness, they no longer deserved the Land.

Nevertheless, the exile constitutes chillul Hashem, a desecration of the Name of G-d:

“They came to nations to which they came, and they desecrated My holy Name by their saying, These are the Nation of Hashem – yet they have departed from His Land” (Ezekiel 36:20).

And so, the tikkun, the rectification for this horrific desecration of G-d’s holy Name is for the Children of Israel to return to their Land:

“I pitied My holy Name, which the House of Israel had desecrated by being among the nations to which they came. Therefore say to the House of Israel: Thus says Hashem G-d: Not for your sake do I act, O House of Israel, but for the sake of My holy Name which you desecrated by being among the nations to which you came. I will sanctify My great Name which was desecrated among the nations, which you desecrated among them – and then the nations will know that I am Hashem” (vs. 21-23).

As the exile was חִלּוּל הַשֵּׁם, desecration of the Name of G-d, so our Return to Zion and the Ingathering of the Exiles is קִדּוּשׁ הַשֵּׁם, sanctification of the Name of G-d.

The exile is a graveyard, which means that our national return home to Israel is our national resurrection. When our exiles are ingathered, the nation comes back to life. As Rabbi Yehoshua said, “In Nissan we were redeemed, in Nissan we will in the future be redeemed” (Rosh Hashanah 11a, Mechilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yochay 12:42 et al.)

Or more specifically, “On the 15th of Nissan we were redeemed from Egypt, and on the 15th of Nissan we will in the future be redeemed from subjugation to exile” (Tanchuma, Bo 9).

Shabbat Parah is the introduction, the preview, to the month of Nissan, the month of redemption. Nissan is the month in which we leave the graveyard of exile for the resurrection of the Land of Israel.

The precedent was the generation that left Egypt on the 15th of Nissan. As the Ramban (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, Spain and Israel, 1195-c.1270) notes in his Introduction to the Book of Exodus, when our ancestors left Egypt, even though they had been redeemed from slavery, they were still in exile, still in a land not theirs, still in the desert.

The redemption was only complete 40 years later when Joshua led them over the River Jordan and into the Land of Israel – which also happened in the month of Nissan, on the 10th of the month (Joshua 4:19).

So as we prepare to enter the month of redemption, the month of our national resurrection, we prepare to cleanse ourselves of טוּמְאַת מֵת, the spiritual contamination cause by dwelling in the graveyard of exile.

The almost-contemporary Rabbi Eliyahu Ki-Tov (Poland and Israel, 1912-1976), in his Sefer ha-Toda’ah (translated into English as The Book of our heritage), in the section on the Red Cow, notes that G-d gave this Mitzvah to the Children of Israel on Rosh Chodesh Nissan in the second year from the Exodus, when the Mishkan (the Tabernacle) was first erected. Before entering the Mishkan, they all needed the purification of the Red Cow: even those who had not come into any contact with a dead body needed this purification, because they had all been defiled by the débâcle of the golden calf – and idolatry causes the same ritual impurity as does contact with the dead.

And the exile is, by its very existence, a form of idolatry:

“I am Hashem your G-d, Who brought you out from the land of Egypt, to give you the Land of Canaan to be your G-d” (Leviticus 25:38), on which the Talmud expounds:

“A Jew must always live in the Land of Israel, even in a city whose majority are idolaters, and not live outside of the Land of Israel, even in a city whose majority are Jews; because everyone who lives in the Land of Israel is equivalent to one who has a G-d, and everyone who lives outside of the Land of Israel is equivalent to one who has no G-d, as it says, ‘to give you the Land of Canaan to be your G-d’.

So does anyone who does not live in Israel not have a G-d?! – Well, this teaches you that anyone who lives outside of the Land of Israel is as though he worships idolatry” (Ketuvot 110b).

The Rambam cites this, word-for-word, as halachah in practice (Laws of Kings 5:12).

So just as the generation of the desert needed the Red Cow to cleanse them from the dust of idolatry of the golden calf, so too as we return to the Land of Israel we need the Red Cow to cleanse us of the idolatry of exile.

As Rabbi Yishmael taught, “Any Jew outside of the Land of Israel worships idolatry in purity” (Avodah Zarah 8a). Just as the golden calf wasn’t out-and-out idolatry, so too living outside of Israel isn’t out-and-out idolatry.

But just as the golden calf contained a strong element of idolatry, so too dwelling in exile contains a strong element of idolatry.

Shabbat Parah prepares us for the month of Nissan – the month of redemption, the month of returning to the Land of Israel.

This is the Shabbat to prepare to cleanse ourselves of the impurity of the graveyard of exile. Spring is about to burst upon us, “behold the winter has passed, the rain is over and done, the blossoms have bloomed in the land, the time of song has come, and the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our Land” (Song of Songs 2:11-12).

We are on our way home, ready to burst forth to new life, cleansed of the idolatry of exile.