Parah Adumas - New and Old

The Temple Institute of Jerusalem seems to be making a big fuss over a potential Parah Adumah that was discovered in the United States. Assuming that it is a kosher Parah Adumah – and it very well may be - it is definitely something worth watching.

The YouTube video that shows it is embedded here.  (If you receive my emails and the video is not embedded – HERE is the link.)
 

The interesting thing is that if you are as old as I am, this may not the first time you have heard about a real live Parah Adumah. In the late 70s, as I recall, there was an announcement of one being born at Moshav Komimius in E”Y.  Some time later I asked somebody whatever became of it and I was told that it “turned black”.

I heard about another one in E”Y about the time I made Aliyah in the late 90s.

The obvious conclusion is that just like every generation has its “Moshiach” and Eliyahu HaNavi on “standby”, there is also a Parah Adumah hanging around somewhere on standby.

Yet it makes quite an impression to know where it’s hanging around. Hey, from all of the reported Parah Adumahs of the past, this is definitely the first one to make it onto YouTube!

I just want to focus a bit on what I just wrote that there is a Parah Adumah in every generation. I mean that in more ways than one. This is because there are two kinds of Parah Adumahs.

• A real one – as shown in the YouTube video above
• A philosophical one – I explained it in detail in a post I wrote almost six years ago.

The real one has four legs, a tail, a head and an udder and a pure reddish brown coat. It is all but impossible to find.

The philosophical one has many blurry lines and is everywhere we look. It is all but impossible to avoid.

Both are metaher temayim and metamei tehorim and both are here in every generation.

Please see my post on this from September, 2008 – HERE.

We truly need both Parah Adumas. Only the real one can purify us from tumas meiss. But only the philosophical one can help us understand the world we live in.