adumah

Adumah is the Hebrew term meaning “reddish” or “made red,” and in Jewish law it refers to the red heifer used in the Parah Adumah ritual described in Numbers 19. The phrase Parah Adumah literally means the “red cow” and denotes a specific, highly detailed purification rite in ancient Israelite tradition. The animal is required to be a young, unblemished female cow that is completely red, without a yoke, and with no significant defect.

In the ritual, the cow is brought outside the camp and slaughtered by a priest. Its blood is sprinkled seven times toward the entrance of the tent of meeting, and the entire animal—hide, flesh, blood, and offal—along with cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet yarn, is burned outside the camp. The ashes are collected and stored in a clean place outside the camp. These ashes are then used to prepare the “water of purification,” which is employed to purify those rendered ritually impure by contact with a corpse.

Purification with the water of the ashes requires sprinkling on the third and seventh days after exposure to death, followed by washing and bathing to end impurity. A priest performs the sprinkling, and the process is part of the broader system of ritual purity observed in the Temple era. With the destruction of the Second Temple, the Parah Adumah rite has not been practiced, but it remains a subject of rabbinic discussion and eschatological significance in Jewish tradition. The term adumah itself also functions as the general Hebrew word for something red.