Parashat Tazria-Metsora, Leviticus 12:1-15:33; Rosh Chodesh Iyar

We are searching for transformational experiences.

One of them hit middle age, the other is pre-pubescent, both made headlines recently:
Barbie turned 50 this past March and Dora the Explorer is growing up. Both have had their share of controversy. In her fifty years, Barbie has changed little, other than a slight thickening at the waist which still leaves her with proportions not found in real life. Dora is trading in her shorts and t-shirt for a more fashionable look now that she is a 'tween. Is she following in Barbie's stiletto covered footsteps? Hard to believe but Barbie started off as a teenage doll.

The controversy surrounding both dolls is one of image. What is the message they are conveying to their faithful followers? Do these dolls influence the body image of the girls who play with them? Hard to say. Still, in the last few decades women have been working hard at changing their bodies to conform to unrealistic proportions. Clothing stores are carrying sizes that did not exist before. Size 0!? Whatever became of the perfect size 8? Today she's considered overweight. Look around and you'll see that people are getting younger. Botox injections are getting rid of the creases that have shaped your face through years of smiling and frowning. It's not only folks who are as old as Barbie who are using these techniques. Why are 30 year olds getting such injections? Do they want to look 14?
This seems to fulfill the words that Naomi Wolf wrote in The Beauty Myth:

When women adapt too well to the strictures of the industries, the weight or age that defines grace merely adjusts by plummeting: The models descend another 10 pounds, the surgeons lower the ‘preventative’ age for face-lift by another decade.

The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf, p. 102

In case you guys are feeling left out, consider the change in suit design that has occurred in the last couple of decades. The proportions on suits are changing: More suits are now wider at the chest and shoulder and narrower at the waist. Think superhero physique.

It is impossible to look at the human body objectively. Anthropologist Mary Douglas points out that the physical always carries a social aspect. "…the human body is always treated as an image of society…there can be no natural way of considering the body that does not involve at the same time a social dimension. …If there is no concern to preserve social boundaries, I would not expect to find concern with bodily boundaries." (Natural Symbols, p. 74)

For Jews it all started with noses. Modern rhinoplasty was invented by a nice Jewish doctor. In 1896 Berlin Dr. Jacques Joseph was dismissed from a group practice for operating on a child with protruding ears. The dismissal was on the grounds that the surgery was cosmetic rather than reconstructive. (Interestingly, a picture of Dr. Joseph shows him sporting a dueling scar.) Two years later the good doctor was approached by a man who wanted a nose job. He complied and reported his rationale to the medical society, stressing the fact that the physical surgery alleviated the patient's depression. As Sander Gilman explains, "The patient no longer felt himself marked by the form of his nose. He was cured of his 'disease,' which was his visibility.” (The Jew's Body, pp.184-5)

All this finally brings us to the double parashah Tazria-Metsora. The former parashah discusses the priestly diagnosis of various skin ailments and whether they make an individual ritually impure:

The priest shall examine the affection on the skin of his body: if hair in the affected patch has turned white and the affection appears to be deeper than the skin of his body, it is a leprous affection; when the priest sees it, he shall pronounce him unclean. But if it is a white discoloration on the skin of his body which does not appear to be deeper than the skin and the hair in it has not turned white, the priest shall isolate the affected person for seven days.

Leviticus 13:3-4

The latter Torah portion describes the treatment for an infected person to be re-introduced into the community. Once the individual has been examined by the priest and declared "clean," he or she must also undergo an elaborate ritual:

The priest shall take one of the male lambs and offer it with the log of oil as a guilt offering, and he shall elevate them as an elevation offering before the Lord. The lamb shall be slaughtered at the spot in the sacred area where the sin offering and the burnt offering are slaughtered. …The priest shall take some of the blood of the guilt offering, and the priest shall put it on the ridge of the right ear of him who is being cleansed, and on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot. …

Leviticus 14:12-14

What on earth could be the cause of such priestly concern and such elaborate rituals? Rabbinic tradition opines that the affected individual is being punished for a wrong committed. Perhaps it was gossip or slander. The metsora, the infected person, is punned as being motsi ra, one who speaks evil. Alternatively, the person is said to have acted in a haughty manner; hence the lowly hyssop is used as an instrument in the purification ritual. Either way, the physical problem faced by the individual points to the social boundaries of the commentators' community.

Reading the text through modern eyes, we view the separation from the community at best as a quarantine and at worst as a punishment. We know that we would not treat individuals this way in modern society. We would pity them, while hoping they would do something to hide or change their appearance, for most likely, they would be scarred when re-entering the community. (Our reaction in itself says something about our bodily concerns and social boundaries as is evident by "makeover" television programs.)

Before we object to the guilt offering and accompanying rituals, realize that the ceremony parallels the priestly ordination ceremony (Leviticus 8:23-4). In both cases the individuals are separated from the community for seven days, must wash their clothes, bring similar sacrifices, and perform the same rites. This is not a ceremony of punishment but of acceptance.

Imagine the emotional and spiritual power that this ritual brought to the affected individual; the person who is both scared and scarred is welcomed back into the community and accepted before God. While we may only be cognizant of the physical change, the metsora is coaxed into a spiritual transformation.

Today we are searching for transformational experiences. We are constantly bombarded with messages that cosmetic treatments, diets, and intense exercise regiments will change the way we look and transform our lives as well. In reality, however, vanity of vanities all is vanity (Kohelet 1:2) . True transformation is the record of life and experience etched in the clay of the human body that molds the soul within.

What is man that You are mindful of him.
Mortal man that You have taken note of him,
That You have made him little less than divine
And adorned him with glory & majesty.
Psalm 8:5-6

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Michal Shekel

Parashat Tazria, Leviticus 12:1-13:59; Shabbat HaChodesh, Ex. 12:1-20

Ritual impurity is not a value judgment.

Things ain't what they used to be: How often we employ this lament! Life was simpler and better when we were young. The world is more complex, and somehow more dangerous. In many regards, though it really is a good thing that "things ain't what they used to be." I know; I too miss the candy bars that were cheaper and bigger, the films that were creative and original, and time that moved at a more leisurely pace. On the other hand, I am rather partial to the fact that housing has improved, transportation is better, and there really is much to be said for indoor plumbing and running water. Given a choice between much that existed in the "good old days" and what we have today, I'm happy to be living in our day and age.

For one thing, back in the "good old days" a lot of people I know would not have made it to whatever age they are now. We are able to treat an astounding array of complex physical problems that were beyond our ability and imagination way back when. We also view many things as routine which at one time were not. Like the fact that most women who give birth get to hold their babies and watch them grow. In the golden days of yore up to 25% of women only reached the threshold of motherhood, succumbing to what was known as "childbed fever."

Thing changed slowly but significantly. In 1843, an overachieving New Englander named Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. published a report entitled The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, in which he argued that the source of this deadly disease among new mothers was actually being carried from patient to patient by their caregivers. Among his recommendations were that physicians clean their instruments and burn their clothes after a fatal delivery. He actually termed this a moral obligation on the part of the doctor.

Four years later and half a world away, Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis of Vienna, concerned with the same obstetrical problem, reached a similar conclusion and mandated that doctors in his wards wash their hands in a chlorinated lime solution before treating each patient. Both men were largely ignored at that time, despite the results of their innovations. Holmes, in fact, was taken to task by a well-known obstetrician of his day who remarked that "Doctors are gentlemen, and gentlemen's hands are clean." It was only thanks to Louis Pasteur's germ theory of disease that the practice of antiseptic cleanliness developed by Semmelweis began to be practiced.

Until these pathfinders came along, there was a strong possibility that the joy of bringing a new life into the world would be followed by its opposite: the death of either infant or mother. Is it any wonder then, that the ideas of birth and death were often intertwined?

This congruence is evident in this week's parasha, Tazria, which deals with a woman after childbirth and the offerings she is to bring as part of the purification ritual. Subsequently, it goes on to detail a number of skin ailments that are to be brought to the attention of the kohen (priest), as well as the actions the priest must take at this point. The kohen is not a healer but a purifier. Not surprisingly, purification is the focus of Tazria, and it is also the focus of next week's portion, Metsora.

What is the problem with impurity? It represents the opposite of holiness. There is a balance between the holiness of life and the impurity of death.

Biblical religion regarded the dead as impure in the extreme and forbade priests from participating in funerary rites. In the commentary it is maintained that this prohibition was aimed at preventing a cult of the dead from becoming part of Israelite worship. To the extent that a higher form of religious expression is served by avoiding the cult of the dead, the devotion of kohanim [priests] to the ancient purity restrictions has contributed significantly to this goal.

Baruch Levine, Leviticus, Jewish Publication Society Commentary, p. 221

But what does all this have to do with mothers and newborn infants? Isn't the birth process perceived as the opposite of death?

…in the Israelite mind, blood was the archsymbol of life. Its oozing from the body was no longer the work of demons [a worldwide view], but it was certainly the sign of death. In particular, the loss of seed in vaginal blood was associated with the loss of life. Thus it was that Israel - alone among the peoples - restricted impurity solely to those physical conditions involving the loss of vaginal blood and semen, the forces of life, and to scale disease, which visually manifested the approach of death.

Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus, Anchor Bible p. 767

So to summarize this rather graphic parashah: Impurity results from contact with the dead. Skin afflictions, translated misleadingly into English as "leprosy" in Leviticus, make one look dead. Genital fluids are generative matter and represent the loss of potential life.

Now let's get back to mother and child. Even in the good old days, commentaries made a symbolic connection between birth and death: "The Torah states that a woman is in a state of impurity for seven days after birth. Similarly, there is a seven-day period of mourning for the dead. All is counted by the number seven." (Yaakov ben Yitzchak Ashkenazi, Tzenah Urenah 2:589)

This Shabbat is also designated as Shabbat HaChodesh (Sabbath of the New Month), which is the first Shabbat of the month of Nisan, when we observe Pesach. The additional Torah reading is Exodus 12:1-20, dealing with the Paschal sacrifice. Here too, in a different context, we see the importance of blood and its association with both life and death. When the paschal lamb was sacrificed, its blood was placed on the doorposts and lintels of the houses of the Israelites. (Exodus 12:7) This was a sign to protect their inhabitants from Divine wrath: And the blood on the houses where you are staying shall be a sign for you: when I see the blood I will pass over you, so that no plague will destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. (Exodus 12:13)

Nonetheless, our modern sensibility is generally uncomfortable with the idea that a new mother is somehow "impure." In answer, we need to remind ourselves that ritual impurity is not a value judgment.

Just as ritual "holiness" may be transmitted by contact (6:11) so too defilement. Both the tamei [ritually impure] and the kadosh [holy] emit a sort of energy. As with modern asepsis, so with ancient ritual: positive measures are needed to overcome defilement. In contrast, ritual purity is a neutral state and is not transmissible. A bandage is no longer sterile if it falls on the floor, yet it does not transmit its former sterility to the spot on which it falls.

W. Gunther Plaut, The Torah: A Modern Commentary, revised edition, p. 723

As was pointed out last week, the book of Leviticus is focused on order and having everything in its proper place. Even things that are natural can be considered to be outside the ideal order: blood in the body is fine, outside the body it’s problematic. Skin diseases and certain bodily discharges are not so good either. We are somewhat sensitive to this as well. Gruesome films depend on blood, ooze, guts and what-not to bring about a reaction in us. Judging from the amount of money they make, it works.

The levitical mindset is concerned with bringing about the proper reaction, which just can't happen when certain factors are not in their proper places. The sanctity and holiness of the mishkan, God's abode, must be protected; and proper precautions are necessary to do so. Just as bad things can happen if an operation takes place in an unsterile environment, bad things can happen if God's abode is not ritually pure. Tazria instructs the reader on the protocols for situations that are out of the ordinary; among the protocols are ways of correcting things that are out of place. The time of blood purification for the new mother is an example of this. Blood plays a role in the purification of priests and of those with skin afflictions as well, although in the latter case the blood has a different source.

Tazria encourages us to contemplate blood and its deep connection to life. Here, and in numerous other parts of Leviticus, the connection is deeply symbolic. We may struggle with the symbolism, but surely we understand the basic physical connection. Having said that, consider the importance of blood and how a simple blood donation on your part can be pivotal in pikuach nefesh (saving a life). Once Shabbat is over, how about doing your part to turn symbolism into reality?

Shabbat shalom,
MS