April 25, 2015 6 Iyar, 5775
Omer Count: Day 21
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Shul Announcements
Tazria - Metzora
Page 608 (Torah)
Page 1172 (Haftarah)
We Remember Toby Messer!
Thank you to the Messer family for sponsoring today’s
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This Week:
April 25: Messer Family Sponsored Kiddush – In
Memory of Toby Messer’s 1st Yahrzeit.
April 25: Jr Cong, 1030AM
April 25: Shabbat Afternoon Torah Study guest
teacher: Rabbi Michael East
April 26: Talmud study, 9AM
April 30: Thursday Torah, 10AM
Upcoming Events:
May 2: Schmelkin Baby Naming
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Thank you to those who made donations in the month of March 2015!
March 2015 Tribute Donations to MFJC
Tributes In Honor Of
Tributes In Memory Of
Birth of Ethan Samuel Rosenbaum
Hezy & Janet Cohen
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March 2015 Yahrzeit
IN MEMORY OF:
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Rosenbaum, Michael & Rochelle Zeiger
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For more information about the Caregiver Support Group,
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WEEKLY PARSHA
By Rabbi Dov Linzer, Rosh HaYeshiva and Dean
of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Parshat Tazria-Metzora
|
April 24, 2015 / 6 Iyar 5775
A Tzara'at Survivor
The double parasha Tazria-Metzorah details the laws of tumah, any impurity that would require
people to maintain their distance from the Mishkan. The primary focus is on the metzorah, a person
afflicted with the skin disease tzara'at, and how he is to become pure. The parasha continues with
cases of tzara'at that occur on garments and on a house before turning the focus back to people and
their impurities: the zav, literally the "flow," a man with an unusual penile emission; a man who had a
seminal emission; the niddah, the woman who has menstruated; and the zavah, the woman who has
had an irregular flow of blood.
The common denominator of all of these tumaot is that they develop from within the person; they are
not contracted from the outside. Whether the condition is a skin disease or some type of flow, the
source is in the person. Although less intense than the tumah of touching a corpse, the tumah of this
week's parasha is more severe in one important way: it directly defines personal status. Such a
person may not enter into to the Levite camp, or, after the wilderness period, the Temple Mount. A
person with corpse-impurity, by contrast, can go up onto the Temple Mount.
Tumah that comes from the outside, even if very intense, does not define the identity of the person
to whom it transferred. We do not have a proper noun for a person who has touched a corpse; he is
described only in terms of what he has done. In contrast, Tazria-Metzorah is filled with a cast of
characters - the Metzorah, the Zav, the Niddah, the Zavah - defined by their status. Hence, they
must keep their distance from the Temple, where the primary concern is to keep tamei things, and
more specifically tamei people, out.
We often define a person's very self by more readily identifiable traits. This can help us organize our
reality, but it can also lead to generalization and discrimination
My children have special needs, but these don't define them. I do not want them to go through life as
"he is Asperger's" or even "he is autistic." These are conditions they have not adjectives and
certainly not proper nouns. I want no one to forget - especially them - that, first and foremost, they
are special, unique, wonderful people who are so much more than any particular condition they may
have. When people meet one of my sons, they have to see them for who they are; if all they see is a
label, they are not really seeing them at all.
As we might expect, a closer reading of this week's parasha reveals that the Torah does not label
people by their conditions. Take, for example, the man with an irregular flow. He is referred to as hazav.This could be translated as a proper noun: "the Flow-er," or "the Emitter." However, this
approach is almost universally eschewed; most translators have understood that the word zav, as it
is used here, is not meant as a name but a descriptor. The proper translation is, "the man who has a
flow." This is his condition, not who he is.
This is true for everyone in our parasha. There is the man asher teizei mimenu shikhvat zera, "who
has experienced a seminal emission"; the woman who is bi'nidattah, "experiencing her flow"; and the
woman who is "in her [irregular] flow" (Vayikra, 15:16, 20, 26-28). These are people in certain states,
not people defined by their state. Because the tumah occurs to them directly they own their tumah
more, and they are more distanced from the Mikdash, but this does not and should not define their
identity.
There is one exception to this rule. Although the person with the skin disease is mostly described
just that simply, the Torah does, in one place, give him a proper name. At the beginning of Parashat
Metzorah he is called the metzorah, a title used in very much the same sense as "the leper." This
may be because, unlike the others, this condition is long-lasting, severe, potentially recurrent, and
visible to all. It is thus more likely that a person may wind up being defined by it. This is often what
happens with those who have cancer. Consider the following blog post:
I had migraines for 25 years. Bad ones, that left me quaking in agony in a darkened
room, moving only to vomit. Those migraines changed my life more than cancer
did... Yet, I don't consider them a part of my identity.
Not so with cancer. I have migraines, I am a cancer patient.
I suppose the [intensity of the] treatment can help explain it... We can't keep it a
secret, like those with high blood pressure can. We don't get to face our disease in
private: we lose our hair and are thus outed as cancer patients. If we leave the
house, we tell the world.
It's also true that the fact that the disease can come back and strike at any time is
part of the reason it never fully leaves your psyche.
Notice how many of the characteristics of living with cancer parallel those of tzara'at: intensive
treatment, the public nature (hair growing wild in one case, baldness in the other), the potential for
recurrence. These traits can conspire to turn the disease into identity.
I believe, however, that even here the Torah pushes back against this sort of labeling. It is ironic that
the label metzorah does not appear when the person is diagnosed with the condition, when he is
ostracized from the camp, or when he practices the public signs announcing his state. It is only
assigned when he begins the process of purification: "This shall be the law of the metzorah on the
day that he becomes pure..." (Vayikra, 14:2). It seems that the Torah is acknowledging that this state
can become an identity and advising that it only be recognized as such in retrospect, once the
condition can no longer outwardly identify who they are. In fact, one study has shown that people
who self-identify as a "cancer survivor" are more likely to have "better psychological well-being and
post-traumatic growth," this in spite of the same study's finding that "neither identifying as a 'patient'
nor a 'person with cancer' was related to well-being."
It would seem that after having lived through such a traumatic condition, it is healthier to see one's
current state as a significant break from one's past state. If one 'had cancer' and now simply 'does
not have cancer,' if there is significant continuity of identity from the period of disease to after, it may
be harder to fully own one's new, healthy state. Perhaps the Torah is telling the person with tzara'at,
resist letting this terrible disease define you when you have it. But when you are putting it behind
you, then you can say that before you were a metzorah, and now you are no longer.
Just as they may be helpful when the condition is a thing of the past, labels for people can serve a
useful function in legal texts. Halakha and the rabbinic literature does in fact assign labels to people
with these conditions: a woman with a flow, for example, is a niddah, a menstruant. Legal systems
may need a convenient way of categorizing and grouping, but when dealing with real people with
current conditions, labeling will always remain dangerous, reductionist, and dehumanizing.
While the Torah focuses on how certain people can become tahor, how they can change their
current state, we must acknowledge that there are people with lifelong conditions. These people can
only talk about managing their condition, not treating it and certainly not curing it. We cannot further
trap them in their condition by labeling them and identifying them with it. It is our responsibility as a
society to ensure that, whomever the person and whatever their condition, we will always see him or
her as he or she fully is, that we see the inherent purity that is each person's essence.
Shabbat Shalom!
Shabbat Shalom
Parshat Tazria-Metzora (Leviticus 12:1 – 15:33)
Efrat, Israel - “Speak to the children of Israel saying, when a woman conceives (tazria) and gives birth to a male …
on the eighth day the child’s foreskin shall be circumcised.” (Leviticus 12:2-3)
The Hebrew word “halacha” is the term used for Jewish law which is the constitution and bedrock of our nation; indeed, we
became a nation at Sinai when we accepted the Divine covenantal laws of ritual, ethics and morality which are to educate and
shape us into a “special treasure… a kingdom of priest-teachers and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6).
The verb of the root “hlch” means “walk”; progressing from one place to another, and not remaining static or stuck in one
place, as in the biblical verses: “Walk before Me [hit’halech] and become whole-hearted” (Genesis 17: 1) and “You shall walk
[ve’halachta] in [God’s] pathways” (Deuteronomy 5: 33).
This is important since scientific discoveries and social norms are constantly evolving, and it is incumbent upon scholars to
consider these changing realities when determining halachicnorms, such as establishing time of death (no longer considered
the cessation of the respiratory function, but rather now considered brain-stem death), which would allow for heart transplants.
For this reason, the Oral Law was never supposed to have been written down – for fear that it become ossified.
It was only because our lost sovereignty (70 CE), pursuant exile and almost incessant persecution might have caused us to
forget our sacred traditions that the Sages reluctantly agreed to commit the Oral Law to writing in the form of the Talmud,
declaring, “It is time to do for the Lord, they must nullify the Torah law” not to record the Oral Law (Tmura 14b).
However, thanks to responsa literature, where sages respond to questions of Jewish law from Jews in every country in the
globe, halacha has kept “in sync” with new conditions and new realities.
I would like to bring to your attention a ground-breaking responsum published by the great Talmudic luminary Rav Moshe
Feinstein in 1961, regarding the verse which opens our Torah portion. Reactionary forces opposed his ideas, burnt his books
and harassed his household, but he refused to recant.
The Hebrew word tazria in the above quote literally means “inspermated,” zera being the Hebrew word for seed or sperm. The
rabbi was asked whether a woman who had been artificially inseminated, after 10 years of a childless marriage because of her
husband’s infertility, could still maintain sexual relations with her husband. In other words: did the “new invention” of
artificial insemination by a man who is not her husband constitute an act of adultery, which would make the woman forbidden
to her husband?
Rav Moshe responded forthrightly and unequivocally: “It is clear that in the absence of an act of sexual intimacy, a woman
cannot be forbidden to her husband or considered to be an unfaithful wife …similarly, the child is kosher,
because mamzerut (bastardy) can only occur by means of an act of sexual intimacy between a married woman and a man not
her husband, not by means of sperm artificially inseminated.” The sage added how important it is for us to understand the deep
existential need a woman has for a child and how our “holy matriarchs” all yearned to bear children “and all women in the
world are like them in this respect.” If the mother does not know the identity of the sperm donor, it would not prevent the later
marriage of the child (lest he/she marry a sibling), since we go in accordance with the majority of people, who would not be
siblings to this child (Igrot Moshe, Even HaEzer, siman 10).
This responsum opened the door for many single women who refuse to be promiscuous, or to take a marriage partner solely for
the sake of having a child with him, but who desperately wish to have a child of their own and continue the Jewish narrative
into the next generation. Especially given the obiter dictum Rav Moshe included, in which he explained the importance of
having a child especially to a woman and specifically states that he would have allowed the woman to be artificially
inseminated ab initio (l’hat’hila — since the woman asked her question after she had already been inseminated), this
responsum has mitigated to a great extent the problem of female infertility. If a given woman does not have a properly
functional ovum, her husband’s sperm can artificially inseminate a healthy ovum, which can be implanted within the birth
mother who will then carry the fetus until delivery; and if a woman is able to have her ovum fertilized by her husband’s sperm
but is unable to carry the fetus in her womb, a surrogate can carry the fetus until delivery.
The question is to be asked: Who then is the true mother, the one who provides the fertilized ovum or the one who carries the
fetus to its actual birth? Depending on the response, we will know whether or not we must convert the baby if the true mother
was not Jewish.
Rav Shlomo Goren, a former chief rabbi of Israel (and previously the IDF chief chaplain), provides the answer from our
parsha’s introductory text: “When a woman is ‘inseminated (tazria) and gives birth…” The word “tazria” seems at first to be
superfluous. Rav Goren explains that it took 4,000 years for us to understand that this word is informing us that the true
biological mother is the one whose ovum was “inseminated.”
Shabbat Shalom
Israel’ s Birth Pangs
This Shabbat, we read the double portion of Tazria-Metzorah. The opening of this portion
deals with the laws of ritual impurity that follow childbirth. When the mother emerges from
her impurity, the Torah issues a strange commandment - that calls for the new mother to
bring a sin offering, a Chatat, and an elevation offering, an Olah which was totally
consumed by the fire. (Leviticus, 12:6)
Why must she bring these sacrifices? The sin offering, as the name implies, was brought on
the altar when a person commits a sin. What sin does the new mother commit that she
should be obligated to offer the sin sacrifice? The Midrash was concerned by this very
matter. The students of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai approached their teacher in search of
clarification to this problem. He replied that during the pain of labor the woman vows never
to be intimate with her husband again, lest she face a recurrence of the suffering of
birthing. But after the event, she regrets her vow and that is cause for her to bring the sin
offering. (See Midrash Aggadah, ibid)
The elevation offering, according to the Meshech Chochma, was synonymous with a holiday
offering. When a pilgrim would come to the Temple for a festival, he would come after a
long absence. So, he would bring an elevation offering of sight – Olat Rieeah – a person
would not come to visit the face of God empty handed. The Olah offering in that context
was a sacrifice of meeting. The new mother, in a similar vein, was prohibited access to the
Temple because of her ritual impurity. Now that she has become pure again, she celebrates
her return and her meeting of God, as though it were a holiday, with the elevation offering.
(See his comments to the verse; Lev., ibid)
The Jewish world celebrated the 67th birthday of the state of Israel this past week. And the
themes of childbirth and sacrifice are relevant as we think about the State of Israel. The
pain of labor, the moments of anguish before birth are feelings that millennia of Jewish
people understood. The Jewish world, pre-statehood, suffered in myriad ways. The
expectant mother knows a baby is coming, but the waiting and the pain is too much to
bear. The Jewish people have always been expectant – we’ve been expecting the birth of a
state and return to our ancestral home and a return to dignity for 2000 years. We pray
those words 3 times a day in our silent prayer; we profess our faith in a redeemed future.
These have ever been our core hopes. But waiting – waiting when the pain was intolerable and not knowing the exact arrival had caused a significant disenchantment; many
foreswore affiliation to the tribe of suffering and the life of wandering.
During the era of Statehood, we are still expectant. We are not yet in a redeemed state; if
that weren’t painfully obvious every day we read the paper and listen to the news. Israel is
a state that is always becoming. And our members lose faith. How can we be a light onto
the nations when we are stumbling in the dark? But the birth pangs are reason for
optimism. We must write no one off and we must send no one out.
The return to the life of the holy is a elevating. We are meeting God with an intimacy and
closeness, face to face, in ways that we never have before. This is the time to offer our
thanks; this holiday – the birth of the State of Israel, is a holiday of reunion and return. The
soul of Israel is reborn and the connection to the holy is alive.
Shabbat Shalom Umevorach and Moadim L’Simcha Legeulah Shleimah, and a special Mazal
tov to my sister and her husband, Avigayil and Reuven, on the birth of their first son – may
he grow to Chuppah, Torah and Maasim Tovim…
Rabbi Menashe East