This week we are treated to a double parsha. A parsha is the portion of the Torah that is read on a particular week. If you want to understand what a double parsha is, and why they exist, I suggest going to this blog entry where I explain it.
Our parsha is called Tazria-Metzorah; the first word is the name of the first parsha, and the second word is the name of the second parsha. Tazria is Hebrew for She will sow/plant, and Metzorah is the term from someone who has a strange illness (Tzaarat in Hebrew) that is incorrectly translated as leprosy. I call it an incorrect translation because I have never heard of leather or houses getting leprosy, but as our parsha explains, these items can Tzaarat.
Before we get into the meat of the parsha, I feel it is important to understand two Hebrew terms: Tahor and Tamae. These words are badly translated to imply that Tahor is somehow good and clean, while Tamae is bad, dirty, and impure. I suggest reading an earlier blog post I wrote on this very parsha. You can find it here.
With the technical issues taken care of, lets dig in. The parsha starts out with a discussion of the states a woman goes through after giving birth. There is a tamae state which is followed by a blood-tahor state. After these she goes back to a normal state. The Torah gives time periods for each of these states.
I am curious if any of the women reading this, who have had children, have been aware of going through these states. If you have, please comment below and share what your experiences were.
After the discussion of how a woman returns to a normal state after giving birth, the parsha spends most of its time discussing two things: 1: how to diagnose this disease called Tzaarat. It can affect the body, the head and the hair, clothing and leather, warp and woof, and even houses, and 2: The final purification process a person or object needs in order to return to a normal way of being.
The parsha ends by shifting gears and talking about different kinds of bodily emissions and 1) how they not only make the person tamae, but also how a person tamae from this can make people objects around them tamae, and 2) how a person who is tamae from these can move into a state of tahor.
Sometimes I like to look at broad themes within parshas, or even across parshas; sometimes I like to dive deep and focus on just one verse or even one word. Today I am in the mood to dive in deep.
Specifically I want to look at one verse: 14:36 in the book of Vayikra (Leviticus). The verse reads: “And the cohen (priest) will command, and they will empty out the house before the cohen comes to see the plague, and he will not tamae all that is in the house. And after that, the cohen will come to see the house.”
I can see that you all have a confused look in your eyes. “What is this talking about,” I hear you ask. Let me give you the context.
The owner of the house has noticed the symptoms of Tzaarat on the walls of his house. He is not obligated to find a cohen and have them verify that the house has this plague.
If the cohen confirms that the house indeed has Tzaarat, then it, and everything in it, is put in quarantine, and attempts are made to eradicate the plague. If it cannot be eradicated, then the house, and everything in it, gets demolished.
The Torah is commanding the cohen to tell the owner to save his possessions by removing them before the priest comes.
What an act of compassion!
It could just as easily have taken a hard line and say, “Sorry, everything you own is history.” Instead haShem (god) shows compassion by allowing the owner to save all his possessions.
This in itself is a sweet teaching on having compassion.
However, I want to go a little deeper. When I was reading this verse, I saw something more.
I saw this as a teaching on how to deal with issues in one’s life.
Too often when some issue pops up in our face, we aggravate the problem with the baggage we carry with us. The result is that we make the thing plaguing us worse than it is, much harder to deal with/clean up, and more painful in that we have increased what we have to lose.
Suppose, instead of adding our baggage to a difficulty, we removed our baggage; we put it aside, and just dealt with the problem by itself. Wouldn’t we have an easier time dealing with the issue be removing the emotional element and just dealt with it from an objective point of view?
This is the very thing that the Torah is trying to teach us with this verse. The house is us, and all our possessions are our baggage. When we are plagued by something, when we notice a plague in our house, we can leave our baggage/furniture and appliances in the way making it harder to deal with and escalating what we have to lose. In other words, we can make the problem worse than it really is.
Or before we deal with the problem, we can remove our baggage from our house, leaving just the issue itself to deal with and making it easier to resolve because there is more room to maneuver and less things in the way.
Now, wouldn’t it be helpful if the first thing the person-who-we-have-to-deal-with-to-resolve-the-problem did was remind us to remove all our baggage before we start to deal with the issue?
This is what the Torah is telling us to do, according to this verse. Pretty sweet, yes?
If you care to read what I wrote about this parsha last year, click here.
About the Author
Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.