Dear
Jewish community,
My name is Parshat Tazria; yes, I am this week’s Torah
portion the one that, in this year’s triennial cycle, speaks of skin
affections, scaly eruptions and scalls, skin discolorations and streaks, hair
that falls out, leprosy, impurity and how an individual must be isolated from
the rest of the community during the time of his or her impurity.
Along with my neighbor Parshat Metzora, I am the parsha that
upcoming bar and bat mitzvahs do not want to get, the one that on the surface
has nothing to do with our modern observance of Judaism and modern medicine as
well.
Like the isolated individual, the one with the leprous
affection who must identify himself or herself with torn clothes, uncovered
head, and by covering our upper lip, the one who must call out ‘Impure! Impure!’ while walking out of the camp, out
of the community, to be quarantined until the disease passes. Like this individual, I’m the Torah portion
for which people scratch their heads and wonder, why, oh, why do we read this
anymore?
The great readers of the Torah, like Rashi, were kind and
gave me due consideration. He reminds us
all that Rabbi Simlai in the midrash gives us a good reason why I, the parsha
about purities and impurities on humans, follow Parshat Shemini, the parsha
that details the signs of pure and impure animals. Rabbi Simlai explains, “Just as the formation
of human beings in the Genesis creation stories follows the creation of
domesticated and wild land animals and birds, so too the teachings about human
beings are explained after the teachings about the variety of animals.”(Vayikra
Rabbah 14:1) Ibn Ezra also gives me the
same nod.
It’s good to feel like one has a place in the chain of
unfolding revelation and teaching.
But even if there’s a place for me here, even if we read and
study me, it’s difficult to figure out just what I’m saying especially since we
do not isolate the impure anymore, we’re all impure, we reminded ourselves of
that last week on Shabbat Parah when we studied the ritual of the red heifer
that purified us in the past, but that is no longer in effect.
This is the kind of thing I think about while waiting
quietly and patiently while the Jewish people chant the other 53 Torah
portions.
I think about the way Nechama Lebowitz brings forward the
commentary of Rabbi Meir Simcha of
Dvinsk, the Meshech Chochma, who teaches about me, (quote) “The preoccupation
with these plagues, entrusted to the judgment of Aaron and his sons, is one of
the mysteries of the Torah…”
In other words, it is not the diseases themselves that are a
mystery, it is the emphasis here in Leviticus about these diseases that is the
mystery. After all, as Nechama Lebowitz
argues, “If the plague denotes a natural
phenomenon requiring isolation as a preventive measure against contagion, the
question arises, why has the Torah selected this disease, and has not alerted
us to the countless natural risks that surround us in our daily life, like
poisonous plants, wild beasts and dangerous illnesses, but left their discoveries
to human intellect, judgment and research, so that he may become partner to
God’s creation.”(Lebowitz, Leviticus – Volume 1, p. 185)
Please don’t think me ungrateful – I am part of the Torah
and that is an honor. The questions
above are significant and insightful, and while I do often feel like a second
class citizen to parshiyot like Vayera – with the Binding of Isaac, or
Beshalach – the Song of the Sea, I do think I’m still around and that I’m still
chanted for a reason.
You see, when we roll to my neighbor Metzora next week, we
will find that when the quarantined individual is ready for purification, the
kohen, the priest, takes the initiative and goes outside the camp himself to
where the affected person is. The priest
goes himself! God’s representative, the
one who offers the holy sacrifices and performs the holy rituals in the most
holy place, strikes out to give attention to one person whom the priest then
prepares to come before God at the holy place for a public ceremony to
demonstrate to the world that he or she is pure again and ready to rejoin the
community.
And so I am the humbly worded beginning of a clarion call
for communities over the millennia, and through until today, to actively seek
out those who are disconnected and disaffected, those who feel that they gain
little to nothing from association with Jewish community, those who have
suffered in silence illnesses physical and mental, those who are marginalized
because a synagogue or JCC or other Jewish institution was not structured to help
or ready to help at the time of that person’s greatest need.
I am the clarion call to the friends and family of those who
quietly slip through the gaps, who become lost in the wash of time, people who
we could help the most if only we could find ways to hear their cry, like the
sound of ‘Impure! Impure!’ that once
caused everyone to turn and look. No,
in this case, the comparison is thin, since what the person in need is saying
is, ‘I’m in need of chesed, lovingkindness,’ and so they would be saying,
‘Chesed, Chesed…’
During my many off weeks, waiting for my turn to be read, I
peruse Jewish books and articles and recently came across a piece by Rabbi
Harold Kushner in the Weekday Sim Shalom (p. xiii) that speaks to what we could
offer here to people in need, and to people who may not even perceive they have
a need, as he says, “What does religion offer that we lonely human souls need?
In a word, it offers community. Our
place of worship offers us a refuge, an island of caring in the midst of a hostile,
competitive world. In a society that
segregates the old from the young, the rich from the poor, the successful form
the struggling, the house of worship represents one place where the barriers
fall and we all stand equal before God.”
I wish I could write those sentiments between the columns in
the Torah right where I, Parshat Tazria, begin, we’ll have to settle with
taking those thoughts and turning them into action. And if I can contribute that to the continuing
evolution of Jewish people and communities, then I’ve done my job well even if
I’m not at the top of the Bar and Bat Mitzvah speech list.
Sincerely yours,
Parshat Tazria
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