This week’s Torah portion is Metzora, which refers to one who has the skin disease Tzaraat, which is like leprosy. It is a continuation of last week’s portion, also about skin diseases, other conditions which render a person ritually impure, and that person’s purification. This portion describes discharges, sexual emissions, and fungus in houses. The person who was ill was declared healed by the Kohen, the priest, and that person brought two birds: one to be killed, and one to be sprinkled with spring water mixed with the blood of the first bird and, and then set free. Three objects were also part of the ritual: cedar wood, hyssop, which is a shrub with spongy leaves, and red wool. The person to be purified was to shave, bathe, and undergo an additional period of quarantine, and then be admitted back into society and the family dwelling.
The Talmud points out that Metzora can also be a contraction of the words, motzi-ra, one who brings forth evil. The Rabbis of the Midrash, Leviticus Rabba, assumed a mind – body connection. They identified ten offenses for which a person might contract a skin disease including: (i) idol-worship, (ii) gross unchastity, (iii) bloodshed, (iv) the profanation of the Divine Name, (v) blasphemy of the Divine Name, (vi) robbing the public, (vii) usurping [a dignity] to which one has no right, (viii) overweening pride, (ix) evil speech, and (x) an evil eye. Other commentators such as Rashi quoting Tanchuma, insisted that haughtiness led to unkind speech, which led to illness, specifically skin diseases. At last Saturday’s Torah discussion we talked about the importance of not blaming the victim and not assuming that a person who is ill has committed sins. As I said last Friday, God is the judge of others: we are the judge only of ourselves.
The S’fat Emet quotes another part of Leviticus Rabba, which refers to a line in Deuteronomy, “I have wounded, and I heal” (Deut. 32: 39) He says that, “ The ways of God are not like the ways of humans. R. Berekiah said in the name of R. Levi, ‘We cut with a knife and heal our wounds with a bandage, but the Holy One, blessed be God, heals with the very thing with which God wounds,’ as the S’fat Emet writes,” the wound itself is the healing.”
This puts our misfortunes, or what we interpret as our misfortunes, in a new light. The Midrash seems to be saying that everything that happens to us occurs ultimately to bring us closer to God: the proverbial carrot and the stick applied alternately to nudge us along the path of greater awareness, greater understanding, and greater harmony with the Divine Energy. We are thus healed alternately with nearness and distance. The nearness gives us a taste of joy: the joy of unselfish giving and of swimming in the love of God and our fellow human beings. The distance makes us long again for that lost love and allows us to be alone with our thoughts and feelings, gathering up new energies, repenting for past mistakes, making new resolutions about our choices and our conduct. It is as if we are prevented from standing still for very long on our spiritual paths. Just as we become comfortable with our surroundings, we are thrust forward, and find ourselves in uncharted territory which demands from us, a new response.
Dr. Ruth Westheimer has written, in her book about sexuality in the Jewish tradition, “One of the biggest hurdles in therapy is for the patient to learn how to confront a shattered or tarnished past, the sins of yesterday. This is not to suggest that anything goes, but, as the Book of Ruth teaches, that everything passes, becomes transformed. Dust turns to diamonds, water to wine – this is a tradition as concerned with the forgiven as with the forbidden.” That we are continually forgiven allows us to move forward. By our wounds, by our picking ourselves up from our falls, we are climbing higher. Sometimes I think that we are hanging onto a rope of life and someone is pulling us along, faster than we expect, faster than it is comfortable for us to travel.
Verse 15:31 from Metzora reads, You shall separate the children of Israel from their impurity. This is the meaning of the positive and negative episodes in our lives. This is what the Divine Presence demands that we do: to purify ourselves so that we can bring greater purity and harmony into the world. One of the Chassidic rabbis pointed out that the Hebrew world for separate, in the passage I mentioned, zayrut, comes from the world, zarah, or foreign. The separation from God and each other we sometimes feel, is foreign to us, because we are from God, and attached to God, simply by our existence. The harmony we yearn for we are truly approaching, dialectically, as in a spiral, alternating both Divine wounding and Divine healing. It is our human way to learn from our mistakes, and it is God’s Divine way to inexorably and ultimately bring us closer. May each of us come to see this pattern more clearly, so that we can learn that which is being taught to us, and grow toward God.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Teaching Love
This week’s Torah portion is Tazria, which means, conceives. It speaks about a person’s state of ritual contamination and their subsequent purification: from childbirth, from skin rashes and skin disease, from burns, and also contains instructions about the contamination of clothing from mold and fungus.
At the beginning of the portion there is a puzzling section which speaks about the difference between the birth of a male child and the birth of a female child. The mother of a male is impure, for ritual purposes, for 7 days. For a female birth, the duration is 14 days. Then the mother is said to remain in the blood of her purity for 33 days for a male child and 66 days for a female child. Afterwards, the mother is instructed to bring a sin offering and an elevation offering to God.
Most of our Torah commentary was written in pre-scientific times, when the function of menstruation and bleeding in women was not well understood. So there is a great opportunity for modern and enlightened commentary on such a seemingly sexist part of the Torah. As with the Kosher laws, the intent of this section cannot be primarily about health, although health issues undoubtedly play a role. It is necessary and good for a mother to be able to rest after a birth and not be obligated to appear at the synagogue; or, in those times, to bring sacrifices to God. Rabbi D.Z. Hoffman has written that a mother should normally be considered ritually impure: that is: exempt from participating in ritual worship, for 14 days, but the Torah allows a mother to be ritually pure for a male sooner than 14 days, so that she can participate in her son’s Bris.
But what could “remaining in the blood of her purity” 33 days for a male versus the 66 days for a female be about? And shouldn’t the Torah read, the days of her impurity? If she is impure for 7 or 14 days, and then pure, what is this special time of purity about? Why should it be set aside? The time a new mother spends with her infant goes by in a blur: feedings, changing and dressing the baby, but mostly, holding, reassuring, and loving the child. And this, I believe, is the crux of what the Torah is teaching us. Erich Fromm, who studied Talmud and Torah, writes in his famous book, The Art of Loving, that love is something that can be taught. This is precisely what a mother does: she loves her baby and in so doing, teaches her child how to love; how to be a human being who knows how to love and can give it and receive it.
The difference between how a male was valued in ancient society versus how a female was valued may be a clue as to why the mother was allotted more time with her daughter. I say, allotted, because the phrase, “dwelling in the blood of her purity,” has a mystical ring to it, as if it is a special gift from God. In the Women’s Torah Commentary, Rabbi Helaine Ettinger quotes a Yiddish torah Commentary, Tzena Urena, as relating the state of a new mother to the state of a mourner, in that both are in an emotionally vulnerable state. They are dwelling in purity because their emotional state is, for the mourner, wholly dedicated to the memory of the deceased, and in the heart of the mother, wholly dedicated to the baby; and they are for that reason, freed from many obligations. A new Mother is vulnerable: tired, frequently in pain, and yet entrusted by God to perform one of the most important acts a person can do: teach another human being about caring, about compassion, about reliability, about acceptance, and about love. Perhaps the male child, at that time in history, would have received a tremendous outpouring of acceptance and affirmation by his parents and relatives, certainly by the greater society. But what of the female child? She is given twice as long to bond with her mother: 66 days; to learn how to love and be loved, possibly because the society would not have valued her as highly, but also, possibly because it will be she - this female baby - who will be entrusted with teaching the next generation how to love. Love, we feel, is terribly important, but it’s sometimes difficult to articulate why. If we feel unloved, we are miserable, lonely, feeling abandoned. But also, love as a skill, enables us to draw closer to God and experience the blessings that God has created for us. Love is truly the spiritual currency of the Universe. By learning love from our parents, we enlarge our loving circle to encompass other family members, friends, lovers or spouses, perhaps children, and finally, members of the community. We are also urged, in the V’ahavta, to love God, and in Kedoshim, to love our neighbors as ourselves. There is truly nothing else that the Torah can teach us. The love our mothers taught us is vital to our being able to function happily in this world. Learning how to love is so important, so precious and so vital to our well being that God has mandated a special time for mothers to teach it and babies to learn it. If we have learned it well, we can bring God’s blessings to others and to ourselves. If we have never been taught it, or taught it imperfectly, we can heal ourselves by giving unconditionally to others that which we ourselves needed but never received. Erich Fromm wrote: “Love is an act of faith. Whoever is of little faith is also of little love” May the love we give increase well being and blessing in the world, healing us, healing our relationship with God and with each other.
At the beginning of the portion there is a puzzling section which speaks about the difference between the birth of a male child and the birth of a female child. The mother of a male is impure, for ritual purposes, for 7 days. For a female birth, the duration is 14 days. Then the mother is said to remain in the blood of her purity for 33 days for a male child and 66 days for a female child. Afterwards, the mother is instructed to bring a sin offering and an elevation offering to God.
Most of our Torah commentary was written in pre-scientific times, when the function of menstruation and bleeding in women was not well understood. So there is a great opportunity for modern and enlightened commentary on such a seemingly sexist part of the Torah. As with the Kosher laws, the intent of this section cannot be primarily about health, although health issues undoubtedly play a role. It is necessary and good for a mother to be able to rest after a birth and not be obligated to appear at the synagogue; or, in those times, to bring sacrifices to God. Rabbi D.Z. Hoffman has written that a mother should normally be considered ritually impure: that is: exempt from participating in ritual worship, for 14 days, but the Torah allows a mother to be ritually pure for a male sooner than 14 days, so that she can participate in her son’s Bris.
But what could “remaining in the blood of her purity” 33 days for a male versus the 66 days for a female be about? And shouldn’t the Torah read, the days of her impurity? If she is impure for 7 or 14 days, and then pure, what is this special time of purity about? Why should it be set aside? The time a new mother spends with her infant goes by in a blur: feedings, changing and dressing the baby, but mostly, holding, reassuring, and loving the child. And this, I believe, is the crux of what the Torah is teaching us. Erich Fromm, who studied Talmud and Torah, writes in his famous book, The Art of Loving, that love is something that can be taught. This is precisely what a mother does: she loves her baby and in so doing, teaches her child how to love; how to be a human being who knows how to love and can give it and receive it.
The difference between how a male was valued in ancient society versus how a female was valued may be a clue as to why the mother was allotted more time with her daughter. I say, allotted, because the phrase, “dwelling in the blood of her purity,” has a mystical ring to it, as if it is a special gift from God. In the Women’s Torah Commentary, Rabbi Helaine Ettinger quotes a Yiddish torah Commentary, Tzena Urena, as relating the state of a new mother to the state of a mourner, in that both are in an emotionally vulnerable state. They are dwelling in purity because their emotional state is, for the mourner, wholly dedicated to the memory of the deceased, and in the heart of the mother, wholly dedicated to the baby; and they are for that reason, freed from many obligations. A new Mother is vulnerable: tired, frequently in pain, and yet entrusted by God to perform one of the most important acts a person can do: teach another human being about caring, about compassion, about reliability, about acceptance, and about love. Perhaps the male child, at that time in history, would have received a tremendous outpouring of acceptance and affirmation by his parents and relatives, certainly by the greater society. But what of the female child? She is given twice as long to bond with her mother: 66 days; to learn how to love and be loved, possibly because the society would not have valued her as highly, but also, possibly because it will be she - this female baby - who will be entrusted with teaching the next generation how to love. Love, we feel, is terribly important, but it’s sometimes difficult to articulate why. If we feel unloved, we are miserable, lonely, feeling abandoned. But also, love as a skill, enables us to draw closer to God and experience the blessings that God has created for us. Love is truly the spiritual currency of the Universe. By learning love from our parents, we enlarge our loving circle to encompass other family members, friends, lovers or spouses, perhaps children, and finally, members of the community. We are also urged, in the V’ahavta, to love God, and in Kedoshim, to love our neighbors as ourselves. There is truly nothing else that the Torah can teach us. The love our mothers taught us is vital to our being able to function happily in this world. Learning how to love is so important, so precious and so vital to our well being that God has mandated a special time for mothers to teach it and babies to learn it. If we have learned it well, we can bring God’s blessings to others and to ourselves. If we have never been taught it, or taught it imperfectly, we can heal ourselves by giving unconditionally to others that which we ourselves needed but never received. Erich Fromm wrote: “Love is an act of faith. Whoever is of little faith is also of little love” May the love we give increase well being and blessing in the world, healing us, healing our relationship with God and with each other.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Becoming Experts
This week’s Torah portion is Shemini, which means 8th. It is the midpoint of the Torah, both in the numbers of letters and the numbers of words contained therein. During the previous 7 days the priests had undergone a process of purification and atonement to prepare them for this 8th day, the beginning of the sacrificial service and the beginning of the priests taking up their official duties. According to the Torah, the priests offered the sacrifices, and God provided the fire, causing the people to sing songs of praise and prostrate themselves before God. On that day, Aaron’s two eldest sons brought an incense offering that was not commanded by God, and they died. Aaron was not allowed to mourn their deaths on such a solemn occasion, and later, there was a disagreement about whether or not Aaron should eat the sacrifice, as Moses had instructed him. God also commanded the priests to drink no wine before any offerings. At the end of the portion, the laws of Kashrut: animals which are permitted and prohibited as food, is set forth, laws that accustom us to limiting our appetites and to obeying God.
In a sense, much of the portion revolves around discriminating what we may eat and when: the sacrifices, the wine, and the animals that are allowed to us. At the end of the portion, there is a sentence of summation, which reads, “this is the law of the animal, the bird, every living creature that swarms in the waters and for every creature that creeps on the ground, for distinguishing between the impure and the pure, and between the creature that may be eaten, and the creature that may not be eaten.” Rashi comments on this verse. He says, does it need to say that we must be able to distinguish between a donkey and a cow and a deer. Rather, he says, that we are being instructed that we should become experts for ourselves. This is a wonderful teaching.
The portion tells us about Nadav and Abihu, Aaron’s sons, who died because they did not distinguish for themselves what was the right thing to do. In the Psalms (75) it says, God is the Judge. God is the judge of others. We are the judge of ourselves. So often, we have this backward. The gift of consciousness that God bestowed upon humankind means that we have tremendous powers for judging and discrimination: for selecting what we like and what we don’t like. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the original Lubavitcher Rabbi, taught, “This is what humans are all about: this is the purpose of the creation of people and the creation of all the worlds, sublime and lowly: to make for God a dwelling in the physical world.” So the question arises, how do we use the gift of discrimination, well and wisely? What is the true purpose of this gift? When we judge others, selecting what we like and recognizing in other what we don’t like or can’t tolerate in ourselves, we misuse the power of discrimination. But used to judge ourselves, this power of separating the good form the bad, the holy from the profane, and pure from the impure, is the highest faculty we possess. In the first Torah portion, B’reisheet, it says, “Now man has become like the unique one among us, knowing good from evil.” Not only are we like God in this respect, but this gift is the one that can bring us closest to a reconnection with the Divine Source, repairing the disconnection we experience in our souls as loss, yearning, and incompleteness, which is really our distance from God.
Moses’ controversy with his brother, Aaron, about whether Aaron should eat the sacrifice, points up the role of reason and intention guiding us on the path to holiness. Moses asks Aaron’s sons why they have not eaten the offering, as they were told to do. Aaron replies that, after such things as the death of his sons, would it be proper to eat the sacrifice and would God approve? Aaron’s ability to reason, and to choose for himself what would be right, allowed him to use the gift of discrimination in the service of the holy. The questions that we can ask ourselves are, what actions can make me a holier person. What thoughts can make me better? What opportunities have been provided to me to help me to become more loving and more compassionate? This type of distinguishing for ourselves is holy work. It is the very best use of our gifts and of our solitude. The very middle of the Torah in its number of words, falls just where Moses is asking Aaron’s sons about eating the sacrifices. The Torah says that Moses insistently inquired, Darosh Darash, about them. It is the same word from which the word Midrash is derived. This is precisely our task: Our sages said that the entire Torah revolves around constant inquiry. We must insistently inquire of ourselves, asking, what is good, what is the loving thing that I can do, what is charitable and how can I help, what will lead me to holiness? May each of us consecrate the powers and gifts we have in service to that which is highest in ourselves, becoming experts for ourselves, doing good, and serving God; and may we be helped in this endeavor.
In a sense, much of the portion revolves around discriminating what we may eat and when: the sacrifices, the wine, and the animals that are allowed to us. At the end of the portion, there is a sentence of summation, which reads, “this is the law of the animal, the bird, every living creature that swarms in the waters and for every creature that creeps on the ground, for distinguishing between the impure and the pure, and between the creature that may be eaten, and the creature that may not be eaten.” Rashi comments on this verse. He says, does it need to say that we must be able to distinguish between a donkey and a cow and a deer. Rather, he says, that we are being instructed that we should become experts for ourselves. This is a wonderful teaching.
The portion tells us about Nadav and Abihu, Aaron’s sons, who died because they did not distinguish for themselves what was the right thing to do. In the Psalms (75) it says, God is the Judge. God is the judge of others. We are the judge of ourselves. So often, we have this backward. The gift of consciousness that God bestowed upon humankind means that we have tremendous powers for judging and discrimination: for selecting what we like and what we don’t like. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the original Lubavitcher Rabbi, taught, “This is what humans are all about: this is the purpose of the creation of people and the creation of all the worlds, sublime and lowly: to make for God a dwelling in the physical world.” So the question arises, how do we use the gift of discrimination, well and wisely? What is the true purpose of this gift? When we judge others, selecting what we like and recognizing in other what we don’t like or can’t tolerate in ourselves, we misuse the power of discrimination. But used to judge ourselves, this power of separating the good form the bad, the holy from the profane, and pure from the impure, is the highest faculty we possess. In the first Torah portion, B’reisheet, it says, “Now man has become like the unique one among us, knowing good from evil.” Not only are we like God in this respect, but this gift is the one that can bring us closest to a reconnection with the Divine Source, repairing the disconnection we experience in our souls as loss, yearning, and incompleteness, which is really our distance from God.
Moses’ controversy with his brother, Aaron, about whether Aaron should eat the sacrifice, points up the role of reason and intention guiding us on the path to holiness. Moses asks Aaron’s sons why they have not eaten the offering, as they were told to do. Aaron replies that, after such things as the death of his sons, would it be proper to eat the sacrifice and would God approve? Aaron’s ability to reason, and to choose for himself what would be right, allowed him to use the gift of discrimination in the service of the holy. The questions that we can ask ourselves are, what actions can make me a holier person. What thoughts can make me better? What opportunities have been provided to me to help me to become more loving and more compassionate? This type of distinguishing for ourselves is holy work. It is the very best use of our gifts and of our solitude. The very middle of the Torah in its number of words, falls just where Moses is asking Aaron’s sons about eating the sacrifices. The Torah says that Moses insistently inquired, Darosh Darash, about them. It is the same word from which the word Midrash is derived. This is precisely our task: Our sages said that the entire Torah revolves around constant inquiry. We must insistently inquire of ourselves, asking, what is good, what is the loving thing that I can do, what is charitable and how can I help, what will lead me to holiness? May each of us consecrate the powers and gifts we have in service to that which is highest in ourselves, becoming experts for ourselves, doing good, and serving God; and may we be helped in this endeavor.
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