This week’s Torah portion is Tazria, which means, conceives. It speaks about how human beings can be contaminated for ritual purposes, that is, when wanting to bring sacrifices, and how they can be purified. Childbirth, which begins this portion, and the flow of bodily fluids such as blood and sexual emissions, and certain illnesses, such as skin diseases, confer impurity. For childbirth there is a period of days before a person can be purified by washing and bringing offerings, but for illnesses, especially those which might be contagious, the one who is ill is instructed to go to the priest. This tradition was a part of so many human cultures whose shamans: priests and healers combined, knew how to bring people to the gates of the spiritual world. In the Torah, the priest was the authority when it came to illness: and was to look at sores and skin conditions, even mold on houses and garments, to determine whether the person or articles should be quarantined, whether the condition might be worsening or abating, and when it was time for that person to be allowed once again to be reintegrated into the community. We might ask, why does the Torah insist that the priest be the one to make these decisions? Why not a person trained or gifted in diagnosing illnesses: a doctor or back then an herbalist or midwife? We know that in the past, the mind body connection was stronger that it is for us today. When someone had an illness it was presumed that the illness was not occurring as an isolated event, but was connected to the whole person, mind, body, soul, and spirit; and further, that every illness has a spiritual component.
This understanding is reinforced by a quotation from the book of Exodus (15:26): God says to Moses, “if you listen diligently to the voice of God your God and do what is just in God’s sight, listen to the commandments and observe God’s decrees, then any of the diseases I placed in Egypt I will not bring upon you, for I am God, your healer.” This brings us back to the teaching that the moral and physical universes are one, and that we are being guided to greater spiritual and moral attainment. While studying the book of Jeremiah, we also learned that the wound is the cure: that illness, war, and disaster can occur to remedy something that may be out of balance in a person or in the society. The Kotzker Rebbe, quoted in the Soul of the Torah, said, “Where purity is removed, impurity replaces it.”
Religion’s goal is to include and not isolate, as noted in the Etz Chayim commentary. It can help a person to develop another perspective on their illness. Perhaps, then, it is wise that a person with an illness goes to the priest. The priest had to evaluate the illness several times, encouraging a real relationship with the patient; maybe to allow and facilitate the patient confiding in the priest, who could then serve as a conduit to spiritual wisdom and healing. Not that we should ever blame the patient, but that a patient may welcome the support of a sympathetic caring person who would be there for counseling if the person wished it. Also, people may impart different information to a priest than to a doctor. The midrash quotes David’s Psalm 139:5: Backward and forward you have hedged me in, You laid your hand upon me. Perhaps this means that illness serves as a message: a teaching, just as does healing. It can serve as a sign that God expects more of us, or that we have been on one spiritual plateau long enough and are being urged forward. We are meant to pay attention to the dis – ease we feel and to ruminate on our inner condition, allowing us to attain a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world. Perhaps a disease also serves, in our scientific time, as a pathway for circling back to our more primitive understanding and reconnecting ourselves to the spiritual mind-body connection our ancestors knew, but on a higher level, integrating our scientific knowledge with our spiritual knowledge. Our sages, like the Apter Rebbe, taught that humans were created last so that we could effect the repair of the entire universe. Tazria teaches that it will be more than enough to repair and improve ourselves, and perhaps, by so doing, bring ultimate repair about. By the pathway of self-improvement, we can reestablish the spiritual balance that results in harmony and good health. The priest, as a denizen of both the practical and spiritual worlds serves as an example to us. May we take the opportunity to look deeply within ourselves and allow the events we experience to speak to us, showing us a pathway of growth and blessing. May we know that we are being led to greater wholeness, kindness, and compassion, in illness as in healing, and may we strive to inhabit both the spiritual and the practical worlds every day of our lives.
Showing posts with label Leviticus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leviticus. Show all posts
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Setting Our Sights on Eternity
This week’s Torah portion is Tzav, which means, command. It continues the rules given to the priests concerning the five categories of sacrifices: elevation, grain or meal, feast-peace, sin, and guilt offering. The portion describes how the sacrifices should be offered and who may eat them; then the portion ends with a description of the priests seven day inauguration process.
This portion is really all about process, and it can be read on a metaphoric level as a kind of guide for self improvement and becoming closer to God. The Torah says, “This is the instruction of the elevation offering; It is the elevation offering, that stays on the flame upon the altar all night until the morning, and the fire of the altar should remain aflame on it. The priest ….shall separate the ashes which the fire consumed of the elevation offering on the altar, and he shall put them beside the altar, and carry the ashes outside the camp to a pure place. The fire on the altar shall remain burning on it; it shall not be extinguished; and the priest shall kindle wood on it every morning, and prepare the elevation offering on it; and he cause the fat of the peace offerings to go up in smoke on it. The fire shall be burning always upon the altar; it shall not go out.” The elevation offering is olah in Hebrew. It’s the word for up, the same word as aliyah, to be called up. Our yearning is to become elevated, and this is what makes us most human. In his great work called, the Tanya, Rabbi Schneur Zalman writes about the animal soul and the human soul. This is what B’reisheet, the first Torah portion, speaks about. Once Adam and Eve eat of the fruit and attain human consciousness, the human soul, they are afraid that God will find out what they have done, and they hide. Of course God already knows what they did and where they are, but God makes a big show about their actions, when God pretends to find out. Eve is given the punishment that her pain in childbearing will be increased. This simply happens through fear coming into the world. Fear is not a punishment, then, because just by having left the animal state, they already feel fear. This is evidenced by the fact that they hid after eating the fruit and before receiving the so-called punishment. Fear is about imagining the future, about having calendars and blackberry’s; and it is precisely our ability to think about the future that leads us to want to improve ourselves; living happier and more fulfilled lives. The great gift of fear is that we can set our sights on eternity and visualize what it would be like to be joyous and whole. The Torah speaks about the offering that stays on the flame all night until morning. If night is a metaphor that describes our suffering, then our desire for re-union with the Divine persists through our nights of difficulty, until the joy of the fulfillment comes in the morning. We are instructed to keep our desires burning through the nights, even to add fresh wood to the fire that burns in our souls, which the Talmud calls the service of the heart. The ashes that remain may be that part of ourselves that we know we need to purify. Rabbi Elimelech quotes the Talmud which says, “Great is repentance, since it transforms willful sins into merits” How is this portrayed in the portion? The ashes were taken to a pure place, meaning perhaps that even our less worthy parts can be put in service to holiness. This is reassuring, because it tells us that we don’t need to get rid of the less noble parts of ourselves; we only have to put them to a higher purpose. This is such an important distinction. Many of us in our upbringing were given the message that only some parts of ourselves were loved and accepted or even acceptable. But we are not manufactured in parts; we are whole beings. Carl Jung writes about personality integration; and that is our task: to use more and more of ourselves to serve what is highest and best in us. The Torah speaks about this also as raising the ashes. How can we raise the ashes? In the process of seeking improvement, the person bringing a sacrifice nourished others. The priests, the relatives and friends, the poor, as well as the person bringing the sacrifice: all ate from it; and when we improve ourselves we benefit ourselves as well as others. This portion repeatedly stresses that our fire: our burning desire to love and be loved must not be extinguished. We must nourish our soul’s impulse to perfect ourselves and in so doing to find the joy in life and the fulfillment of spiritual elevation. This is the pinnacle of being human: a quest to leave the animal state even further behind and rise, becoming truly, as the S’fat Emet says, (P. 157) “half above and half below,” half spiritual soul-beings and half matter. May we seize this commandment to continually elevate ourselves; and turn our thoughts, actions, and desires toward Heaven. May we purify ourselves and in so doing, bring nourishment and goodness to all those whose lives we touch.
This portion is really all about process, and it can be read on a metaphoric level as a kind of guide for self improvement and becoming closer to God. The Torah says, “This is the instruction of the elevation offering; It is the elevation offering, that stays on the flame upon the altar all night until the morning, and the fire of the altar should remain aflame on it. The priest ….shall separate the ashes which the fire consumed of the elevation offering on the altar, and he shall put them beside the altar, and carry the ashes outside the camp to a pure place. The fire on the altar shall remain burning on it; it shall not be extinguished; and the priest shall kindle wood on it every morning, and prepare the elevation offering on it; and he cause the fat of the peace offerings to go up in smoke on it. The fire shall be burning always upon the altar; it shall not go out.” The elevation offering is olah in Hebrew. It’s the word for up, the same word as aliyah, to be called up. Our yearning is to become elevated, and this is what makes us most human. In his great work called, the Tanya, Rabbi Schneur Zalman writes about the animal soul and the human soul. This is what B’reisheet, the first Torah portion, speaks about. Once Adam and Eve eat of the fruit and attain human consciousness, the human soul, they are afraid that God will find out what they have done, and they hide. Of course God already knows what they did and where they are, but God makes a big show about their actions, when God pretends to find out. Eve is given the punishment that her pain in childbearing will be increased. This simply happens through fear coming into the world. Fear is not a punishment, then, because just by having left the animal state, they already feel fear. This is evidenced by the fact that they hid after eating the fruit and before receiving the so-called punishment. Fear is about imagining the future, about having calendars and blackberry’s; and it is precisely our ability to think about the future that leads us to want to improve ourselves; living happier and more fulfilled lives. The great gift of fear is that we can set our sights on eternity and visualize what it would be like to be joyous and whole. The Torah speaks about the offering that stays on the flame all night until morning. If night is a metaphor that describes our suffering, then our desire for re-union with the Divine persists through our nights of difficulty, until the joy of the fulfillment comes in the morning. We are instructed to keep our desires burning through the nights, even to add fresh wood to the fire that burns in our souls, which the Talmud calls the service of the heart. The ashes that remain may be that part of ourselves that we know we need to purify. Rabbi Elimelech quotes the Talmud which says, “Great is repentance, since it transforms willful sins into merits” How is this portrayed in the portion? The ashes were taken to a pure place, meaning perhaps that even our less worthy parts can be put in service to holiness. This is reassuring, because it tells us that we don’t need to get rid of the less noble parts of ourselves; we only have to put them to a higher purpose. This is such an important distinction. Many of us in our upbringing were given the message that only some parts of ourselves were loved and accepted or even acceptable. But we are not manufactured in parts; we are whole beings. Carl Jung writes about personality integration; and that is our task: to use more and more of ourselves to serve what is highest and best in us. The Torah speaks about this also as raising the ashes. How can we raise the ashes? In the process of seeking improvement, the person bringing a sacrifice nourished others. The priests, the relatives and friends, the poor, as well as the person bringing the sacrifice: all ate from it; and when we improve ourselves we benefit ourselves as well as others. This portion repeatedly stresses that our fire: our burning desire to love and be loved must not be extinguished. We must nourish our soul’s impulse to perfect ourselves and in so doing to find the joy in life and the fulfillment of spiritual elevation. This is the pinnacle of being human: a quest to leave the animal state even further behind and rise, becoming truly, as the S’fat Emet says, (P. 157) “half above and half below,” half spiritual soul-beings and half matter. May we seize this commandment to continually elevate ourselves; and turn our thoughts, actions, and desires toward Heaven. May we purify ourselves and in so doing, bring nourishment and goodness to all those whose lives we touch.
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