Tazria 2008

My first post on this site was about Tazria and Metzora, which are often read together (but not this year). You'll find it here.

When I was giving b'nai mitzvah lessons, I probably taught these two parashot to more students than any others, not because their themes are popular, but simply because they come up for reading at a time families like for their celebrations. In this climate, parents are reluctant to schedule a simcha for January or February, and often schedule the mitzvah event for Tazria or Metzora just because those are the first weeks when they think the weather might be good.

For congregations that read Torah on the triennial cycle, the effect is heightened this year, because before we get to the part about skin diseases, we must read two short aliyot about the segregation of women after childbirth. Many people today object to the subject in general, and even more to the fact that the mother's segregation is doubled if she gives birth to a female child. Congregations that read "full kriah" must read this part, too, but it's a smaller proportion of the total.

It happens that I'm doing more interfaith work now than I have in several years, and this is one of the sections where it's hard not to ask "What would the goyim think?"

It is not unusual for Christians to assume that our religious practice follows the Hebrew Bible literally. When I worked in Oklahoma, the temple had a construction project in progress, and one of the construction workers came to the office to tell us that, if we needed sheep or goats for the sacrifices, he was also a rancher and could supply them.

I'm not sure which idea most of us would find more disturbing: that our religion used to include practices that we now find objectionable, or that some of our neighbors might believe we still follow them.

In spite of that, I like to teach Tazria and Metzora: I find a lot of relevant meaning in these and other parts of Leviticus. As last year's drash describes, I prefer to focus on inclusion, more specifically reintegration, rather than on exclusion.

This is a message that is important for young people to encounter, because so much of teenage society seems to revolve around cliques, who's "in" or "out," and exclusion. Without information that we can't deduce from the Torah text, we can't really read Tazria as medical advice. We can read it in the general context of holiness that pervades Leviticus, but the idea of corporate (i.e., national) holiness doesn't resonate with most of us.

The most relevant reading places it more in the context of superstition: just as our ancestors were inclined to reject individuals based on unjustified fears, we are prone to excluding others for reasons that are equally unwarranted, and these two parashot (especially Metzora) teach us to do better.