Bat Kol International, Weekly Torah Nuggets
Parashat Tazria-Metzorah | Leviticus 12:1 – 15:33
You shall put the Israelite on guard against their impurity, lest they die through impurity by defiling My Tabernacle which is among them” (Lev 15:31).
With the celebration of redemptive healing and liberation from bondage at Pesach and Easter still fresh in our hearts and minds, Parashat Tazria-Metzorah shifts our focus and thrusts us into the raw details of genital discharges, various skin diseases like leprosy, scaly patches, burns and boils as well as the need to attain purity following childbirth.
Medical treatment is not the issue here, but healing through cultic rituals to re-establish life. The priest reaches out to the individual, recognises disease and pronounces on impurity or purity. Impurity leads to isolation, not quarantine, and never abandonment, but more like a temporary marginalisation.
Ritual sacrifices (guilt, sin and burnt offerings) will be carried out and a person’s wholeness will be restored so that they will once again be worthy to approach the presence of God, the source of life.
Complex cultic rituals and extensive repetition throughout the parashah challenge the modern reader so that it is easy to lose sight of an important truth: that in spite of outbreaks of impurity in the community, The Divine Presence, the Holy One, continues to abide among the people.
As in completing a circle, our focus returns to God’s redemptive healing, the blessings of new life and access to the holy through reintegration into the community.
Reflection:
Consider who are the “pure” and “impure” in our world today and what are our attitudes toward them?
Mary Ann Payne, Melbourne, Australia
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“Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies.”
Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions: Nostra Aetate, No. 4