…it is as bad as the three cardinal sins – idolatry, murder and incest – combined. More significantly in the context of Hannah Smith they said it kills three people, the one who says it, the one he says it about, and the one who listens in.[2] The connection with this week’s parsha is straightforward. Tazria and Metzora, are about…
…that co-creation is the eighth day, the day He helps us begin to create a world of light and love. [1] Quintus Tineius Rufus, Roman governor of Judaea during the Bar Kochba uprising. He is known in the rabbinic literature as “the wicked.” His hostility to Jewish practice was one of the factors that provoked the uprising. [2] Tanhuma, Tazria,…
…Shabbat 147b. [7] W. H. Auden, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” Another Time (New York: Random House, 1940). DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR TAZRIA – METZORA What is the problem with praising a person’s innate abilities? How could Rabban Yochanan have used praise to encourage a growth mindset in his students? Does targeted praise and encouragement of your efforts motivate you?…
The sedra of Tazria begins with the laws of childbirth and the command of circumcision: “On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.” (Lev. 12:3) Since the days of Abraham, this has been the sign, for males, of the covenant between God and the people He has summoned to be His witnesses: God further said to…
The sidrot of Tazria and Metzora contain laws which are among the most difficult to understand. They are about conditions of “impurity” arising from the fact that we are physical beings, embodied souls, and hence exposed to (in Hamlet’s words) “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. Though we have immortal longings, mortality is the condition of human…
At the start of this parsha is a cluster of laws that challenged and puzzled the commentators. They concern a woman who has just given birth. If she gives birth to a son, she is “unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period.” She must then wait for a further thirty-three days before coming into…
The Sages understood tsara’at, the theme of this week’s parsha, not as an illness but as a miraculous public exposure of the sin of lashon hara, speaking badly about people. Judaism is a sustained meditation on the power of words to heal or harm, mend or destroy. Just as God created the world with words, He empowered us to create, and…
Advances in medical technology such as in vitro fertilisation have raised complex ethical and legal questions. In the case of surrogacy for example – where the ovum comes from one woman, but the fertilised embryo is carried to term by another – who is the mother? On the one hand, the donor mother from whom the ovum is taken contributes…
…beginning, on account of the famine, was also a sin he committed, for in famine God would redeem him from death. It was because of this deed that the exile in the land of Egypt at the hand of Pharaoh was decreed for his children. Ramban, Commentary to Genesis 12:10, based on Zohar, Tazria, 52a. According to Ramban, Abraham should have…
…you celebrate the good, the more good you discover that is worthy of celebration. SHEMINI: What you think of as your greatest weakness can become, if you wrestle with it, your greatest strength. TAZRIA-METZORA: In any relationship that matters to you, deliver praise daily. Seeing and praising the good in people makes them better people, makes you a better person,…