Acharei Mot / K’doshim

Leviticus 16:1-20:27

D'var Torah By: Rabbi Dalia Marx for ReformJudaism.org

What Does It Mean to Be Holy?

In the democratic society of Israel, we with struggle the concept of what it means to be am chofshi b’artzeinu, “a free people in our land.” We ask, “What does the responsibility of freedom require from us?” Every year, it seems the answers are less obvious and the search to find them becomes more demanding.

Maybe our parashah can help by guiding us to approach freedom from the perspective of holiness. This week, we read two parashiyot, Acharei Mot and K’doshim. K’doshim starts with God’s call: “You shall be holy, for I, the Eternal your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). This difficult demand is directed to “the whole Israelite community” (19:2). It is addressed not only to the priests, elders, and respected ones, but also to all men, women, and children; young and old; and leaders as well as average people.

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Tazria/Metzora

Leviticus 12:1-15:33

What Happens in the Body Stays in the Body-A Guide for When It Doesn't

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The first chapter of this double portion, chapter 12 of Leviticus, is perplexing. It seems to stand by itself. Its topic, the condition of a woman who has given birth, does not seem to relate to last week's portion, dealing with permitted and prohibited foodstuffs, and it does not seem to relate to the chapters that follow it, which speak about that peculiar skin eruption called tzaraat. But by placing it as a kind of preface to the chapters on skin eruptions, the Rabbis who arranged the Torah portions seem to be arguing that it does relate to irruptions: it speaks about a natural eruption through the skin-the birth of a baby, compared to an "unnatural," or at least undesired, eruption: the oozing out of fluids. Tzaraatis a substance that is supposed to remain inside the body; it is "unnatural" when it flows out. A baby, on the other hand, is supposed to emerge from the body when its time is ripe. This is a portion, in other words, about boundaries, as Mary Douglas argued long ago in her book Purity and Danger.1 Thus, while Rabbis often dread having to preach about this portion, it is a very suggestive one, and presents, as Professor Douglas has taught us, an image of the human body as symbolic of the body politic of the Israelite people. As such, it fills in several lacunae in the Torah's presentation of the people of Israel. Where did the people come from? God did not create the people-God created human beings to be able to give birth-for men to "sow seed" and for women to nurture the seed in their bodies until it grows into a viable baby able to emerge into the world. Genesis tells us about this: "Therefore a man shall abandon his father and his mother and cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24); "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you" (Genesis 3:16). Indeed, in our portion it is the woman who causes the seed of her husband to be implanted in her, the woman, we might say, who arouses her husband to the point of climax and the sowing of seed. But this section of the parashah includes a controversial statement. Why is a woman to be in a state of impurity (tum'ah) twice as long following the birth of a girl (two weeks) than the birth of a boy (one week)? Sometimes critics have seen this as another example of the Torah's supposed misogynistic mindset. But in recent years exactly the opposite interpretation has taken hold: that is, that tum'ah means not "impurity" in the sense of "uncleanness" but as the liminal state where life and death encounter each other. Childbirth is a fragile time, infant mortality used to be very high. In menstruation, where a woman is also in a state of tum'ah, the outpouring of menstrual blood signifies that a new life was not created. Dr. Rachel Adler2 first espoused this theory of tum'ah many years ago, and it leads to the suggestion that a baby girl, who herself may well give birth in due time, bears a double portion of this life/death encounter. Thus the birth of a baby girl initiates a potential infinite series of births, which over time will create—or sustain—the Jewish people. Again, the human body-in this case the woman and her female baby-is symbolic of the body of the eternal Jewish people. Perhaps for this reason this passage stresses the care that the people must take to prevent an outbreak of the skin disease tzaraat that could infect the entire people and-in a sense-threaten the fulfillment of God's covenantal promise that we would be as uncountable as the stars in heaven. Because the skin eruption is a death-skirting impurity it is appropriate that the patient be examined by the kohein, as though he or she were an offering being brought to the altar. Indeed, we are given much more detail about how scrupulously thekohein is to examine the human subject than we are told how he would examine a sacrificial animal. If the person is found to be a m'tzora, the person is put in quarantine for seven days-the same amount of time Aaron and his sons were secluded during the period of their consecration (Leviticus 13:4; 8:34-35). This is remarkable: the same procedures are instituted for the most pure, the priests, and the least pure, the m'tzora. And in the secondparashah of this double portion (Leviticus 14:14-18) the priest purifies the "healed" m'tzora(the person suffering from tzaraat) in the same fashion as the priests are consecrated-by sprinkling blood on their extremities, as we noted in the comment to Tzav, on Leviticus 8:22-24. Just as the priests become like the altar, on the extremities of which blood is also sprinkled, so the healed m'tzora becomes a living altar as well. Of course it is in the interstices between these extremes-the most pure and the least pure-that the body of Israel dwells. While the non-priest cannot attain to the purity of the kohein (in any case, a status available only to men), men and women are protected from the destructive impurity oftzaraat by the procedures outlined in these two portions, in which the affected person comes as close to the experience of the kohein as a "layperson" is permitted. The ordinaryIsraelite's vulnerability to tzaraat paradoxically creates a kind of democracy erasing some of the distinctions between kohein and Israelite. The end of Parashat Tazria extends this vulnerability to the possibility of tzaraat in a garment as well. In non-leap years like this one we read both Tazria and M'tzora together. There is comfort in this pairing: the first portion describes the outbreak and treatment of the disease; the second portion describes the welcoming of the healed victim back into the community. On years when they are read separately, it is as though we are living out the victim's condition-for a whole week, if we live in communities reading the Torah on Monday, Thursday, and Shabbat, the victim's weeklong isolation becomes part of our life as well, until the person is welcomed back when it is time to read the new portion. In years like this one, by condensing the diagnosis, treatment, and welcome into the same week, we are reminded of the hopefulness that is so much a part of the Jewish people's approach to life; though we may begin a period of time with bad news, there is treatment and transcendence waiting at the end. What a wonderful portion to preach about! Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London/New York: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1966) Rachel Adler, "Tum'ah and Tohorah: Ends and Beginnings," Response Magazine, Vol. VII No. 2, Summer 1973 Rabbi Richard N. Levy recently retired as Rabbi of the Synagogue and Director of Spiritual Growth at the Los Angeles campus of HUC-JIR, where he continues to teach in the fields of liturgy, spiritual growth, and social justice. He is a past Director of the School of Rabbinic Studies at the campus and a past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

Sh'mini II

Leviticus 10:12–11:47

D'var Torah By: Richard N. Levy for ReformJudaism.org

A Diet of Holiness

The second half of Sh'mini, as the Reform Movement has divided it (see commentary on last week's portion for a discussion of this division), begins with a discussion of the offerings that Aaron and his remaining two sons are to eat—including the goat for a sin-offering. When Moses hears that the goat already has been burned on the altar rather than eaten by Aaron and his sons within the holy space of the Mishkan, Moses becomes angry. And Aaron, who had remained silent after Nadab and Abihu were consumed with fire, shows his anger to Moses: "they brought their sin offering-and these things happened to me!" (Leviticus 10:19). This and the next sentence ("Had I eaten the sin offering, would that have been good in the eyes of God?") suggest that Aaron is frustrated that he had done all the proper things, and his sons were killed anyway (Leviticus 10:20). Moses certainly seems insensitive to his brother's pain here, but he once again makes clear that he sees his primary responsibility as making sure the people obey God, no matter what else is happening in their lives. In Exodus 34:5ff. God grants Moses a glimpse of God's announcing the Holy One's Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, which Moses was to use to remind God when the Holy One lapsed into anger. Perhaps God needs to return the favor here and remind Moses!

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Sh'mini I

Leviticus 11:1-23

The Boundary at the Table: Forbidden Foods and Us

   
D'var Torah By: Rachel Adler for ReformJudaism.org

Just now, American society is reexamining the way it eats. Michael Pollan, in his best-selling book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manefesto , advises distinguishing between food and some of the poor imitations for food that we currently ingest (New York: Penguin Group, 2008). He suggests that we not eat too much and that we eat mostly plants. That's easier said than done. Barbara Kingsolver, in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, advocates eating only what is local to reduce our carbon imprint on this overburdened earth, to circumscribe the boundaries of our appetites and become locavores (Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver [New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008]). It appears that boundaryless eating is not respectful either of our bodies or of animals or of the earth or its products. Parashat Sh'mini , in Leviticus 11:1-23, lays out dietary laws for the people of Israel. We are counseled to restrict ourselves, to practice, one might say, a kind of purity law about diet. Somewhere in eternity, Levitical priests are smiling. "What a novel idea!" they whisper to one another.

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