Scrollers Preview - Parashat Tazria-Metzora 2013

 Ah yes, laws about skin diseases, menstruation,  irregular bleeding and discharge…lovely stuff!

Now that I have your attention, don’t forget that after Scrollers tomorrow we have our 2^nd Saturday Shabbat service and pot-luck Kiddush lunch. We’ll be honoring Phyllis Ross, and our Torah readers are three Scrollers – Kevin Fox, David Tilles and Rita Christopher!

Okay - back to the preview. This week’s double Torah portion deals mostly with the issue of ritual purity and impurity. As we have already explored in our discussions on Leviticus, in order to be able to come close to God and offer a sacrifice through the priests at the Tabernacle, the individual had to be in a state of ritual purity. Things that would make a person impure were things like touching a dead body, having sex, giving birth, and having the skin disease called “tzara-at.”

As I have emphasized in previous sessions, being impure didn’t mean that you did anything bad or wrong or that you were somehow dirty. You became impure by doing things necessary for life, and often joyful. Being impure meant that you had been in contact with the intensity of life through birth, burial of the dead, or certain kinds of illness. In fact, the ways in which you became impure probably brought you into close contact with God as well. But in order to come close to God through the specific ritual of sacrifice, you had to go through a ritual that got rid of your impurity and made you ritually pure again.

This week’s Torah portions focus on various sources of impurity, how to manage the period of impurity, and how to return to a state of purity again. One of the potentially troubling ways a person becomes impure is through childbirth. The first parasha, Tazria, opens by stating that a woman who gives birth to a male child is impure for seven days and then must remain in a state of “blood purification” for 33 days. If she bears a female, these time periods of impurity double in length. As part of returning to  a state of purity, the woman has to bring a chattat offering, usually understood as a sin offering, and a burnt offering.

Commentators spill a lot of ink explaining why it is that the woman who just gave birth must bring a “sin” offering and why the birth of a girl increases the period of impurity. We will study some of these texts together and explore whether we think the Torah is being sexist here, or if there may be a deeper spiritual message behind these rules, or if we think that the deeper spiritual reasons are merely apologetics so that we can more easily swallow these regulations.

Looking forward to studying  with you tomorrow morning!

 

Scrollers Preview - Parashat Shemini 2013

This week’s Parasha can be divided into two sections.

In the first section, Aaron offers his very first sacrifices, and everything works beautifully. At the end of Chapter 9, The Presence of God appears to the people, and fire comes forth from before God and consumes the sacrifices on the altar.

But then, in Chapter 10, everything goes wrong. Two of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Abihu, offer “alien” or “strange” fire to God. Fire again comes forth from before God, but this time it consumes these two men and kills them.

Then, in Chapter 11, we find the laws explaining which animals we are allowed to eat and which are prohibited.

One theme that runs through the parasha is that of coming close to God. How do we come close, but not too close? What are the boundaries we need to draw around ourselves in order to live as a holy community, close to God? Why do we need these boundaries?

In Exodus, the encounter with God at Mount Sinai was a one-time intense experience of being in the Presence of God. There too we had boundaries around the mountain, we had to be pure to come close, there were limitations on who could get closest, and there was danger in coming too close. Here in Leviticus we’re talking more about a normative experience of living in community with God on a daily basis.

The Haftarah picks up on this theme of boundaries and danger involved in having God in our midst. There we read about the transport of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. And there too, there is a tension between wanting God to have a permanent dwelling place among the people and the sense that God “moves about” in a portable shrine. Again, we confront the questions of what it means to have God in our midst. Is it better to have a permanent temple to which people must make pilgrimage, or a traveling Tent that comes to the people where they live? Here too, we have danger associated with having God’s Presence so near. Uzzah, who is guiding the ox cart which conveys the Ark, reaches out to steady it as one of the oxen stumbles. God strikes him down on the spot.

Looking forward to exploring this with you tomorrow!