Community Blog

Shabbat Shalom! This week's Torah portion is Parashat Tazria, in which a number of laws regarding bodily purity are enumerated: how to purify after a skin disease, how to purify after childbirth, how to purify if some kind of mold or infection (the scientific specifics are very unclean) spreads over a house and clothing. 

 

 

As many of you know, this past week I attended the yearly conference for the CCAR, the rabbinic association of Reform Judaism. At Monday’s Torah service, the Darshan spoke about the process of purification for tzara'at - the scaly skin condition described in this parasha. He likened it to our ongoing quarantining practices through this pandemic. The person with tzara'at must withdraw from the community, and wait out the infection in isolation. But they are never without community. The priest must walk them out of the camp and escort them back into the camp once they are clear. They are welcomed back in with love and joy. 

 

Much of Monday’s Torah service, and indeed the whole week, filled me with much gratitude and hope. We celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first American woman to be ordained a rabbi - the second recorded female rabbi in the history of the world and a product and ordinee of our denomination. We celebrated gathering back together for the first time in two years - or three really, for the CCAR specifically, since the last conference was in 2019. We spoke about harms done within our movement and how we would commit to do better in the future. We laughed, we cried, we drank, we sang, we prayed, we learned. 

 

The story of tzara'at is also one of hope. In a time when leprosy was misunderstood and stigmatized, our people allowed people with this mysterious skin disease to reintegration into society. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg suggests that in fact the whole book of Leviticus is about Hope - specifically the hope of moving forward from grave mistakes. In her brand new and highly anticipated (by me at least) book on Leviticus, The Hidden Order Of Intimacy, she dives into each parasha through the perspective that the whole of Leviticus is about making up for the Golden Calf incident. But its not just about teshuva, she says. Its about the hope that they can do and be better, that God will dwell among them in the Mishkan in a way that the Golden Calf could not truly be present, that there was truly a loving and saving force in the world to guide them toward the future. That there was a future. 

This Shabbat and always, may we have that hope, go forward toward better futures, toward healing, toward repair. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.