What is one to do with all this skin disease? Parashat Tazria, the locus classicus for tzara’at (usually, but very probably inaccurately, translated as “leprosy”), a disease that could cover the entire body with repulsive, oozing, hairy and perhaps disfiguring growths, pustules, welts etc. And not content to invoke misery upon the body of the sufferer, tzara’at could strike clothing and house, systematically rendering impure in the extreme every “container” within which a life might take refuge. So it is more than a bit bizarre that the parashah opens with the laws of impurity of a birthing mother. “When a woman becomes fertile and bears a male…” Is there anything sweeter, more pure , than a newborn baby? The midrash in Vayikra Rabbah expresses amazement at the phenomenon: The mother is an av hatum’ah , capable of rendering impure other humans and vessels, yet the baby whose emergence invokes this impurity, is as pure as, well, the day he is born. That image, howeve
Thoughts and insights on the weekly Parashah, Daff Yomi, and whatever else I may be learning or brooding about, ranging from pedantic grammatical observations to sweeping generalizations of dubious provenance. Enjoy!