Tazria-Metzora
Leviticus 12:1-15:33
Kings II 7:3-7:20
As we delve into the book of Leviticus, we enter into territory both unfamiliar and uncomfortable. In our modern lives, the notion of killing animals for the
purpose of worship has been so long out of our consciousness that it is repugnant. Our theology has shifted so much that the concept of bringing food (or even burning something that produces a sweet smell) to the Divine does not resonate with us as a holy act.
It may even feel idolatrous, as we and God have liberated ourselves from the confines of the ancient Temple and are now in a more spiritually sustained relationship.
I invite you to gently pull back the curtains of our modern realities, and take a look at the past with an eye to finding the wisdom hidden in the text, even for today.
Let us begin with the idea of inside and outside the community. In ancient times, you could either be in a state of “ritual purity” or “ritual impurity” — and these have nothing to do with your soul or your general level of ickiness or desirability, but with those things with which you have been in contact.
One of the major categories into which impurifying things can be classified has to do with the nexus of life: blood, semen, dead bodies. Any of these things can make it such that you become ritually impure, and you are not allowed to enter into the sanctuary in that state.
Why this is so is in itself interesting: Are you in danger of contaminating the holy space? We know from the Mishnah Yadayim that the Torah is itself incorruptible by ritually impure touch, so why not the whole of the sanctuary?
We also know that if you do something inappropriate (though we do not exactly know if ritual impurity figures into the examples we have in the Torah), you can have a rather sudden loss of life as a consequence, and we are in fact warned of this fact, especially when dealing with the items that go into the center of the Tabernacle/Temple. Regardless, it is clear that to enter into the Presence, you need to be both conscious and prepared.
So consider the woman who has borne a child: She counts off her days of blood purification for 36 (or 66) days. She shall not touch any consecrated thing, nor enter the sanctuary until her period of purification is completed. Then she brings her offering to the priest. The soft lamb, the silky feathers of the dove, both their gentleness and their struggle as she ties them; she places them in a basket, carries the light load along with the new weight of her child, now beginning to smile and coo in her arms, reminding her of the force of life, and of its fragility.
And just as the glass breaking gives us a moment of solemnity at the pinnacle of our joy, so the sacrifice serves as a reminder that the world is uncertain, broken. It seals the bond of life as she offers now the life of the animal to welcome and protect her child.
There is a level on which she trades her food, her best lamb, a plump pigeon, for the even greater gift of wonder that is the child. Knowing that this daughter or son, too, will have to make the choice of generosity to connect himself or herself with the Divine one day, she also is honoring her role in the act of creation. As we bring life into the world, so do we gain responsibility, and we become obligated in new ways to give of ourselves and of our resources.
This is reflected in the last fast that some people observed before Passover — the fast of the Firstborn. We, the ones who escaped the Angel of Death, have the power to transform the future: We give of ourselves so that no innocent Egyptian should lose a child to the terror of that night again.
Just as God made a covenant with the rainbow, so we create a group dedicated to preserving the possibility of the future for all those who come after us. And we do it by giving up, by surrendering, by suffering even, a bit of privation to remind ourselves and the Divine that we are truly in a partnership, and that we are willing to give up something that is important to us to ensure the greater good of all, and the future of the worldRabbi Elisheva Salamo is the spiritual leader of Keddem Congregation in Palo Alto.