By Rabbi Alexandra Wright

Once upon a time in the past history of Liberal Judaism, this week’s double portion known as Tazria-M’tzora, would have been passed over and replaced by another less viscerally biological, more sanitised passage from the Torah.  Why?  Because Liberal Judaism felt that the categories of purity and impurity which the Torah addresses in Leviticus, were no longer relevant in any way; that the laws for women following childbirth were primitive and irrelevant, and that the body of laws that deal with the diagnosis of and regulations concerning skin, garments, leather goods and houses with certain kinds of surface eruptions – what the Torah calls tza’ra’at (leprosy) – no longer had significance in the contemporary world.

Both these parashiyyot have affected society quite negatively – especially women and people who are unwell.  Childbirth, menstruation and illness are all tainted in some way by the taboos that still remain around these things.  Illness frightens us, it brings uncertainty, sometimes disability, we lose our full strength, sometimes our independence and it’s not always easy for us to ask for help or support.  And childbirth is probably the biggest change that occurs in an individual’s life – the changes our bodies experience as women which are life-changing, and the upheavals and adaptations that the arrival of a new child brings.  We become different people once we become parents.

Reading these passages today is not only about understanding the biblical regulations around impurity and purity, investigating the context in which these laws operated, but about allowing us to explore the uncertainties, fears and taboos that are pervasive in our silence or discussions around health. It is about bringing understanding to the risks and hopes that new life brings to us as families. Bringing a new child into the world and raising our children reminds us that lives are vulnerable, precious, in need of the love of family, friends and community. Our texts can become part of our lives through birth and death, in health and sickness, in pain and joy.  The conversations that arise from our readings and our deeper exploration of them can only enrich and strengthen our lives.

I offer these two poems as a reflection on the opening verses of Leviticus 14, parashat M’tzora – the purification ritual for a person with the affliction of nega tzara’at – ‘a scaly affection.’

—

Ritual I

This is the ritual for the one to be cleansed
from a ‘scaly affection,’
that clings to man or woman,
a cloth of wool or linen fabric.

Take two living birds –
Wild sparrows nesting in the branches of trees,
cedar from Lebanon,
crimson yarn,
and growing out of the wall,
tiny flowers
of sweet-scented hyssop.

An earthen vessel filled with fresh water,
stained red from one slain bird.
The living bird –
awaits its fate to be set free,
feathery wings clasped in priestly hands,
dipped with cedar bark and crimson wool
and purifying hyssop.

And all the congregation shall say:
May God keep away all sickness,
May God take away all sickness.
Heal us, O God, and we shall be healed,
Save us and we shall be saved. 

—

Ritual II

Bloodied water,
sprinkled seven-fold.
The live bird
wings its way to open country,
scapegoat of all ills.

And now, the hidden,
shut up and quarantined
for seven days,
appears in open air,
To wash her clothes, cut hair
and bathe at dusk in tear-filled streams.

Another seven days
she remains ‘outside her tent’,
No hands entwined, no stroke or touch,
words tapped out in warm embrace.

Seven nights more,
she shaves her head and brows,
soaks her clothes and bathes;
shaven but not shamed.

First touch comes from priestly hands,
with silent prayer:
I take this blood and oil
and touch your pulse;
that you may hear God’s words,
and with your hands complete God’s work,
and walk in all God’s ways.

And all the congregation shall say:
May God keep away all sickness,
May God take away all sickness.
Heal us, O God, and we shall be healed,
Save us and we shall be saved.

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