Skin Lesions and Life to the Dead

Unlike my other blog posts, this is a more "traditional" D'var Torah, or sermon, on the reading of the week, Parashat Tazria, Leviticus 12:1-13:59. I offer this in part for those who missed my service this past weekend. To all reading, especially if you actually did hear my words: I typically write out what I want to say as a way of helping to congeal the ideas in my head, but it's still a little like jelly, fluid, so this isn't exactly what I said on Saturday. Thanks for the supportive readership.

This week’s Parasha, Tazria, contains sometimes vivid descriptions of bodily functions and malfunctions, skin lesions, and other physical “impurities.”  While it fits well with the rest of the Levitical blood and guts experience, this can easily be the most difficult, even embarrassing, portion for bar or bat mitzvah kids to work with, and quite disturbing even for an adult audience, trying to read it from a spiritual perspective.  

Even the ancient rabbis had difficulty with it.  What were these physical illnesses and what did they have to do with the spiritual work of the priests?  Surely there were plenty of lesions and illnesses that didn’t have to be proven pure or impure by a priest’s eye or through sacred ritual?

Leaving aside the issue of childbirth, where the parashah opens, the rabbis asserted that the skin diseases weren’t just any physical lesions - these were spiritual afflictions, resulting from actions, things a person did (or didn’t do).  Torah teaches that Miriam contracts one of these skin lesion diseases as a direct result of speaking ill of, or doubting, her brother Moses.  And so the most direct link between lesions and actions is said to be lashon hara, speaking ill of another.  

We could simply leave it at that, as the rabbis do - not try to find any explanation for how action might lead to physical ailment.  And indeed, the rabbis more or less do leave it untouched.

But they do offer some clues, in their discussion of this parashah, and in various other biblical texts and rabbinic interpretations.

The lesions at issue here are white.  Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Epstein, an 18th century Chassidic leader known as the Maor VaShemesh, taught that this is the clue -

“Now, actually, the reason for this is simple. The key locus of life’s vitality is in the blood, ‘for the blood is the life’ (Deut. 12:23); the human soul (nephesh) is in the blood.”

Essentially, we pale when our life goes out of us.  And white skin lesions are evidence of life leaving one or another part of our body, usually, he suggests, because we have embarrassed ourselves or another through our actions or words.  Anger, he suggests, is one of the worst offenders, and Rabbi Jonathan Slater interprets this to mean anger is “a small death.”

First, we need to be careful in a reading like this not to think that because a person has an illness of any kind that they have somehow brought it upon themselves by action.  Even the rabbis suggested that this was something that used to happen.  

Still, the notion of anger as being a portion of death is intriguing.  The Talmud also suggests that “sleep is 1/60th of death,” a little like death.

And this carries us to one of my favorite lines in our prayers - mechayei hameitim.  That God gives life to the dead need not be read as a direct assertion of reincarnation.  It can be easily understood in this way of restoring spiritual life.

In the Reconstructionist and Reform liturgies, mechayei hameitim has been replaced by either mechayei hakol or mechayei kol chai - both essentially meaning that the life we have and know is the life God has given us.

To me, this change in the liturgy is unnecessary.  Indeed, it denies the notion that we can be spiritually, or even physically, revived.  

One of my colleagues, Rabbi Megan Doherty, once argued that mechayei hameitim was the perfect blessing to recite over the first cup of coffee in the morning.  This may be a little tongue in cheek, but I think that the idea isn’t far off base.  Indeed, some hold a tradition of reciting these words as a short blessing when seeing someone they haven’t seen in a full year or more.

And what of the Yiddish “mechaya”?  Something good happens, even something as simple as a warm day after the winter, or a cup of icy cold water on a hot day - that’s a mechaya.  It’s a relief, a little bit of life-reminder.

The Reform siddur has returned mechayei hameitim as an alternative in its new siddur.  The siddur you use here is great about giving the options.  Reading with alternatives in place is an opportunity for us to rethink how we are reading: is it too literal?  Is tzara’at really leprosy, or is it a psychosomatic / or spirituo-somatic symptom, a result of something being not quite right in our inner life force?  Is mechayei hameitim only (or even at all) about reincarnation or resurrection, or is it closer to the Yiddish derivation, a mechaya, a little bit of life returning where we have felt a little weary or lost or some such?

Baruch ata Adonay - mechayei hameitim.  Blessed are You, our God, who provides sustenance and renewal, raising life up where it has drooped, offering solace and support and nourishment - to the individual, and to our whole world.  May we be aware of this renewal as the earth brings forth new greens, as the coming month of Nissan and our season of spring and Passover heralds rebirth and new beginnings, emerging from the deathly constrictions of winter and mitzrayim.

Olfactory Memory and Temple Sacrifices

The inner doors to my son’s school opened to let through the onslaught of parents picking up our children, and we were instantly surrounded by a moist, bready smell.  “Why are they baking bread?” another parent asked, “it’s not Friday!”  And I remembered - they were going to bake hamentashen this morning - at least in my son’s class, and probably others.

In the Torah reading cycle, we are in Leviticus, full of bloody, gut-flaying animal sacrifices - and a few somewhat cleaner bread and grain and incense sacrifices.  But in the holiday cycle, we are at Purim, that joyous holiday on which we eat (depending on Ashkenazi/Sephardi background) yummy pastries designed like a man’s hat, or the slightly more disgusting version of his ears.  

In a post-sacrificial Judaism, the holiday yummies are probably more likely to conjure some level of religious connection than the sacrifices.  But where the Mishnah makes the transition from sacrifice to prayer, I would like to suggest that our own experiences of holidays through food, tasted but especially smelled, may in fact hold a more direct connection for us.

The phrase ריח ניחח - re’ach nicho’ach - a fragrant (pleasing) scent, appears numerous times in Torah, all in direct relation to various sacrifices - four times in this week’s reading.  Whether grain or beast or fowl, a fire offering provides a pleasing scent, often specifically described as “for G-d.”  The fact that these sacrifices were commonly consumed by the priests (and, in the case of the Passover sacrifice, by the masses), we can begin to see the connection between the altar that stood before the Holy of Holies and our grandparents’ (for example) kitchens.  

For me, the smell of latkes frying or chicken soup cooking on the stove can bring me home to my mother’s kitchen.  Fresh baking challah, tzimmes, brisket, roasting chicken, cholent, and yes, hamentashen, may be among foods that bring you to various kitchens of your memory.  

And not just any memories, but memories of Jewish time, exactly the kind of time that the sacrifices helped to mark.  The everyday, the Sabbath, various holidays and seasons.  

The association Jews have with food (there’s some idea that you can’t attract Jews to a program without it) is, therefore, not just about putting something in the belly.  It has the potential to be so very deeply spiritual -- in the sense that our kitchens are our altars, filled at their best with ריח ניחח, re’ach nicho’ach, pleasing odors that permeate our very souls and bring us into relationship with each other. It is an inherently spiritual relationship, in the sense that neshamah, soul, is related to breathing (as is smelling), and ru’ach, wind, another word for soul, is directly related to the word re’ach, odor.

Chag Purim sameach - a very happy and joyous Purim to all.  May your olfactory memories tingle, this week and always, with your own efforts or the efforts of someone you love.  

Rewriting What is Written in Stone

Fire in Stone
original sketch by the blogger ;)

The image of the ten commandments - a few dozen words etched directly by G-d into two tablets of stone - epitomizes the notion of immutability of not just these few words, but the whole of Torah, perhaps the whole bible.  

All of the progressive movements of Judaism have made gender-balancing changes to the siddur (prayer book), at least as an option, thus literally changing the words of our texts.  

But no Jewish community has, to my knowledge, rewritten the text of Torah. Torah is sacred and, for all intents and purposes, written in stone.

One of my two year old’s favorite TV shows, Super Why!, focuses on reading as a superpower. The show opens with song: “Who’s got the power / The power to read / Who answers the call / For friends in need / … / Who looks into books / For the answers we need / It’s SUPER WHY and the Super Readers.”  

Little boy Whyatt and his friends transform into superheroes. As Super Why, he says, “with the power to read, I can change this story and save the day!”

What a radical concept! Not only does reading provide knowledge, but the opportunity to change the very thing we are reading.

The stories the Super Readers enter and make to are often well known, like Jack and the Beanstock or Goldilocks, stories I would have thought nearly as sacred, immutable, as Torah.  

But the Super Readers come in and “save the day” by challenging the very text.  An angry giant takes a nap on his “huge bed” rather than having a “huge tantrum” (Season 1, Episode 1); moonlight suddenly brightens the room of a bear who is afraid of the dark by changing the last word of the sentence, “Charlie’s room is dark,” to “light.”

They transform the story by changing the words.  

But we can’t do that with Torah.  And there are times Torah seems to, I’ll be honest, contain things we would rather not read, let alone teach our children. So what do we do?

Essentially since the moment Torah was written, there have been ways to transform meaning. Consider, for example, the understanding of the word שמע shema (as in the credal, “Hear, O Israel,” (Deuteronomy 6:4)) as שאו מרום עיניכם - “lift high your eyes” - not only emphasizing the notion of “pay attention” but linking it to another text (Isaiah 40:26).  

In this week’s Torah reading, Parashat Vayikra, we find the following (Leviticus 1:2):  אָדָם כִּי-יַקְרִיב מִכֶּם קָרְבָּן

Just to give you a sense of how translation is inherently interpretation, I offer the following:

• 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation, “When any man of you bringeth an offering...”
• 1999 Jewish Publication Society translation, “When any of you presents an offering…”

The main difference between the two translations is a problem, as it were, with the first word, ADAM - אדם. The first translation is as a generic “man,” and the second translation avoids to word entirely.  

Some ask the question, why ADAM (אדם) instead of ISH (איש), which is the more common word for “a person”? Our second translation opens up the possibility that אדם is a more gender neutral term, something more compatible with contemporary egalitarian thinking.  I would imagine they might justify that based on the verse “And G-d created אדם...male and female” (Genesis 1:27), such that Adam is a word not subject to the gender binary, whereas Eesh (איש) is explicitly gendered.

Another nice twist is the acronym given for אדם by Rabbi Yochanan in a discussion on what a person does/is when they are haughty (Talmud Bavli, Sotah 5b) - aleph (א) for אפר aphar, meaning dust; dalet (ד) for דם dam, meaning blood; and mem (מ . ם) for מרה marah, meaning bile. An act of repentance or turning from haughtiness - a base, physical act - could be an offering, an attempt to turn away from the physical ADAM and to “draw near” to one’s spiritual self through an act of קרבן korban, the type of offering here, which is connected in its root to קרב karov, literally to draw near.

Those who read Torah, who are knowledgable in the Hebrew especially, have the power to be, as all Torah commentators throughout the centuries have been, nothing less than Super Readers, with the power to transform the meaning of our text for our own and future generations.