This week’s portion – or, more accurately, two portions that are read together, Taz’ree’ah and Metzo’rah – seems, at first site, like a continuation of last weeks’ portions: a detailed, somewhat tedious account of ordinances relating to everything under the sun – from bad skin conditions to pure leprosy. But, just like those earlier portions, a deeper look reveals some extremely thought-provoking insights. I want to discuss three in particular today.
A Word About Portion Titles
The title of the two portions tells us something about their subject matter. Taz’ree’ah is a word related to seed or sperm, but in this week’s portion it appears in relation to a woman. Most translations understandably took the easy route, simply reading the text as where “a woman gives birth,” “a woman is with a child,” or, closer still, “a woman has conceived seed.” Only one translation of the eleven I examined, the Douay-Rheims Bible, chose to confront the Hebrew original head-on by writing: “If a woman having received seed shall bear a [male] child” (they wrote “man-child”). In any event, the first portion begins with pregnancy – the beginning of human life. We will return to this issue in a moment.
[It should be noted that this week – as in every week – the portion is named after the first meaningful word in the opening section. By “Meaningful” I do not mean that it has a meaning – all words in the bible do; rather, it is meaningful in the sense that it is not a part of the formal introduction to the portion (as in “So said God,” or “Then God has spoken,” or, more to the point in recent weeks “And God spoke to Moses and told him: Tell the children of Israel to do the following,” and so on). What is interesting to note, however, that the first of these meaningful words this week is not Taz’ree’ah, but rather “a woman.” Despite that, the sages chose not to name this portion, as it should have been called, “woman.” That is unfortunate. Just think for moment what would it do to Judaism – to Jewish women, to Jewish men, to all Jewish people all over the world – if one of the Torah portions were to be named (appropriately) “a woman.” At this point, it seems a bit too late to change that…]
The title of the second portion – Me’tzorah, which means a leper – also tells us something about this week’s content. In the lowest level of abstraction, reading the text as plainly as possible, both portions deal heavily with skin diseases in different stages of evolvement. Perhaps that was a frequent condition in the desert, requiring an elaborated set of ordinances (with the priests in the role of physicians). But perhaps there is something deeper here. Allow me to surmise.
The Totality of Judaism
About twenty years ago, the Israeli Supreme Court was heavily divided around a major jurisprudential (legal philosophy) question: Is the law ubiquitous? Is it everywhere, all the time, all around us, whenever we go? Or does the law have a limited role, intervening in our lives only when we do (or attempt to do) something wrong? On the one end of the spectrum stood the Vice Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a noted Torah scholar and a prolific jurist, Justice Menachem Elon. He vehemently opposed the idea of “the law is everything.” To him, (and I cite from memory, twenty years after the fact), “the law has nothing to say about love, dancing, playing with my grandchildren, and many other activities. The law is not everywhere, and the law is not everything.” On the other end of the spectrum stood Aharon Barak, then an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and later to become Israel
The debate was never firmly resolved. But reading this week’s portion and thinking of the debate between these two giants – the noted Torah scholar on the one hand and the brilliant jurist on the other – it seems that the Torah itself leans towards the latter (the jurist), at least in its perspective on Jewish law.
Indeed, this week’s portion takes us through a long journey of human life (“the circle of life” in Elton John’s words), and not necessarily through the glorious stops on that journey (to be more exact, it takes us through the legal rules or decrees we have to follow in those stops): From pregnancy to post-birth “impurity”; from circumcision (an eighth-day decree that the Rambam himself emphasizes comes from this portion and not from the elaborate discussion in Genesis on the Compact between Avraham and God; see Leviticus 12:3) to a variety of skin diseases in all shapes and sizes; from hair and beard infections to baldness; from contaminated clothes (and proper rules of laundry) to leprosy; from women’s menstrual cycle to men’s inadvertent semen discharge – and many, many, more.
While tedious at times, this legal journey is fascinating in the sense that it shows, on the one hand, the ubiquity of the rules of Judaism – how it may govern every aspect of our lives, from birth to death and everything in between. But it also makes another important point, which often escapes theological observers, especially non-religious ones.
What Religion Is
When we talk about religion – every religion, but ours most especially – we usually think about very spiritual, dignified issues: Shabbat (or Sunday, or Friday, to others), Praying, God, the Holidays (realize these are “holy” days), going to Shul (or church, or musque) , etc. Very few people, I would venture to guess, think about issues such as women’s cycle, skin diseases, proper laundry rules, and others when asked “what religion means to you.” This week’s portion, however, makes the very profound point that religion – every religion, but ours most especially – in not only about those unique (or “holy,” which, as I have explained elsewhere, is also “unique,” or “special”) moments in life, but also about every single moment in life, from birth until death. Thus, when a person receives upon themselves the obligation of religion – the yoke of Torah and Mitzvot – they are placing an enormous responsibility on their lives. It is the responsibility to live and act like a Jewish person at all times. [The Shulchan Aruch, one of Judaism’s profound documents, takes this point to the extreme, ordering a Jewish person what to do from the moment they wake up every single day until they go to sleep again.] Indeed, the laws of Judaism are all around us, all the time, and not only when we light the Shabbat candles. That is the message of this week’s portion.
Shabbat Shalom,
Doron
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