Save "Tazria-Metzora ~ Ritual impurity, boundaries and internal contradictions"
Tazria-Metzora ~ Ritual impurity, boundaries and internal contradictions

Orach Chayim, Chukas

A man owned two vessels one was full of honey the other full of garbage. He took these vessels outside. All the flies and insects converged on the honey filled vessel, while the garbage filled vessel, although it attracted some insects, it does not compare to the honey vessel.

So too when a Jew passes away, since he is full of sweet and serene holiness, when the soul leaves and the body remains empty the impurities gather in infinite numbers. These are the impure powers which always desire to attach themselves to holiness to enjoy its sweetness.

Rabbi Shai Held: Bible scholar Tikva Frymer-Kensky explains that “if the disease was at all similar to modern leprosy, its affect in an advanced state was similar to the decomposition of a corpse… The afflicted individual, like one who has been in contact with a corpse, might have been considered to be in a no-man’s land between two realms which must be kept rigidly apart.” When Miriam is afflicted with leprosy after speaking ill of her brother Moses, Aaron asks Moses to pray on her behalf, tellingly pleading that their sister “not be as one dead, who emerges from his mother’s womb with half his flesh eaten away” (Numbers 12:12). For Leviticus, then, the metzora quite literally looks like death; the living dead conflate categories and blur boundaries—and are thus considered impure. ( http://mechonhadar.s3.amazonaws.com/mh_torah_source_sheets/CJLIParashatTazriaMetzora5775.pdf)

Leeza Negelev: "In Tazria-Metzorah, the Torah describes a skin affliction called tzarat, similar afflictions of clothes and home, a mother who is post-birth, and all kinds of bodily fluids. As it has been said in other modern commentaries, all of the above physical experiences are aspects of life leaving the body naturally (childbirth, menstruation, seminal emission) and others which are irregular, (afflictions and irregular emissions). These physical states render the person tamei, or in a state of spiritual impurity. Hence, there is a direct correlation to your physical body and your relationship with God and holiness because being tamei literally means you can’t make an offering to God."

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