Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 1 Nisan, 5784
Parsha Tazria’ – “Conceives”: (Leviticus 12:1 – 13:59)
Third Portion: Leviticus 13:18 – 13:23
Good morning! What a morning. This is a time of rebirth after the eclipse yesterday. The feminine moon showed up in her power to block out the masculine sun. Our energies shifted as a collective and individually into more wholeness. Our masculine got a break for a moment – he can relax for a bit and surrender to feminine power (within us). And today? We move right into the original month.
Chabad has an amazing kabbalah article on Nisan here:
This moon cycle is about renewal and newness. Nisan wakes up from hibernating this winter. New life is bursting forth.
Yesterday on the drive to Copenhagen, Denmark (in New York) – we saw yellow and blue flowers blossoming along the roads. Our strength and voice is opening up once again from the sleep and rest we’ve received for the past three months.
As Chabad writes in the article – “new life force and potential is ready to manifest itself.”
Where are we needing new life force in our life? Where do we need this potential? These are the questions. Where do we WANT this life force? Where it is needed and where it is wanted could be two different areas.
From Chabad:
Two terms – spring cleaning and spring fever – represent the very real manner in which this energy affects us. We are ready for new directions and new insight, ready to break free from the restraints of the past and embrace the future with new optimism and enthusiasm.
Has any people had to begin again so many times due to a long and tortured history? No matter what the circumstances, we have persevered and renewed ourselves countless times in communities around the globe. This essential power exists in every Jewish soul and is one of the secrets of our survival. The miraculous ingathering of the exiles and the rebuilding of our ancient homeland in Israel today clearly testifies to this truth.
Just sit with this. I know. We are tired. Tired of being agitated. Of being tortured. And. We have persevered. This POWER exists in us. And it is the secret of our survival.
And this:
We are not referring to just renewal, but an even more essential power to reveal new insight and spiritual energy altogether. The verse in Ecclesiastes (1:9) stating there is “nothing new under the sun,” implies that “under” the sun there is nothing new, but “over” the sun there is always something new. Every Jewish soul is connected to the place “over the sun” in the deepest way. It is no wonder that approximately 20% of all Nobel Prize winners are Jewish, as this figure relates to the essential Jewish power in the soul to reveal new insight, whether in Torah, literature, medicine, mathematics or science.
Yesterday’s eclipse firmed this up for us. What came OVER the sun? Something new. The moon. Every Jewish soul is connected to this place “over the sun” in the deepest way. It is our feminine soul. We are so used to taking action in our masculine energies. We don’t always wait for the right time for the feminine energy to show up. This constant rejection of our feminine energy creates our abandonment wound, our rejection wound, or betrayal wound. And our masculine energy feels this is their depths.
It is this Nisan energy we dig into today’s portion with:
18If [a person’s] flesh has an inflammation on its skin, and it heals,
19and on the place of the inflammation there is a white se’eith, or a reddish white bahereth, it shall be shown to the kohen.
Inflammation – the expansion of our skin. This is a time of expansion. And it is difficult sometimes to know whether this expansion is going to open up our old wounds that have yet to be healed, or show us the resilience of our scars. We need someone ELSE to look at it and help us asses:
20The kohen shall look [at it]. And, behold! its appearance is lower than the skin, and its hair has turned white; so the kohen shall pronounce him unclean. It is a lesion of tzara’ath that has erupted on the inflammation.
If the expansion takes us backwards, it is unclean. The lack of cleanliness erupted the inflammation. We are in our wound.
21But if the kohen looks at it, and behold! it does not contain white hair, nor does it appear to be lower than the skin, and it is dim, the kohen shall quarantine him for seven days.
So if the expansion looks healthy, it is possibly clean. We need to be curious and be quarantined for 7 days.
22And if it spreads on the skin, the kohen shall pronounce him unclean. It is a lesion.
If the inflammation spreads, it is unclean.
Now. I want to end with this. A lot of us dislike the concept of “clean/unclean.” It feels like a value judgment. I am “unclean” means I have less “value” than someone who is “clean.”
And yet a lot of us LOVE the concept and embrace the concept of being “broken” or “wounded.” We need to be fixed.
Think about this. Would we rather believe we are broken and need to be fixed? Or would we rather see ourselves momentarily unclean and needing support to “wash up?”
To me? This idea is mind blowing.
May this eclipse reveal to us the patterns within that keep us stuck in broken/fixing mentality, and allow us the freedom to see the clean/unclean mentality. It is much easier to “wash up” than “fix ourselves.” Where is our mentality in this renewal and rebirth?
These are my thoughts. What are yours?
Here is my thought from two years ago:
Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 26 Adar II, 5782
Today is a very short passage continuing our journey looking at skin lesions.
Todays portion begins discussing inflammation caused by an infection. If that inflammation heals, but on the place of inflammation there is a white blotch, or a streaked red and white spot, it needs to be shown to the priest.
If the blotch is white, making it look deeper than the surrounding skin of the body, and the hair has turned white, the priest will announce him ritually impure.
If it isn’t white or it’s white but does not contain a white hair, the individual goes to quarantine for 7 days. After 7 days, if:
- It spreads on the skin, the priest will pronounce him ritually impure
- If it doesn’t spread, it is merely scar tissue and the priest will pronounce him ritually pure.
Ok. Seems like a simple passage. But we have some interesting commentaries here.
First the Talmud teaches us in looking at this portion:
Unlike earlier passages, that refer to “a person” (adam), who has a lesion, this verse reads literally, “If flesh (basar) will have an inflammation on its skin.” The passages are also dissimilar in their conclusion: Although this verse speaks of healing, earlier passages do not.
The lesson here: Healing comes only when you are humble and supple like flesh (basar). A person who is arrogant and rigid like the earth (adamah) will not be healed.
Next, Rabbi Menachem Ben Solomon writes this about the Priest’s examination:
A person can see all blemishes, except his own (Mishnah, Negaim 2:5).
People do not see faults in themselves. If a person does something wrong, he will explain it away, saying that it is not a fault. Therefore it is important that you have close friends whom you can listen to when they point out your faults.
To me, this is the BIGGEST takeaway from todays portion. How often do we surround ourselves with Echo chambers of people who tell us what we want to hear and confirm our own beliefs. We need to have people who care about us and can point out our faults so we can see reality for what it is. We often get hyper focused on our own reality. We don’t consider others may have a different view, and those views have validity.
When we are wounded, we must show our wounds to another who we can hear and we can listen to in order to have an opportunity to heal. We must hear the pieces we are responsible and need to work on for ourselves AND we need to listen to how maybe what happened wasn’t about us and is something someone else must deal with; independent of ourselves.
Having friends and those who care about us to tell us hard truths is something critical in our Jewish lives!
What are your thoughts?
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