Metzora (lev. 14:1 - 15:33)

Shabbat Haggadol (the "big" Shabbat)

Yesterday I had the privilege to join an amazing operation that is held every Thursday morning in Jerusalem. It is an operation for packing and providing generous, full baskets of food to victims of terror and their families. There were many dozens of empty baskets on the floor, waiting to be filled, and a handful of volunteers worked hard to put bags of vegetables, fruit, meat, bread, juice and other groceries in every basket in order to enable those families to enjoy rich Shabbat meals. What is nice about this charity organization, Ohr Meir & Bracha, is that the manager does not take any salary to herself from it. She does this for free. What's even nicer is the possibility for all the donors to see with their own eyes how their money turns into food baskets and then being delivered to the victims homes. Many of these donors come to help with the packing, which makes it doubly meaningful for them. You can hear there a blend of languages, including American English, as some of these volunteers are new immigrants from America. Next Thursday this operation is going to be much larger than usual, since it would be just before the holiday of Passover, to enable those families to have proper Passover meals. Here are a few pictures I took there:



This coming shabbat is the shabbat before the holiday of Passover, and it is called "Shabbat Haggadol", "the Big Shabbat". This is a very special shabbat, and all around the world, but especially in Jerusalem, there are special, festive sermons given on this occasion in synagogues. Why is this shabbat called shabbat Haggadol? There are a few reasons for it, but the main one is the fact that on this Shabbat a miracle happened to the People of Israel in the year of the Exodus from Egypt: they took lambs and sacrificed them as the Passover sacrifice (Exodus 12: 3,6). What makes this a miracle? This is so if we realize that lambs were considered to be gods in Egypt. Just as in India cows are considered holy animals that should not be harmed and are believed to be gods by the pagans, so in Egypt lambs and cows used to be gods. The Israelites were poor slaves in Egypt. It was inconceivable that such miserable, defenseless slaves would take the sacred animal, the god of their oppressors, hold it for four days in their homes, kill and sacrifice it, and then should emerge unscathed from it. But this is exactly what happened. It was on this Shabbat, many many years ago. Shabbat Haggadol is a symbol of faith, and this is a lesson to learn again and again in every situation in our lives.Today we don't sacrifice a lamb, but we have a piece of meat on the Seder table as a reminder of that lamb.

The Torah Portion this week is that of Metzora (Leviticus 14:1 - 15:33). In it is detailed the (humiliating) purifying process of a person who was inflicted with the spiritual and physical disease of Tzara'at, a disease that used to inflict a person who spoke slander against others in the community. After sitting outside the camp for seven days in isolation, the person comes back into the camp, sits for another seven days outside his tent exposed to all, and shaves his head. There are more details, but the bottom line is that it all makes him conspicuous, ashamed and isolated for a couple of weeks, so that he would feel on his own flesh (literally) that which he wanted to cause to others with his slander. The sin of the evil tongue is so prevalent in our day and age, that such a purifying process wouldn't help. The majority of us would have to sit outside of the camp and then outside of our 'tents', hence the effect of isolation and shame would lose effect.

Passover is just around the corner, and it is already felt here. School children are already off from school for their 2 week Passover break, and many parents take days off to be with them (in some work places the organization gives days off to all the employees. In other organizations, people may choose whether to use their yearly paid-leave days now or at some other point during the year. The supermarkets are having big sales of Matzah bread, and soon they will be made Kosher for Passover, with large sections of non-Passover products covered with plastic bags to avoid the selling and buying of Chametz (leavened bread and similar products) during the holiday. Many products have the stamp of "Kosher for Passover" on their packages. The radio commercials try to allure us to buy all sorts of things with Passover sales and invite us to participate in tempting leisure activities during the holiday. People keep asking each other: "So, where will you do the Seder this year?" (Seder is the festive Passover meal in which we retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt). Most people do it with their families, but in recent years Hotel Seders have also become popular.
The most important aspect of Passover is to preserve the national and religious memory of the events that took place so long ago, but have affected the entire world - the Exodus and the receiving of the Torah. So many nations ever since wanted to see themselves as the Israelites leaving Egypt. The American pioneers wanted to name America as the new "Cana'an" and wanted to have the parting of the Red Sea (so called erroneously - the true name is the Reed Sea but at some point one 'e' fell...) as their national symbol. Like them, many still like to use images and concepts from our Exodus story to model their own struggle for freedom, however defined. So in a way, we don't only keep this memory alive for our own sake, but for the entire world. I want to wish all of us a meaningful Passover, and a successful exodus from our own personal "Egypt"s.

Shabbat shalom and Happy Passover,
Revital

Torah Portion: Tazria (Leviticus 12:1 - 13:59) 5776

Torah Portion: Tazria - The Power of Speech

Spring is here, and it is high time to take long walks in nature. I have just came back from a hike in the mountains of Jerusalem's Ein Karem neighborhood, an old village nestled at the outskirts of the city, overlooking the Jerusalem Hills. We were not the only ones there - many people, Israelis and foreign tourists, were walking the streets of this picturesque neighborhood and enjoying a day in nature. After a winter blessed with lots of rain, there is a lot of green everywhere and this is the time to go out and see it. In a couple of month, when the sun becomes strong, it will all turn into yellow-brown (which has its own charm, but green is nicer). There were so many flowers everywhere! I picked a few branches of rosemary and lavender for the Bsamim (fragrant spices) blessing in the Havdalah ceremony at the end of Shabbat and promised myself that I will do it again soon. 

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​This Shabbat is special - it is both a Shabbat and a Rosh Chodesh (the first day of the new month of Nissan), and since it's Nissan, everybody is starting to get ready for Passover: cleaning the houses more meticulously than usual, getting rid of unneeded clothes and items in the house, finishing all the pasta and other foods that are Chametz and therefore are not Kosher for eating (or even keeping at home) during Passover. Every Rosh Chodesh that falls on Shabbat, there is a very festive prayer at Jerusalem's Great Synagogue, with a choir of men who sing the service and an excellent, soulful cantor. This cantor once brought me to tears with his honest prayers. I will go there tonight.

The Torah Portion of this week is that of Tazria (Leviticus 12:1 - 13:59). It talks about laws of purity for women after birth (laws that don't apply today because the Temple is not in place), and about the laws of Tzara'at, a mysterious skin disease (that can also affect house walls and clothes), and that is diagnosed not by a doctor, but by a Kohen, a Jewish priest from the descendants of Aaron (Moses' brother). The fact that it is diagnosed by a Kohen shows us that it has a spiritual origin, not a medical one. The connection between mind and body is stressed here with this form of mysterious disease. It is translated as Leprosy in English, but it is not the Leprosy we know from recent centuries, it is another form of disease that we don't know today. The cure for this disease is for the affected person to sit in isolation outside the camp, not to come in contact with people for seven days, and after a week the disease is cured. 

The portion doesn't explicitly specify what causes this disease, but elsewhere in the Torah it is mentioned in relation to Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron, when she spoke not-nicely about Moses and his wife, and was punished for it with this disease and in order to be cured from it was asked to sit outside the camp in isolation (Book of Numbers, chapter 12). From this, our sages infer that the cause for this disease is bad use of language, or simply: evil tongue. The evil tongue includes a few categories of immoral use of speech, but they all come down to saying bad things about other people behind their backs: disgracing others, putting them down, mentioning their flaws, exposing things that violate their privacy (and privacy is sacred!), telling lies about them and also telling bad things that are true. Some think that if we say bad things about someone, but those bad things are true, then it's OK for us to tell these things. But this kind of gossip is forbidden and can cause a lot of harm to three parties: to the speaker, to the one spoken about and to the listener. It diminishes the level of love in society and the social glue that keeps people together and causes disdain towards the person spoken about and a feeling of superiority for the speaker and the listener. There won't be love there the next time they see this person. This is the reason why the cure for the Tzara'at disease is to sit in isolation outside the camp: it's like saying - if you want to weaken the social glue between people in your community, if you want to make someone else be treated with disdain, you should taste your own medicine (literally) and be isolated (and ashamed) yourself. It is no big honor to sit outside the camp alone for a week because of this spiritual-physical disease. 

Only in specific cases is one allowed (and even encouraged) to say bad things that are true about another person (for example: if you know that Dana is going to marry or get into business with Danny, who is a dishonest person, you must warn her, but make sure your motives are to help her, not to get back with Danny). 

Words can heal and words can kill. Speech is what distinguishes between us humans and other animals, and it is such a lofty gift we humans got, that we just must use it responsibly and with discretion. With speech we can change someone's world, or even change the world (and there have been quite a few examples for this in human history). A tender word for someone in distress can sometimes save their lives, and a bitter word said to someone or about someone behind their back can ruin their lives. I volunteered once at a hotline for people in distress, and it just taught me how much weight each of our words carry and how we can affect other people's lives with just our words, even if they are physically very far away from us. 

Words have power, and every word we say leaves an impression in this world. We can truly heal the world with positive speech (and also positive inner speech, directed towards ourselves!). And it costs us nothing. It is a free gift we got, and we can give good words to others and lift them up without any cost to us at all. 

I want to give two examples to people who use the power of speech - one positively, the other not quite so. One is the Israeli Arab Christian Pastor, Gabriel Naddaf, who works a lot for peace in Israel. He preaches for unity in society and encourages all Arabs in Israel to enlist into the IDF. He speaks for Israel and advocates for it in different places in the world and affects many young Arabs in this country and abroad. He was chosen to lit a torch this year in the prestigious opening ceremony of the celebrations of our Independence Day - this honor is given to people who have achieved something big in their lives. He brings people from different ethnicities and religions together (like him there are many other Arabs who do so, not just Christian Arabs but also Muslim Arabs). If you look at his Facebook page, you will see that his cover picture says: "I stand with Israel. And you?" (I hope you answer to this: "me too!"). 

On the other hand there is Mr. Bernie Sanders, who, while being liked a lot everywhere, used speech in a very irresponsible way this week, throwing false accusations at Israel, without considering the impact of his erroneous words. I won't repeat his words here so as not to give them more power. He later corrected himself somewhat. Israel has suffered a lot from bad use of speech against it (as Jews have throughout history), and since he is a Jew, I would expect him to be more sensitive, and check the facts before speaking, even if saying some things might make him more liked and win him some political points at home. Words have power.

So this Shabbat (and this month, and just generally), let us find ways to use our speech in a constructive way towards ourselves and towards others and truthfully make this world a better place.

Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov! 

Revital

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