Treating a person with a disease is the subject of this week's Torah portion. In Parashat M'tzora, we read about the ancient priests who served as diagnosticians for a skin disease known as tzara'at. The priests served as biblical dermatologists, assessing the skin condition and rendering a diagnosis and a treatment plan.
Elie Wiesel shared these words with the world for Holocaust Remembrance Day: “I still believe that one minute before one dies, there may be hope in his or her heart—one minute before one dies, he or she is still immortal... " Ours is a tradition that relishes in the inversion of the expected.
Theologian Elizabeth Dodson Gray notes: "Women's bodies may be the hardest place for women to find sacredness" ( Sacred Dimensions of Women's Experience, 1988, p. 197). Our society sends negative messages to women from earliest childhood about the expected perfection of their physiques and the disappointments of any flaws in the female form. Parashat M'tzora, then, with its focus on menstrual impurity (15:19-24), seems to impart the same kind of unfavorable sense. Rejecting our own received biases and patriarchal assumptions about menstruation, however, can help us form a contemporary view of these so-called taboos.
M'tzora, the name of this week's parashah, refers to a person or a house afflicted with a skin condition called tzaraat. Often mistranslated as "leprosy," tzaraat is something totally different than what we, today, call leprosy.
Torah Commentary
Encountering the Plague in our Midst
Treating the M’tzora in Each Generation
Inversion Tactics: Deciding How to Interpret Words and Actions
Elie Wiesel shared these words with the world for Holocaust Remembrance Day: “I still believe that one minute before one dies, there may be hope in his or her heart—one minute before one dies, he or she is still immortal... " Ours is a tradition that relishes in the inversion of the expected.
Bringing New Meaning to the Status of a Menstruating Woman
Theologian Elizabeth Dodson Gray notes: "Women's bodies may be the hardest place for women to find sacredness" ( Sacred Dimensions of Women's Experience, 1988, p. 197). Our society sends negative messages to women from earliest childhood about the expected perfection of their physiques and the disappointments of any flaws in the female form. Parashat M'tzora, then, with its focus on menstrual impurity (15:19-24), seems to impart the same kind of unfavorable sense. Rejecting our own received biases and patriarchal assumptions about menstruation, however, can help us form a contemporary view of these so-called taboos.
Maybe We’re Really Not Talking About Skin Diseases
M'tzora, the name of this week's parashah, refers to a person or a house afflicted with a skin condition called tzaraat. Often mistranslated as "leprosy," tzaraat is something totally different than what we, today, call leprosy.