From The Rabbi’s Study… Shabbat, May 2,3, 2025/4,5 Iyar, 5785 (Omer 19,20)
Yom HaAtzmaut/Israel’s Independence Day. May 14,1948!
This Sabbath has double Torah readings.
Tazria contains rituals of purification for women after childbirth, and methods for diagnosing and treating a variety of skin diseases.
Metzora contains the methods for purification of the leper. Also, the appearance and treatment of fungus or mildew in the home. Ritual impurity resulting from contact with discharges from sex organs.
The priests were also medical diagnosticians. There was leprosy during the ancient times, and this was the most dreaded of all diseases.
While the Jewish people kept the lepers close by in an “outside the camp” of the Israelites in order to help heal them, many other areas of communities cast them out to fend for themselves. There was an Asham/ the guilt offering was the leper’s symbolic act of purification, marking the return to the community after being healed and released from the outside camp.
The concern for purity was to make sure the Israelites may continue their duties taking care of the sanctuary and not contaminate the Holy Temple and worshippers.
The disease of leprosy was regarded by the rabbis as a divine affliction and punishment for slander and talebearing. Metzora/leprosy having the meaning as motzi shem ra (bringing a bad name upon another person). The Talmud considers slander as a hideous capital crime. A slanderer is like one who denies G-d. G-d says of the slanderer: “He and I cannot live together in this world.” (Talmud Arachin 15b)
Today, during outbreaks of covid, black mold in homes, and even when going for surgery, our medical professionals make sure one is healthy before returning into society. Even hospitals take preventive measures prior to one being admitted into the hospital to be healthy. Our ancestors were knowledgeable of herbs, and treatments for ailments centuries before other nations had methods of cures. Keep in mind the Israelites lived among the Egyptians who created aspirin! (just one of the many empires)
This is for our history fans… The “Dark Ages” was an era when nothing was being learned and methods of healing were lost, hence the Black Plague. The Europeans blamed the Jews for the Black Plague (Antisemitism was spread throughout Europe). The disease was the Bubonic Plague caused by bacterium yersinia pestis that was carried by rats and fleas. During battles the enemy would use catapults to throw their dead into the cities that they were at siege when their weapons were low!
As Jewish people before we eat anything we recite a prayer for washing our hands… Baruch…al netilat yadayim! Clean hands you know would stop one from getting sick. This was mentioned so much during covid. I pray people are still washing their hands and they do not need a reminder.
May this Sabbath see the return of our hostages from Hamas in Gaza.
Please pray for Israel as an arsonist terrorist set fire to areas in Jerusalem because it was Yom HaAtzmaut!
May this Shabbat bring us closer to peace throughout the world.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Helene Ainbinder
