Tzaraas. Afflictions, in more pustular detail than you had ever imagined!
Have you ever gone to a paint store and tried to find the right shade of white – or as Procol Harum sang, a Whiter Shade of Pale? There are many, many shades of white, and concomitantly, many degrees of tzaraas, and places where tzaraas can appear.
White, a colour we now often and still associate (however incorrectly) with purity and virginity, in Torah is a harbinger of tumah, of what we bluntly consider to be religious impurity.
Anyone who has watched the inexorable growth of white mold on a cement floor, knows there is cause to worry. There is a contamination, a damp destabilization of a structure that must be attended to. And yet it seems, whilst dampness can indicate a dis-ordering, a presence of tumah, in Torah, water is an agent of spiritual cleansing. Fire and water – both carry negative and positive potential.
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Acharei Mot
April 30, 2019 by Rabbi Lynn Greenhough • From the Rabbi's Desk Tags: Acharei Mot •
Shalom Aleichem
Acharei Mot. This is a complicated sidra especially for the LGBTQ community. Leviticus 18:22, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination,” is often used as an example of how Torah can be used and abused as a religious smorgasbord – what to choose to observe and what to ignore – even as fundamentalists try to use this same verse to reinforce their internalized bigotry. As many have suggested, choosing to focus on this one verse, whilst not, for example, stoning ones recalcitrant sons at the city gates, etc. is an action that is both arbitrary and hateful.More