tazria

It is time for my annual sending of photos of our beautiful Victoria to my brother who lives in Calgary: sprays of pink cherry blossoms, blooming magnolias and clematis, all sent as counterbalance to the near dead looking grey soil of Ted’s backyard.

And yet. I know that spring will come to Calgary. I know that his backyard will be luxuriously thick with grass sooner than I could imagine. I am not quite sure how it happens but I have witnessed the revival of the earth in Calgary – it is a different miracle of welcome than what we are accustomed to here, with our quarter year of springtime.More

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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