Shabbat Shalom, thank you for coming to my Bar Mitzvah.
This week's parsha is Tazria Metzorah, a reading that is easily the most pleasant in the whole Torah. It addresses the very pleasing topics of leprosy, childbirth, various bodily discharges and how to resolve or cure them.
I think the complex rites one must undergo to rid oneself of leprosy bring out an emphasis on ritual and physical impurity and the connection between the two, an emphasis found throughout the Torah. Back in biblical times, purity was supposed to be part of your daily life, and had to be taken into account before you did or said anything. To be pure meant to have nothing contaminating your soul or physical being, to have nothing to be guilty or ashamed of, and to be morally wholesome and untainted; for example, slandering another is considered to be a contaminant. If you did contaminate yourself, you had to undergo a series of examinations by a Kohan, or priest, and also ritual sacrifices and quarantine.
For those who are fascinated by the subject, the procedure for curing a leper was as follows: the priest would first take two live birds, cedar wood, "crimson stuff", and hyssop. He would have one of the birds slaughtered over fresh water in a bowl of earthenware, and dip the other bird, the cedar wood, the hyssop and the "crimson stuff" in its blood. He then sprinkles the concoction seven times on the leper, and sets the bird free (the live one). The leper then may return to camp, but may not enter his tent for seven days. On the seventh day he has to shave all his hair, wash his clothes, and bathe. The day after this, on the eighth day, the unfortunate leper has to take two lambs without any blemishes, a one-year-old ewe without any blemishes, three-tenths of a measure of flour with oil mixed into it, and one measure of oil. With these animals and foodstuffs the priest then performs a series of sacrifices and guilt offerings, and anoints the leper with oil. Obviously, the process of purification is enough to scare even the most hardened leper straight to remission.
It wasn't just a matter of getting rid of a rash; if you had leprosy, you were contaminated in both body and soul, and so you would have to go through rituals that attended to both of those ailments. You would have to do this because, according to the Torah, mind and body should be connected by purity. If one is contaminated, the other would be too. This not only promotes complete wholesomeness, but represents the unity of one's physical being with one's spirit. Beautiful, physically flawless people who aren't decent in their thoughts and actions would not escape this connection, as they sometimes do today. The laws mentioned in the Torah portion make a point of being very susceptible to this "soiling of the soul". If you come in contact with an impure person, walk were he walked, sit in his seat, touch his belongings, or anything else having to do with that person, you were also impure until sunset. This could be to prevent the spread of impurity throughout God's nation.
Unfortunately, the importance of purity in today's world has waned slightly--or should I say, completely. Today, we don't care if we get a skin infection; we just go to a dermatologist and get some ointment. We don't go into seclusion, we don't slaughter any baby animals--we don't do anything. And just as we pay little attention to such physical impurities, we pay even less attention to the connection between body and spirit. That connection has diminished very drastically in a world filled with material desires and cosmetic obsessions. The purity of our souls plays second fiddle to our physical appearance and status. We've lost a sense of the connection between them. If we took some time to learn something from this Torah portion, we would not only better ourselves but also improve the overall quality of the lives around us. That is not to imply that if we get a skin infection, we should take the trouble to go through the ritual procedures. That would be a little too much to ask of the typical hustling bustling person. But we should at least step back and look at our behavior, and just try to be more aware of our total well-being. Maybe there is a connection between the condition of our bodies and of our souls. Sure, we can take advantage of modern medicine to cure our physical ailments, but we shouldn't ignore our spiritual well being just for convenience. We should take both into consideration in our daily lives.
Personally, I have had little involvement with ritual purification. However I have been in the mikvah, a tub of pure spring water used to convert people to Judaism. This was because my mother isn't Jewish, and so I had to be converted when I was about five or six. The mikvah, among other things, is a sort of cleansing ritual. The mikvah's water must be pure, which in turn symbolizes the convert's initiation into a people who stress purity so much. If it weren't perfectly clean, that might imply that purity, both physical and spiritual, wasn't important. That might even allow a spread of contamination, both in disease and spiritual impurity. This is a far cry from the rigors of the leper's treatment of biblical times, but it still remains my main exposure to purity in Judaism, up to the time of my Bar Mitzvah.
My Bar Mitzvah marks my introduction into Jewish adulthood, and is the initiation into acceptance as a full-fledged Jew. This means that now I count toward a Minyan, a group of 10 Jews gathered to pray, and I wear T'philin and a Tallit every day during prayer services. More important, this day means that from now on I will have to take responsibility for my beliefs and my actions in order to become a "mensch," a Yiddish term for a decent human being. In other words, I need to discover in my own life the idea of purity that is described in my Torah portion today, Metzorah and Tazriah. With any luck I won't need to find a treatment for leprosy, but I still will need to figure out what purity of mind and soul and body means to me.
I would like to thank many people for helping me with my Bar Mitzvah, none more than my parents who have worked hard to make this day happen, expecting nothing in return (I hope). My tutor, David Wolf, coached me through the Torah portion and helped me every step of the way. My cousin, Elizabeth--or Liz as I know her--has also contributed moral support as well as a helping hand in the actual service. Toby, my aunt, has always been loving and supportive--and her brisket isn't so bad, either. I also have five cousins, five aunts, five uncles, one grandmother, and a partridge in a pear tree in Ching Dao, China (that's where they make Ching Dao beer), and even though there is an ocean separating us, they have always cheered me on. I met them all when I lived in Beijing for a year back in '94, and they are all wonderful people.
That concludes my D'var Torah, and thank you again for coming to my Bar Mitzvah.