Tomorrow we will read Parashat Tazria, where we read about two cases of impurity of the body: the postpartum woman and the person with skin disease. In both cases, these people are separated from their regular lives and from the rest of the community, until their abnormal state has passed and the kohen welcomes them back with special rituals. With this text we recognize the liminal states, the outside of the norm experiences. We understand that the healing time is important to the process of coming back to community and to holiness.
When I was younger, I could only see the ugliness and sexism of parashat Tazria. The idea that giving birth was something that caused a woman to become infectiously impure, especially if the baby was a girl, causing twice the time of impurity, seemed unholy. The subsequent verses that talk about tsaraat, the strange disease that can affect body, clothes and home, made the parashah even more unattractive.
Rabbi Dr. Rachel Adler teaches that “Tumah is the result of our confrontation with the fact of our own mortality. It is the going down into darkness. Taharah is the result of our reaffirmation of our own immortality. It is the re-entry into light. Tumah is devil or frightening only when there is no further life. Otherwise, tumah is simply part of the human cycle. To be tameh is not wrong or bad. Often it is necessary and sometimes it is mandatory.”
Women have this inexplicable connection with the cycles of time. Over and over, time begins to count differently, and our bodies invite us to learn to deal with it again. From childhood from puberty, then to adulthood, for some to childbirth, and then to menopause. Different moons and different bodies. For each cycle, for each pregnancy, we step outside the community, heal and come back to holiness.
Today, after three pregnancies and a bit more of life experience I can see the wisdom of the text. When a woman gives birth to a child, part of her dies, and a new part of her is born. She becomes a different person; the world becomes a different place for her. Time is really important for a new mother to reconnect to herself, to her times, to her body and soul. This time that she is left alone with herself, “tameh”, is important for her, for the baby and for the family.
Parashah Tazria is an invitation to think about life changing events that affect your body and soul. About the need of being apart to heal, to get to know the new person that one has become after being affected, being Tameh. Parashat Tazria is about taking time to become holy again.
This week, parashat Tazria inspired me in poetry:
Moon, blood, body and soul.
My body womanly is not mine.
It belongs to the moon,
Dictating cycles
Changing my mood,
Flooding my days.
It belongs to the child
Who changed my body
Performing miracles
Making me impure,
Flooding my days.
It belongs to the seasons
Hot and rain
Uncertain, unreliable
Changing my body, changing my mood
Flooding my days.
It will belong to the earth
Maybe to the uncontained space
Of memory and love
Dissolving my body
In the flood of the days.
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