Tazria and Metzora Guest Post Sascha Hardouf
Sascha is a Jewish woman of Welsh-Italian and Sephardic ancestry, trying to weave together her love of Celtic mythology, of Halachah, and of her landscape to honour the Divine. You can read more of her musings over on Instagram at @esotericjewess"
Tazria & Metzora These two parashot contain details for the priests on how to identify, purify, and reintegrate into society people who are nagua. This is translated as ‘diseased’ or ‘afflicted,’ but literally means ‘touched’, with the contagion of ritual impurity often transmitted to other people or objects through physical contact.
Each parashah comprises two chapters of Leviticus. Chapter 12 outlines how a new mother is to be ritually excluded for a period of time depending on the sex of her child. It closes with the rite required to facilitate her return to society. Chapter 13 contains instructions for the priests on how to oversee the ritual exclusion for someone with a skin condition. The different types of skin ailment are expounded in sometimes gory detail, reading like a priestly procedural chart. Although this chapter doesn’t prescribe a medical role for the priest, it does necessitate that he is intimately involved with the individual’s condition, guiding them from pollution to purity.
Chapter 14 is the how-to manual on how to reintegrate someone who has healed from a skin condition into society, though notably, this only involves the individual and the priest overseeing their exclusion. It also provides guidance on how to ‘treat’ an afflicted house, for which the Sages offer thought-provoking interpretations. Finally, chapter 15 concerns itself with carnal pollution, covering the impurity that results from ejaculation, sex, and menstruation.
The four themes I would like to consider are:
● How do we relate to ‘the excluded’ in our societies?
● What does it mean for a structure to be afflicted?
● Why is there ritual exclusion after childbirth?
● How do we conduct rites of reintegration?
Tazria contains tremendous detail for the priests to be able to examine someone’s skin condition and oversee the appropriate form of ritual exclusion. Although we do not have a similar phenomenon in contemporary Jewish practice, I was struck by the similarity to the Sephardic ritual enclosure known as endulko.
Endulko, also known as salvadura, was carried out by maestras, women who were folk healers for Sephardic communities. This ritual was undertaken in the days leading up to Rosh Chodesh, where the afflicted individual was confined to their home with the maestra and her assistants. This lasted a minimum of three days, with the enclosed person fed a special diet that banned bread and strong smelling foods like meat, fish, or alliums.
Instead of treating skin conditions, endulko was used to treat espanto, or fright, which one could gain from experiencing overwhelming emotion. I would argue espanto is a pseudo-, or perhaps proto-, psychological understanding of the way mental distress can result in non-normative behaviour. The endulko thus provides the community with a ritual mechanism to support their distressed members, while also regulating non-normative behaviour by excluding or hiding it.
In her commentary on Tazria in ‘Torah Queeries,’ Ayala Sha’ashoua Miron suggests that this parashah compels us to reflect on our relationship with those who are excluded from society. Do we really examine and understand the ways in which people differ, and how they are intentionally kept apart from mainstream society? Or do we unceremoniously dump them in the trash can of rejection?
I feel this line of thought can also be extended to the more than human world. Most of us go through life blissfully unaware of the impact our lives and our society have on our unseen or ignored neighbours. In my experience, this lack of relationship with either human or more than human neighbours, which might also be termed ignorance, is often the seed from which exclusion is born.
What or whom is excluded from your life? In what ways do the excluded differ from yourself and how are they excluded? What rituals do we have or can we develop to sit with and build relationships with the excluded?
In Vayikra Rabbah 17:2, the Sages say that a house becomes afflicted because its inhabitants refuse to lend things to their neighbours. In other words, they have the resources to support their community, but they refuse to share them. They are too preoccupied with their own concerns and ultimately are pulled up short when they have to empty all their belongings out of their home, and the community sees they had plenty to offer all along.
Another way of framing this is that the house’s inhabitants aren’t living in right relationship with their neighbours. I can certainly see an indictment in the way contemporary society teaches us that we’re in competition with each other, rather than in community. Extending this to the more than human world, we only have to look at the framing of the natural world as a resource to plunder to see some of the ways we might be causing affliction in our landscape.
But Rashi offers a curious interpretation of this section of the parashah. He writes that the Amorites, a Semitic people who occupied the Northern Levant before conquering all of the Fertile Crescent, hid their treasure in the walls of their homes during the 40 years that the Israelites wandered the desert. Because of this, the walls later became afflicted and the house had to be knocked down. But this affliction was actually a good thing, as it meant that they found the treasure hidden inside. In contemplating this midrash, I can identify a number of structures within my own life, and in how we relate to each other and our landscape physically and spiritually, that one could describe as afflicted. I wonder what treasures we would find if we knocked down those walls.
In what ways are we not living in right relationship with our human and more than human neighbours? What structures do we need to tear down to make way for better ones? What treasures might we find if we do?
Although the laws regarding skin conditions are no longer followed, strangely enough traditional interpretations of Halachah still hold that you are tumah after childbirth. (Note that it’s not actually that strange at all.) But the most common practice nowadays doesn’t differentiate between the sex of the child, allowing you to purify yourself seven days after all bleeding stops. As well as contemporary Rabbinic laws to guide you after childbirth, there are also folk practices, such as the Sephardic tradition of akompanyado la parida, accompanying the new mother.
The initial days after childbirth were held to be incredibly dangerous for both the baby and the parida. To physically convalesce and to ward off mal ojo, espanto, and echizo - the evil eye, fright, and witchcraft - both the baby and the parida would be secluded away with the maestra, and not left alone for at least the first week. The maestra’s job was not only to care for both of them physically, but spiritually too. Similar folk practices can be found in the traditions of many cultures around the world and I do feel there is a difference between ritual exclusion for those with skin conditions, and ritual seclusion after childbirth.
Bringing forth new growth into the world is exhausting work, with childbirth the prime example. But it holds true that when we bring forth a new idea, it can be helpful to find solitude to hash it out, or to have the guidance of our elders. I can certainly see echoes where ecological consciousness is concerned. Reborn into Western narratives after the couple of centuries we spent plundering the natural world for its resources, this idea seems fragile and looks like it could be snuffed out in an instant. So it begs us to question how we can uphold new, progressive values like social and ecological justice, and where our elders are to help protect us and these ideas in this process.
What difference is there between ritual seclusion and ritual exclusion? When and where do we need ritual seclusion in the present day? In what ways do you feel guided and protected by your elders in this process?
As with most rituals in Leviticus, the rites of purification to reintegrate someone into society are expounded in intricate detail. Two things stand out to me: firstly, only the individual and the priest overseeing their ritual exclusion are involved; secondly, for a skin condition at least, purification is a gradual process with the individual allowed to enter the camp - but not their home - for the first seven days.
The fact that only excluded individuals and the priests are involved in the rituals of reintegration brings a couple of thoughts to mind. We have made what I will generously term a decent amount of progress to rectify some past social wrongdoings. It’s by no means sufficient but, in the UK at least, we have policy wins like comprehensive anti-discrimination protection, equal marriage, and a slightly degrading process to change one’s legal gender. There’s been far more movement socially than there has been ecologically, let’s put it that way. However, all those rites of reintegration are between the excluded and the elite, not between the individual and their community.
I’ve shared above about how I see the existence or quality of our relationships with our human and more than human neighbours as the seed from which exclusion grows. I don’t really see how a top-down approach between the priests and the excluded leads to real reintegration. I think there also has to be communal reckoning. If not, we end up with the root causes of ignorance going unaddressed, and there being a backlash down the line. We are certainly seeing it in the rhetoric against Trans communities, in the resurgent antisemitism regurgitating tropes we hoped had been left in the past, and in the ongoing denial that humanity is having a negative impact on the natural world - to name just a few examples. I wonder then if it’s the priests’ job to bring the excluded into camp, but our collective responsibility as a community to welcome them home.
What could real reintegration or inclusion of all our human and more than human neighbours look like? What reckoning needs to happen for us to get there and how do you see it unfolding? Who needs to guide this process?
QUESTIONS
What or whom is excluded from your life? In what ways do the excluded differ from yourself and how are they excluded?
What rituals do we have or can we develop to sit with and build relationships with the excluded? In what ways are we not living in right relationship with our human and more than human neighbours? What structures do we need to tear down to make way for better ones? What treasures might we find if we do?
What difference is there between ritual seclusion and ritual exclusion? When and where do we need ritual seclusion in the present day? In what ways do you feel guided and protected by your elders in this process?
What could real reintegration or inclusion of all our human and more than human neighbours look like? What reckoning needs to happen for us to get there and how do you see it unfolding? Who needs to guide this process?
