April 14, 2016 | 3 minute read
This week’s Torah portion (Metzora) begins with instructions for restoring a person afflicted with tzara’at to ritual purity. The ceremony for cleansing the person with this mysterious skin condition requires some very specific things: The kohen (priest) is to order, and the person to be cleansed is to take two live, clean birds, a cedar stick, a […]
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April 5, 2016 | 4 minute read
This week’s reading (Tazria), continues the instructions for managing the competing energies of life and death, and purity and impurity. Much of the text focuses on tzara’at, a curious condition that could affect both skin and clothing. Under certain circumstances, a person with this affliction was subject to an extreme form of quarantine: All the days the […]
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