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Tumah, Taharah, and Torah as Fire - Parashat Tazria

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The concepts of tumah and taharah , ritual impurity and purity, can sound uncomfortable to our modern ears. They sound to many of us like ‘bad’ and ‘good’. It is bad to be impure; it is good to be pure. However, there’s something a little more complex than that in the Torah’s concepts of tumah and taharah . I will remind you, for example, that contact with a dead body brings a person into a state of tumah , of ritual impurity - and it is a mitzvah, a religious obligation, to care for the deceased. Therefore, it cannot be the case that tumah (ritual impurity) is bad and taharah (ritual purity) is good. So what are these categories for, if not distinguishing the good from the bad? This week’s parashah has been concerned with two experiences that bring an individual from a state of taharah (ritual purity) into a state of tumah (ritual impurity): tzara’at, the mysterious skin affliction, and childbirth. The Torah does not tell us what these people have in common, but it becomes clear
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Resilience - Rosh Hashanah Kavannah (5781)

I think that the word of this year behind us is ‘resilience’. Resilience is not only the ability to work through a difficult time, it’s the ability to maintain something in ourselves while doing so. Of course this year has changed us. It’s changed the way that we pray, the way that we learn, the way that we interact with one another. But I have been astounded and moved time and time again by experiencing the great care that is at the heart of this community.  We are of course not the first generation to live and worship through a tumultuous situation. Our history is filled with these kinds of stories. To the ancestors of our deep past, before the building of the Temple in Jerusalem, worship occurred on the road. Our forefathers built their own altars as they travelled. The generation of the Wilderness built a mishkan , a tabernacle, a portable temple for their experiences of wandering. And after we had built and experienced the Temple as a centre of Jewish worship, we found ourselv
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Hosea 2: Is the Marriage Salvageable?

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This piece first appeared in Rabbi Natasha's commentary on the 929 Tanakh Project here .            When the 10 Sayings are carved into two tablets of stone, the second statement ‘you shall have no other gods’ on the first tablet is parallel with the seventh commandment against adultery, on the second. This is the primary analogy of the Book of Hosea: Israel is cast as God’s unfaithful wife. God wishes to take her back, but only if she will renew their relationship and be faithful.           This brings up a particular issue in Torah law. According to the laws of adultery, a woman who has intercourse with another man is now forbidden to her husband. This throws the analogy into some confusion, because Hosea does take Gomer back, and the Divine also plans to renew His relationship with Israel. Commentators have long debated the place of Hosea’s marriage - some saying that Hosea’s relationship issues were a dream; others saying that he was given leniency around this law due to being
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