TAZRIA-METZORA, April 27, 2006
Our souls are the deer running through the forest.
The feminine is:
The masculine is:
In the seder, we raise our glass of wine when we say that in every generation they have tried to annihilate us – how can we process this thought? How can this possibly work to our benefit? To lose hope to gain hope. What possible good can this do? We have uneasy doubts about G*d’s intentions. I said that I have raised my wine to the statement that follows this statement, that G*d has rescued us, but the Rabbi corrected this: “G*d rescued some of us.”
In the Warsaw ghetto, the Nazis used G*d’s directive to us to choose life to destroy us. We had to abandon “choose life” and give up hope in order to achieve choosing life.
We have to acknowledge pain and move forward at the same time. We are not supposed to explain pain away, not to ourselves and not the mourners in a house of shiva. We are not supposed to tell mourners facile explanations like G*d took him/her away to be with Him. We don’t explain pain away. We sit with the mourner, letting our silent presence be a comfort.
The first week after leaving Egypt has the attribute of the sephera of chesed, loving kindness. During this week the waters were parted. In the second week, the week of Gevurah, discipline, boundaries, receptive, we ran out of water. Gevurah is also heroism.
As a side note, Ashkenazi Jews according to rabbinic decree do not use rice during Pesach because it can be used to create a bread substitute, which is forbidden. Sephardic rabbis, however, allowed rice because rice was a staple for the poorer members of the community.
On the way to Har Sinai we were attacked and ran out of water.
When we ritually wash our hands upon arising and before eating bread, we wash the right hand with the left because we have to have discipline in the service of love. According to this chart, based on information from the Rabbi’s web page, the right hand is chesed and the left hand is gevurah:
If chesed is in the service of gevurah instead of the other way around, the result is anger.
The anger of men towards women ahs to do with the diminishment of the moon. There are two versions of this story, which we have been discussing for the past few weeks. In one version, HaShem says to the moon “diminish yourself.” In the other, HaShem diminishes the moon. An anger offering has to be brought- (?? What does this mean?) The source of the anger between men and women is: competition.
At the present time, with regard to the threats of the president of Iran, is the world being given an opportunity to do teshuva for the Holocaust and other crimes against the Jews?
Perhaps the diminishment of the moon is a giant signpost in the sky. It appears as if the moon is being destroyed as it wanes, but in truth it is just a sleight of hand. The moon actually remains the same even when it looks like it is about to be annihilated. The moon represents the feminine and also represents the Jews. Perhaps this is G*d’s sign to us that even when the destruction of the Jewish nation appears certain, it is just an illusion.
The seder plate:
The egg is in the upper left position of the seder plate. It represents gevurah. It is silent: nothing is said about the egg in the Haggadah, although we speak about everything else on the seder plate. The egg makes a connection with Shavuos, making meaning out of suffering.
The empty space of the seder plate before it’s filled is Malchut.
We have to take the pain of Jewish history very seriously and understand its moving us toward our goals, the giving of the Torah.
Malchut (nobility) is a very dark space (the womb). Jews are angry. The poison of gevurah is anger.
Aaron was silent when his sons died – he was angry – he said to Moses that he would not eat the goat sacrifice (the goat is anger).
The Torah does not buy into the American ideal of equality the way we understand it. There has to be an outsider and an insider in order to create longing.
Pinchas kills 24,000 people – they return in their next gilgul (reincarnation) as Akivas’ students.
G*d appears in the empty space between two things.
D’rash (we are seeking) The middle of the Torah scroll D’rash (we are seeking)
Male Cherub in the mishkan G*d appears Female Cherub in the mishkan
Moses G*d’s voice Aaron
We, the Jewish people, are reflecting the light of our host nations. We have no attributes, but we take the attributes of our host nations and elevate them. We are the moon.
That’s why the women have to be on the other side of the mechitza. (Why? To create longing?)
Moses heard the voice of HaShem from where he was standing outside the mishkan; no one heard HaShem’s voice inside the mishkan.
Aaron’s sons were reborn as Pinchas and Eliahu (Elijah). Zimri and Cosby were reborn as Akiva and the Roman woman he later married.
Elijah brought fire down during his showdown with the idolatrous priests (note the repetition of the idea of bringing fire down from the previous gilgul as Aaron’s sons) – the ravens feed him (in a better manner than they feed their babies, I hope!) – he goes into the cave – there’s lightening and thunder – G*d’s voice tells him that He can be heard as the still, small voice, the diminishment, not in the all the drama and fireworks.
Tazria was not translated properly. The word means orgasm. The translation should be that when a woman has an orgasm first, she will conceive a boy. If a man has receptive patience, to delay his animal desires in order to please his wife, he will give birth to initiative, a boy. If he doesn’t, he will give birth to patience, a girl. The shortcut results in the long way, the long way results in the shorter way. This is not to be taken literally as men and women, but as the ideas of masculine and feminine. The sexual imagery is used because it’s common to all people.
Comfort is convenience, shortcuts. Pleasure and pain are connected – you can’t appreciate bread unless you stop eating it for a week.
The parting of the Red Sea (Am Soof) – Egyptians are addicted to water. Jews have to be out in the desert, begging HaShem for water.
A man’s comfort is ejaculation. However, sex is proscribed after the birth of a boy for 33 days, but twice as long after the birth of a girl. If the man does not delay his pleasure (to pleasure his wife) at conception, then he has to delay after the birth. A man’s pleasure is in the delay. Delay is a hard sell in a shortcut world.
The main price of comfort is addiction.
The Nazis invented metaamphetamines, which produce a feeling of gevurah, total strength.
Longing is important. Women longing to hold the Torah – longing to go to Israel: Zionism killed longing for Israel – this is part of the moon imagery, the longing is part of the pleasure.
The sexual imagery in the counting of the omer is waiting 49 days between Pesach and Shavuos (leaving Egypt and receiving the Torah). There are only two instances of counting days in the Torah: the omer and nida (laws of family purity).
Prayer is longing, cleaning out the chumatz is longing. Study after prayer is very important. Prayer helps us in deciding what we’re letting in and what we’re keeping out. This is gevurah, the walls of every cell, the kidneys, which are the brains of the body (because they filter, deciding yes/no).
Nida is a low place of longing, the wandering Jew.
Aish Kodesh, page 182
The main tool in getting to a higher perception of G*d: Rabbi Akiva went into the Pardes and saw G*d – he meditated on the letters of G*d’s names.
The vehicle is words
The world of speech is above the world of action.
We do this in the counting of the omer in the Anah B’Koach. The 42 letters spell out G*d’s names. The only silent part of the omer count-
The crossing of the Red Sea was not a miracle, it was a test (nase means miracle and also means test). Nahon, the man who jumped into the water, was the only one who passed the test. The majority of the people fail each test.
You can’t take the shortcut along the coast when traveling from Egypt to the Promised Land. You have to trap yourself in the corner (when HaShem sent them back to face the Egyptian army). Nebukh, trapped. Only in the corner can you find out who you really are – then you can begin to do teshuva, return. Sometimes we have to be left alone to hit bottom to ask for help.
HaShem said, “The Temple in its destruction gave Me more holy people than when it was standing: the rabbis.”
Marriage should be two people in the relationship of helpful opposition, ezer connegdo. If this is not the case, the people are comfortable/addicted/enablers.
Metzora – Aish Kodesh, page 82.
The leprous curse on the house was to reveal the hidden treasure – the former residents of Canaan had hid their treasures in the walls of the houses, and HaShem caused the leprous spot to appear so they would pull the stones out and find the treasure. Tumay means blocked and depressed. Why was there a delay of seven days to tumay?
When someone received a leprous curse, it was a sign to a treasure. Miriam was the only person in the Chumash to get leprosy (except for a brief moment of Moses). The treasure she received was silence.
Aaron’s sons, Elijah, Pinchas (gilguls), all thought that G*d was in the big show.
When Moses killed the taskmaster, he didn’t want to delay, he wanted the Hebrew slaves to rebel immediately, with himself as the leader. This would have been the shortcut. This didn’t happen, because there was a process that had to be undergone. At the burning bush he spoke loshan hora (gossip): he was disgruntled that the Hebrew slaves not only refused to follow him to rebellion, but also turned him in, so he told HaShem, “They don’t want to be saved.” Because of his desire to shortcut, he received momentary leprosy.
Moses lost the land of Israel when he went donned Egyptian clothing when running away from Pharaoh. He presented himself to the world as an Egyptian, which we know because of the way Zipporah described him to her father.
The Aish Kodesh asked, “Where is the treasure when the synagogue of Warsaw was bombed?” The treasure was his masterpiece, Sacred Fire, which was miraculously found in the rubble just as a Jew was passing by.
They said, “It looks as if there is a leprous mark in the house,” not “There is a leprous mark in the house.” We don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, because this world is the place where G*d is hiding.
Next week we will hear the story of King David being suspended over the point of a sword, if we remind the Rabbi.
Revelation: when we find the child within. We ask a child to look at a letter when we think it’s pussel – when you feel like G*d is teaching us.
15 is G*d’s name.