WRJ Voices: Tazria-M'tzora

This week’s Voices is written by Lillian Kowalski who is a 3rd year rabbinical student at HUC-JIR in LA. She graduated last year from the Rhea Hirsch School of Education with a Masters in Jewish Education and received her bachelors from Brandeis University.  She currently serves as the student rabbi at Temple Shalom in Yakima, WA. Lillian is one of 6 students who are receiving YES Fund scholarships this year from WRJ.

Self-care has become the rallying cry of my generation.

Among the many difficulties we face in today’s day and age, the necessity of self-care becomes imperative. However, despite my own best efforts to maintain a regular practice of self-care (which for me includes leisure reading, coloring in the pages of a journal a friend sent me, attending weekly Israeli folk dance sessions in Los Angeles, and enjoying an occasional meal out at a restaurant), I find it difficult to maintain these practices without some support.

During my recent visit to my hometown of Albany, NY for Passover, I saw firsthand what it meant to have this kind of unconditional support. Despite plenty of good activities with my parents, my friends, and my home synagogues, I still found it necessary to retreat away and complete my own responsibilities, both those to my school work and those I had to myself personally. The wonderful thing about being surrounded by these supportive and encouraging people, as I was, was that they harbored no ill will to me when I politely excused myself to take care of myself and my responsibilities.

In this week’s Torah portion, a perennial favorite in all of our congregations (or maybe not), this same idea is presented to us in how we relate to one who needs the assistance of the community. Tazria-Metzora overall covers a number of unpleasant topics: menstrual impurity, skin diseases and infections, and how one deals with these infections of tza’arat in the community, whether it is on their property or on their person. In the case of the person infected with the tza’arat, typically translated as leprosy, one goes about the community crying out “Tamei, tamei” – “Impure, impure." [1]

Typically, this outcry is interpreted to be that of shame or impropriety, that since this person is infected, they should not be approached by others. However, another interpretation of this verse found in the Talmud declares that this outcry is to elicit compassion and prayers on behalf of the infected. “It is the responsibility of an afflicted person to recognize the illness and ask for help; and it is the responsibility of the community to offer support and prayer rather than shun or ignore the afflicted.[2]

The cry of the infected in Tazria-Metzora is a cry to all of us, both from within and from outside It is the cry of our fellow human, our classmate or our coworker or family member, who silently suffers, afraid to speak up for fear of being put down and disregarded. It is the deep cry of our own heart to reconnect with ourselves in a way that validates and values our own needs as much as those of another, to take the time when we need it for ourselves and to ask for help when we are overwhelmed.

One of the most important things I have (re)discovered during this year of rabbinical school is that I cannot appropriately care for my own community, regardless of who or where they are, unless I ensure that I take care of myself first and foremost. This truth is especially difficult for me, since I am choosing to pursue a helping profession, one that often places the needs of others over myself. I can often hear and respond to the cries of “tamei, tamei” from others. However, I must also acknowledge when I myself must cry out as well, and to whom I direct those cries. I find it difficult to ask for help, and yet this Torah portion requires me to do so. The return to Tazria-Metzora each year is a reminder to me to check in with myself just as much as I look after others, to take stock of my own needs, and to look to my community to hear me and see me when I need them as much as they need me.

_____