Parsha Tazria/HaChodesh
27 Adar II/March 29
By: Michal Kohane
For those of
us who arrive at shul when musaf already started (writer often included J) it’s easy to miss the
fact that this Shabbat is the last of four special shabbatot: the four
Shabbatot around Purim and before the new month of Nisan. In each one another
Torah scroll is taken out and a special section read. What are the four, and
what’s special about them?
Shabbat
Shkalim usually comes around the end of the month of Shvat and definitely
before Purim. We read from Exodus 30:11 about the contribution of half a shekel
that each Jew had to bring. Why half a shekel and not one whole shekel,
aquarter or one penny? So that each one of us remembers that while we are a
“whole”, we’re also still only a half without another. There is also a midrash
about the specific word machatzit – מחצית =
half. This word has the letter tzadi in the middle for the tzadik, the
righteous person, and for tzedaka, righteous giving. The one close to the
(letter) tzadi is chai (חי),
alive, while the one further removed is met (מת), dead.
The connection is Haman’s suggestion to king Achashverosh to give him money for
killing the Jews, and a reminder to us to give tzedaka and push away the
Haman-amalek forces in our lives.
The Shabbat before Purim is called Zachor and we
honor it by reading a section from Deuteronomy 25:17: “remember that which Amalek did to you on the way, when
you left Egypt”… it’s an interesting thing, to remember something in order to
forget it…? but if you think about it some more, there is really no other way.
Forgetting is not the same as erasing from memory, and the latter is (must be!)
a conscious effort. In Gimatria (numerical value of Hebrew letters), Amalek = safek
(doubt) = zachor (remembers). In a way, it’s like Newton’s Law of
motion: A
force will continue in constant uniform motion until an opposite force of equal
or greater magnitude acts upon it. The
sages teach us that the greatest joy is letting go of doubt, and that takes
work. Amalek sneaks behind on the weak. It does that to our mind too. But we
also have the power to stop it through Zachor.
The next Shabbat is Para and our extra reading is
from Numbers (19:1) about the Red Heifer. The Red Heifer is a chok, a
mitzvah that isn’t readily understandable, and we are called to fulfill even if we don’t “get
it. But, we can have some insights. This mitzvah has to do with purifying
people from their tum’at met, their “spiritual impurity”, a state
that happens due to coming in contact with a dead person[i].
The Gemara says that evil people even while physically alive are called “dead”;
Kabala says that death is a “shutting off of the lights”. If a person behaves
in an evil manner, he is like dead. Some say the Hebrew word “rasha”
(evil person) is an acronym for ratzon shel atzmo – his own will, namely
egotistic. The reminder of the Red Heifer is to remove the evil inclinations,
to “purify” ourselves from our selfishness, to be attentive to another, to be
ready.
The last Shabbat of the four is today, Shabbat Hachodesh,
the Shabbat of the month, and on it we read from Exodus 12:1, the commandment
to mark the new month. Awareness of time is perhaps the most critical element
in our journey. We might think we have “forever”; we might think we can delay
things to a tomorrow; alternatively, we might think time has passed already.
Being connected to the flow of time, allows us an opportunity to start anew,
leaving our private and general Mitzrayim, place of Narrow Straights
(Egypt) behind. The One who gave us all our abilities to share, do good and
fight evil, also gave us time to do so. Happy journey & Shabbat shalom!
[i] “spiritual impurity” which isn’t a good
translation to tum’a but in the absence of a better one, we’ll take it
for now
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