Beth Emet
Shalom! Good to see you again!
Beth Emet
Shalom! Good to see you again!
Beth Emet
Would you like to react to this message? Create an account in a few clicks or log in to continue.

Beth Emet

Searching for Truth with No Agenda
 
HomePortalSearchLatest imagesRegisterLog in

 

 Parasha

Go down 
AuthorMessage
MMkgc

MMkgc


Posts : 39
Join date : 2007-09-08
Age : 66

Parasha Empty
PostSubject: Parasha   Parasha EmptyThu Apr 03, 2008 7:55 pm

http://www.ou.org/shabbat_shalom/article/brander_tazria_concealment_and_revelation/

Interesting article on this weeks parasha

April 03, 2008
Tazria: Concealment and Revelation
By Rabbi Asher Brander
Back to top Go down
MMkgc

MMkgc


Posts : 39
Join date : 2007-09-08
Age : 66

Parasha Empty
PostSubject: Re: Parasha   Parasha EmptyThu Apr 03, 2008 7:59 pm

From FFOZ on this weeks parasha

Parashat Hashavuah


Tazria / "Conceived"
Torah : Leviticus 12:1–15:33
Haftarah : 2 Kings 7:3–20
Gospel : Luke 10–13

The Sin of Childbirth


Thought for the Week


The sacrifices after childbirth remind us that the act of giving birth is itself a miraculous encounter with the Divine. It is not to be regarded as just ordinary life. Instead, the Torah grants the event sanctity and significance by requiring sacrifices. The new baby is a gift from God, and the mother naturally wants to reciprocate with a gift. She brings a burnt offering and a sin offering as her gifts to God, who blessed her with a child.


After the mother's days of purification were completed, she was readmitted to the Tabernacle and the sacrificial service. At that time she was required to bring a burnt offering and a sin offering to the LORD (Leviticus 12:6). The sin offering seems troubling. Did the woman sin by having a baby? On the contrary, she was fulfilling the commandment to be fruitful and multiply. Why did she need to bring a sin offering?
The Talmud explains that when a woman is in the pain of childbirth, she might inadvertently curse her husband or take a vow never to let him touch her again, and because of that, she must bring a sin offering to exonerate herself from her rash vow or her resentful thoughts. Women who have gone through the pain of childbirth may find this explanation amusing and even concur with some of the sentiments, but this is hardly a credible interpretation.
A simpler explanation is that sin offerings were often brought for purification purposes. When that happened, the sin offering was not a punishment for sin or a consequence of iniquity, it was simply part of the purification ritual. Along similar lines, a person who suffered an unnatural bodily discharge and a person being purified of leprosy also brought sin offerings.
On a mystical level, the mother's forty- or eighty-day journey through ritual unfitness is like a microcosm for her baby's own odyssey through life. Prior to having the baby, the woman was in a state of ritual fitness. She enjoyed the presence of God in His holy dwelling place and was fit to eat from His table. After childbirth there was a period of time during which she was unable to enter the dwelling place of God. At the conclusion of that time, the woman was readmitted to the Tabernacle through the atonement of a sin offering. This progression of events symbolizes the baby's own passage through life. Her soul begins in the eternal dwelling place of God, but her birth in human flesh requires a departure from that place and a sojourn outside of God's heavenly tabernacle. After an allotted period of time, though, the soul leaves the body to return to God:
Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12:7)
Through the atonement of Messiah's timeless sin offering, the soul of the believer returns to fellowship with her source. The mother's readmission to the Tabernacle might be said to symbolize the eventual return of the new life to God.


Discuss.....
Back to top Go down
MMkgc

MMkgc


Posts : 39
Join date : 2007-09-08
Age : 66

Parasha Empty
PostSubject: Re: Parasha   Parasha EmptyThu Apr 03, 2008 8:02 pm

A previous edrash on this parasha

Parasha: Tazria


Leprosy in the Gospels


Tazria - תזריע : “She Conceived”
Torah: Leviticus 12:1–13:59
Haftarah: 2 Kings 4:42–5:19
Gospel: Luke 10–11
Thought for the Week:


In the Torah, leprosy is an archetype for all human sickness. Sickness results from the breakdown of the flesh. Death follows. Leprosy graphically represents that progression. In God’s eternal sanctuary there is no sickness, no death and no decay. His sanctuary on earth is meant to be a reflection of that eternal reality. Therefore, lepers are banned from the sanctuary.

Quote :

He shall remain unclean all the days during which he has the infection; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp. (Leviticus 13:46)
Why was the healing of lepers such a central concern in the ministry of the Master? Not only did He heal many lepers himself, but He gave His twelve disciples authority to heal leprosy as evidence of the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 10)
Aside from leprosy, no other human disease or ailment renders a person ritually unclean. Why is leprosy associated with uncleanness? The symptoms described in the Torah that might potentially be diagnosed as biblical leprosy involve decomposition, decay and putrefaction—corruption of the flesh.

The Temple worship system seems to shun corruption and decay. In keeping with that tendency, the Torah commands that the flesh of the sacrifices must be burned up after two days. If the sacrificial meat is allowed to turn rancid, the entire sacrifice is invalidated. The same impulse toward incorruptibility lies behind the laws of the grain offerings. The grain offerings are all made without leaven. Leaven represents corruption because the leavening process is actually a fermentation of the dough. For the same reason, the sacrifices were all salted. Salt is a preservative, which slows down the decomposition process.

God’s sanctuary is about immortality and incorruptibility. In His presence, there is no death, no decay, no decomposition. Therefore, the disease that represents a living decomposition is banned from the sanctuary. Leprosy is an ongoing, visible progression toward physical corruption. It is the antithesis of the immortal and incorruptible world represented in God’s sanctuary.

Yeshua is the solution to the leprosy problem. Spiritually, He did not suffer the leprosy-like infection of sin. Physically, His flesh did not suffer corruption. “For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay,” Psalm 16:10 prophesied about Him. Through His resurrection from the dead, His flesh passed from the mortal to the immortal, from the corruptible to the incorruptible. His body is still real human flesh, but it is regenerated as an imperishable spiritual body.

Leprosy symbolizes the sin-laden human condition, destined for death and decay. Each time the Master healed a leper, it betokened a reversal of that corrupted, mortal state. Every leper healed of his affliction was a testimony that the kingdom of heaven had indeed appeared among men.
Back to top Go down
MMkgc

MMkgc


Posts : 39
Join date : 2007-09-08
Age : 66

Parasha Empty
PostSubject: Re: Parasha   Parasha EmptyThu Apr 03, 2008 8:04 pm

And yet another

Parasha: Tazria


Clean and Unclean


Tazria - תזריע : “She Conceived”
Torah : Leviticus 12:1–13:59
Haftarah : 2 Kings 4:42–5:19
Gospel : Luke 10,11
Thought for the Week:


In this world the priest examines for leprosy [skin afflictions]; but in the World to Come—says the Holy One, blessed be He, “I will render you clean.” Thus it is written, “And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean.” (Leviticus Rabbah 15:9)
Commentary:


This week’s chapters from Leviticus are concerned with matters of ritual purity, i.e. the laws of clean and unclean. At first blush, these Temple purity laws seem to have little to do with believers, but actually they teach us about the World to Come and the resurrection from the dead. As the rabbinic interpretation cited above says, “In the World to Come—says the Holy One, blessed be He, ‘I will render you clean.’”

In the time of the Messiah, for those who have been resurrected, there will be no declaration of ‘unclean’, only ‘clean’. Why? Rabbi Shaul explains in I Corinthians chapter 15. In concluding his defense of the resurrection of Yeshua and our resurrection with Him by faith in Him, Shaul states, “I declare to you brothers that flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of God.” (I Corinthians 15:50)
Shaul argues that the reason for the resurrection where the believer receives a new kind of body is that we might live in God’s kingdom. But to do so we need the right kind of outfit for it. Just like a moon-walker needs a moon suit, an earth walker needs an earth-suit (our present bodies). So also, will a kingdom of God walker need a kingdom-of-God-suit! God will provide one for us in the resurrection.
The reason that life in His kingdom will require a different outfit is that His kingdom lacks two earthly items: sin and death. Thus, Shaul says, “Death has been swallowed in victory…The sting of death is sin…But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Messiah Yeshua!” (I Corinthians 15:54–57)

In other words, it is through the complete and final atonement for sin accomplished by Messiah Yeshua, accompanied with His powerful resurrection, that a person can be declared truly “clean” for eternity. For, in Yeshua the elements which render a person ritually unclean, human mortality, death and sin, are removed and done away with! Thus, when our earth-suits are exchanged for kingdom-suits there will be no more declaration “unclean,” because we will no longer come in contact with, or walk within, the confines of sin and death.
Back to top Go down
Sponsored content





Parasha Empty
PostSubject: Re: Parasha   Parasha Empty

Back to top Go down
 
Parasha
Back to top 
Page 1 of 1

Permissions in this forum:You cannot reply to topics in this forum
Beth Emet :: Torah Study :: Weekly Parsha-
Jump to: