Time for Rest and Healing
The meaning of Tazria – of both the woman after childbirth and the ‘metzora’ (the person afflicted by tzara’at, a skin condition affecting the individual) – is the implicit and explicit reality of rest and healing.
The meaning of Tazria – of both the woman after childbirth and the ‘metzora’ (the person afflicted by tzara’at, a skin condition affecting the individual) – is the implicit and explicit reality of rest and healing.
Our world has shifted on its axis again and we try to find new footing.
Lea Haravon Collins’ D’var Torah for Parashat Tetzaveh
Two weeks ago, I had the intention on starting a new sermon series. It was Parashat Bo, and two years – according to the Hebrew calendar, that is – since I had first preached on a ‘novel coronavirus’ that had put a Chinese city in lockdown.
Exactly two years ago, according to the reckoning of the Hebrew calendar, that is, I preached a sermon on the ‘new coronavirus’ that had put a Chinese city, Wuhan, into lockdown.
The baby is born, fragile and innocent. Lovingly swaddled, she nurses him at her breast but then knows what needs to be done. The wicker basket has been prepared and she gently lowers him into it.
This year, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah are almost back-to-back. The last time there was a complete overlap was during the ‘Thanksgivvukah’ of 2013; the next time this will happen is in the year 79,811.
She woke up to the faint blue glare, as usual. The silk sheets and down pillows were inviting and she just wanted to burrow down deeper into them, into the comforting oblivion of sleep.
The charge that the ‘Torah is homophobic’ engages in one important fallacy: it assumes that the Torah is a static text and that our relationship to it is stagnant.
View Rabbi Hugenholtz’s High Holiday sermons.