Parsha for Kids: Tazria 2023
Below is the transcript for this week’s episode of Parsha for Kids, Tazria 2023. (Yes, Metzora will also be forthcoming.)
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Season 3 Episode 4:
Hello! My name is Chana and this is Parsha for Kids. The Parsha of the week is Tazria. Tazria means “she will conceive.”
But what does it mean to conceive?
To conceive means that a mother becomes pregnant with a child. In this context, it is talking about a mother becoming pregnant with a child who is a boy. In this week’s parsha, we learn about special korbanot, offerings, that a mother brings after giving birth to a boy or a girl. At first, after giving birth, the mother is in a state of tumah, spiritual impurity. After a certain amount of time, however, she comes to bring korbanot at the Mishkan or Beit HaMikdash.
A new mother would bring a lamb for an olah, whole burnt offering, and a pigeon or turtle dove for a chatat or sin offering. If she could not afford to offer a lamb, she was allowed to give a bird instead, in which case she would be offering up two bird offerings.
Why does a new mother offer korbanot? There are different possibilities, but one of them is to thank God for having saved her from the dangers of childbirth. Especially during the time the Torah was given, but even nowadays, giving birth to a baby was an important medical event. Just like any time an important medical event occurs, unfortunately, sometimes things could go wrong. If the mother survived and was blessed with a new baby, it makes sense that she would want to show God that she was grateful.
Please note that much of the information in this week’s podcast was taken from The Little Midrash Says.
TRANSITION
In this week’s parsha we also learn about another mitzvah, Brit Milah. Brit Milah refers to circumcision, and it is also when a baby boy gets his name. We learned about Brit Milah back when Avraham was told that he should perform one on himself. We also saw it again when Tziporah performed one on her son, and when Bnei Yisrael had to make sure they performed it prior to eating their Pesach lambs.
In this week’s parsha God commands the Jewish nation that every Jewish baby boy must have a brit milah on the eighth day after he is born unless he is sick. Even if the eighth day is a Shabbat or Yom Tov, the boy must still have his milah. This shows you how important the mitzvah of Brit Milah is. One is allowed to delay a Brit Milah if the baby is sick, which is why you might sometimes know of a situation where the Brit Milah takes place after eight days.
Have you ever attended a Brit Milah? Nowadays they tend to take place in a shul or synagogue, though they do not have to. Here are some of the things that happen.
When the new baby is brought in, all the people who attend call out Baruch HaBa, welcome. There is a couple called Kvatter. A female who has been honored with this role takes the baby from the baby’s mother and then gives the baby to someone on the men’s section, usually to her husband. The baby is then placed in a special seat called Kisei Shel Eliyahu, the throne of Eliyahu. The prophet Eliyahu is an angel sent by God to attend every Brit Milah. The mohel is the person who is specially trained to perform the circumcision. The mohel puts the baby on the knees of the sandak, the man who is honored with holding the baby during the Brit Milah. It is a special honor to be a Sandak and many have the tradition that the baby will share the Sandak’s good qualities.
When the Mohel is ready to perform the Brit Milah, he makes a blessing, Blessed are you God who made us holy with His mitzvot and commanded us to do a milah. The baby’s father says a special blessing as well, Blessed are you God, who made us Holy with His mitzvot and commanded us to bring the new boy into the Brit of our father Avraham.
What does it mean that the baby is being brought into the Brit of our father Avraham? It refers to the fact that the first mitzvah God commanded Avraham to perform was milah on himself. The milah would be a brit, or two way promise, also known as a covenant or treaty, between God and the Jewish people. The Jews would believe in God, and God would watch over them.
The Brit Milah continues with the guests wishing that the new baby grow up to become a talmid chacham, get married and have children, and do mitzvot, good deeds. The parents then invite everyone who is there to join them in a seuda or special joyful meal.
TRANSITION
The Torah continues to teach us about the laws of tumah and taharah, spiritual impurity and purity. One of the ways in which a person is called tamei is if they have a skin condition called tzaraat. Tzaraat is often translated as leprosy but that is not an accurate explanation of the term. Tzaraat does not exist nowadays, so there’s no English term for it. That’s why leprosy is the closest word we have for it in English.
Tzaraat was a skin condition that could be diagnosed only by a kohen- not a doctor. If a Jewish person- man, woman or child- noticed one or more white spots on their skin, they had to check whether it might be tzaraat. They had to show the spot to a kohen.
There were four possible colors the spot could be.
Baheres- snow white, the brightest white
Sapachas of Baheres- A little less white, which looked similar to the white plaster of the walls of the kodesh section of the Beit Hamikdash
Se’ais- A darker white, the color of clear white wood
Sapachas of Se’ais- The color of the inside of an eggshell
If the spots were darker than any of these colors, they were not tzaraat.
When a Jew came to the kohen and asked to be checked to see if they had tzaraas, the kohen checked to see whether he could find one of two things:
Two hairs that had turned white inside the white spot or
A piece of healthy skin in the middle of the white spot
If the kohen saw this, he told the man “You have tzaraat and you need to keep the laws of someone who has tzaraat.”
If the kohen did not find these two things, he would tell the person to wait a week. In a week, the kohen would come back and check the person again for the two signs. He also checked whether the white spot was larger than it had been the week before. If the person still did not have these signs, the kohen instructed him to wait for yet another week. Then the kohen came back again. If the kohen did not see two hairs that had turned white inside the white spot or a piece of healthy skin in the middle of the white spot or that the spot had grown larger, he would then declare that this person was tahor, or pure, and could go back to his regular life.
TRANSITION
Why would someone get tzaraat?
In the Gemara (Arachin 16a) we learn that people might get tzaraat because they committed murder, lied when taking God’s name, engaged in forbidden relationships, were arrogant, stole or were envious. However, the most common reason that a person might get tzaraat is because they spoke Lashon Harah, evil speech or gossip about others. Nowadays, we no longer experience open miracles (which is when it’s very obvious that God did something miraculous, like when fire comes down from heaven to burn the korbanot), only hidden miracles. Similarly, we no longer experience tzaraat, which is God directly intervening with the body to show us we have made a spiritual error.
If someone made their neshama, soul, impure by committing a serious sin, God would make that person’s body impure with tzaraat. This would serve as a wake-up call to the person that they needed to do teshuva, repent and return to God. This is why someone with tzaraat, called a metzorah, needed to go to a kohen, not a medical doctor. Tzaraat was a spiritual illness, not a medical disease. Upon doing teshuva, the metzora would be cured.
But while the metzora was in their tamei, spiritually impure, state, what happened to them? When Bnei Yisrael lived in the Midbar, wilderness, the metzora had to leave the camp and stay outside by himself. In the time of the Beit Hamikdash, he had to leave walled cities.
Any Jew, including a child, who would touch a metzora became impure, too. If a metzora came into someone’s home, he made the walls of that house and the vessels in that house tamay. When someone was declared to have tzaraat, they had to tear their clothing just like we do nowadays when someone close to us dies. The metzora had to be sad about the bad deeds he had done that had led to him having tzaraat.
The metzorah had to remain alone. People were not allowed to sit within four amos of him. If someone came close to him, he had to call out, “Stay away! Don’t become impure because of me!”
The metzora had to cover his mouth with a scarf. One interpretation is that this was so that he would think about the sin of lashon hara that had caused his tzaraat.
Let’s think about the connection between someone speaking lashon hara and then being sent outside of the camp. When someone tells mean stories about someone else, even if they are true, they ruin that person’s reputation and distance other people from them. So, God punishes the speaker middah kneged middah, measure for measure. Now the metzorah has to physically remove themselves from the community and be all alone outside of it. They can think about how that feels, and how their gossip and mean words might have caused another person to feel. Hopefully, this will lead them to feel regret and resolve to do better in future.
TRANSITION
We’ve already explained that tzaraat was a skin condition that had to do with one’s soul, not a medical condition. To add to that, tzaraat could sometimes appear on clothing. If a Jew’s white clothing developed green or red spots, he had to show it to a kohen. The kohen would lock up the piece of clothing for a week. He would check to see if the colored spot or spots had grown larger. If they had, the clothing was burned.
Sometimes, God chose to bring tzaraat upon a person’s clothing before choosing to bring it upon that person’s body. This would warn the person that they had done something wrong and that they should reflect and figure out what it was, then do teshuva for it. In general, God often brings smaller punishments before He brings bigger ones in the hope that the small punishment may lead the person to change their ways. Your own parents may give you warnings or small punishments before they escalate to larger ones for the same reason.
TRANSITION
So here’s what we learned this week!
A new mother must thank God for surviving childbirth, which is one of the reasons she brings korbanot.
Brit Milah, circumcision, is a special mitzvah we keep until today in which a baby boy enters the covenant God made with Avraham.
Tzaraat is a special skin or clothing disease that reflected someone’s spiritual status, not their medical status.
Most often, tzaraat was linked with speaking lashon hara, evil speech, and God wanted people to change their ways and be more empathic towards the people they had excluded through speaking lashon hara.
If you have any questions or comments on this week’s episode, please email me at parsha4kids@gmail.com. That’s parsha the number 4 kids at gmail.com. Good Shabbos!