Acharei Mōth: the hidden

דַּבֵּר֮ אֶל־אַהֲרֹ֣ן אָחִ֒יךָ֒ וְאַל־יָבֹ֤א בְכׇל־עֵת֙ אֶל־הַקֹּ֔דֶשׁ מִבֵּ֖ית לַפָּרֹ֑כֶת אֶל־פְּנֵ֨י הַכַּפֹּ֜רֶת אֲשֶׁ֤ר עַל־הָאָרֹן֙ וְלֹ֣א יָמ֔וּת כִּ֚י בֶּֽעָנָ֔ן אֵרָאֶ֖ה עַל־הַכַּפֹּֽרֶת׃

Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come at will^*at will Lit. “at any time.” into the Shrine behind the curtain, in front of the cover that is upon the ark, lest he die; for I appear in the cloud over the cover.

The chapter is introduced

  וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר יְ  אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה אַחֲרֵ֣י מ֔וֹת שְׁנֵ֖י בְּנֵ֣י אַהֲרֹ֑ן בְּקׇרְבָתָ֥ם לִפְנֵי־יְ 

 Gd spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew too close to the presence of Gd. 

There is mortal danger  in the approach.  Aaron's sons, the last people who looked behind the curtain, died for the peek.

The parsha goes on to describe the scheduled, annual rendezvous, a kind of tryst. The High priest would dress for the occasion, bringing gifts and incense (perfume?) for the date. The sins of the year were confessed and, in the afterglow of burning flesh and coals, the love was re-established. 

The text then commands that the blood of the feral beasts should always be covered, never left exposed.  The powerful, flowing life force must be protected from the voyeur.  

The parsha ends with the incest taboos.  They are all expressed as acts of exposure: 

אִ֥ישׁ אִישׁ֙ אֶל־כׇּל־שְׁאֵ֣ר בְּשָׂר֔וֹ לֹ֥א תִקְרְב֖וּ לְגַלּ֣וֹת עֶרְוָ֑ה אֲנִ֖י יְ

None of you shall come near anyone of his own flesh to uncover nakedness: I am Gd

The parsha invites an examination of the hidden. What is behind the theater curtain? How are  our  beliefs being manipulated? What pleasures and treasures are concealed from view? What crimes are cloaked? 

Lawrence Kushner was interviewed by Krista Tippet  on her podcast in 2014. He related that he had led a tour of preschoolers  through a synagogue.  When they came to the ark -the closet, covered by a curtain, that contains the mantled, parchment  Torah scrolls - they ran out of time. The children speculated about what this most hidden cabinet contained. Four opinions were recorded. The wise child proposed Jewish holy objects. The nihilist child thought that there was nothing there - empty. The foolish child, exposed to the televised "Let's make a Deal" blurted " A New Car!" The fourth child said: a giant mirror. 

The curtain is always a giant mirror. It's opaqueness allows only the penetration of imagination. It generates the mystery - and thus the mystic ( and the scientist?).  

With the enlightenment  that devolved from ingesting the fruit of knowledge, the first thing Adam and Eve  do is hide from each other by making clothing and then hide from Gd to avoid admitting their guilt ( too soon),  The last act of the Torah is the concealment of Moses' grave. 

All is hidden in plain view. 

Mitzorah: the Birds

 Mitzorah: the Birds

The purification  ritual of the metzorah ( King James leper) is a sacrificial rite that fascinates. It begins with a bowl of spring water.  Into the water, the blood of a slaughtered bird is collected. A living bird, of the same species, is dipped into the blood-water mixture and let loose, to fly away.  

וְטָבַ֨ל אוֹתָ֜ם וְאֵ֣ת ׀ הַצִּפֹּ֣ר הַֽחַיָּ֗ה בְּדַם֙ הַצִּפֹּ֣ר הַשְּׁחֻטָ֔ה עַ֖ל הַמַּ֥יִם הַֽחַיִּֽים׃

and he shall take the live bird, along with the cedar wood, the crimson stuff, and the hyssop, and dip them together with the live bird in the blood of the bird that was slaughtered over the fresh water.

וְהִזָּ֗ה עַ֧ל הַמִּטַּהֵ֛ר מִן־הַצָּרַ֖עַת שֶׁ֣בַע פְּעָמִ֑ים וְטִ֣הֲר֔וֹ וְשִׁלַּ֛ח אֶת־הַצִּפֹּ֥ר הַֽחַיָּ֖ה עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַשָּׂדֶֽה׃ 

He shall then sprinkle it seven times on the one to be purified of the eruption and effect the purification; and he shall set the live bird free in the open country.

The symbolism is complex. There is some correspondence between the birds and the recovered person. One bird died.   The killing of the bird reminds  the healed metzorah: this was a possible outcome; be grateful you got the alternative. 

It is the bird that is set free, after dipping it in the blood water of its sister, that represents the celebrant. True, this bird can fly free, but it is marked by the blood of its kin. Its continued life and freedom are bought by dipping into the taboo substance (blood) obtained by the slaughter of another of its kind. 

The days before Passover are the time for baking matzoh. History records this as the season of the Blood Libel, the legend that Jews would drain the blood of a Christian  child to obtain this ingredient that was necessary for the manufacture of authentic kosher matzoh. The continuation of the Israelite cult required all  the blood of an innocent. If a child was missing from the town, the explanation was obvious: she had fallen victim to the cult (in the basement of the pizzaria.) The blood libel would generate a pogrom. The killers and their religion of  human child sacrifice must be punished. Blood for blood. 

For centuries, after the absurdity of this myth was realized, Jews were protected by the guilt the devolved from the  crimes committed by ancestors.  Like the bird dipped in the blood of its partner, later generations of Jews earned a degree of liberty. But the respite was minimal. The antisemites did not need the Jewish analogy to their own eucharist to justify their crimes.  The pillage and murder of Jews was more efficient without the encumbrance of mystical rites. The blood that the Jew drained was the money they accumulated. Justice  demanded a pound of flesh. 

How did the bird community take to this blood dipped sister? I am reminded of a novel(?), the Painted Bird  ( Jerzy Kosinski), that describes an orphaned boy, begging from house to house in Central Europe. He meets a bird catcher who paints one of the birds. Upon its release, the painted bird  is torn to bits by the other birds. 

The theme of releasing a sanctified animal evokes the Yom Kippur service. A lottery is performed on a matched pair of goats.  One goat is offered as an expiation sacrifice.  The other is sent to Azazel, a crag from which it is dropped.  The Azazel goat has some chance to live, but not a very good one.  Did the slaughtered goat draw the better lot? Did the bird dipped in blood win or lose?

Jews live marked by the blood of our ancestors and siblings. the haggada quotes Ezekiel ( 16;6), providing a post hoc prophecy of Israel becoming a great nation:

 וָאֶעֱבֹ֤ר עָלַ֙יִךְ֙ וָֽאֶרְאֵ֔ךְ מִתְבּוֹסֶ֖סֶת בְּדָמָ֑יִךְ וָאֹ֤מַר לָךְ֙ בְּדָמַ֣יִךְ חֲיִ֔י וָאֹ֥מַר לָ֖ךְ בְּדָמַ֥יִךְ חֲיִֽי׃ 

When I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you: “Live by your blood.” , I said to you: “Live by your blood.”׃

The liberation from Egypt emerged from the Nile that was turned to blood by the drowned Hebrew infants. The lamb's blood on the doorposts was the sign to let the Israelite firstborn flee while the Egyptian firstborn died. The mark of the blood of my ancestors anoints me, contaminates me and purifies me. 

 Tazria: Spread

Much of the parsha deals with diagnosis. An aberration appears on the skin. Is it insignificant?. Is it  a transient wound, a discoloration from trauma or age; or is it a dread disease that requires isolation, an unpredictable condition that probably has a bad outcome after an inexorable decline.  The diagnosis requires an outside, more objective view and criteria.

The diagnosis of tzoraath, translated as leprosy by the King James committee, requires that the spot appear deeper than the skin.  A superficial problem can, and will, be shed.  If it affects the layers below, it is a more penetrating problem, a process that goes deeper; who knows how far? 

Tzoraath changes the hair.  The hair loses its color and becomes thin, The hair becomes weak.  Does this indicate the potential for the disease to cause other weaknesses?  Tzoraath has the dominion over its neighborhood.  It is more than a spot. 

 Spread and recurrence are   the main indicators of a dangerous condition that requires isolation, time for resolution and purification.  Spread and/or recurrence  mean that the control mechanisms are not working well enough. The automatic correction mechanisms of the body are losing to the lesion. This affliction is not contained.  It is spreading.

The disease entity has a life force. It is an entity that increases. This drive to flourish and perpetuate evokes a dreadful sympathy. The tzoraath is like any other living thing: it is driven to survive and reproduce. That process impacts the complex organization of its more normal human host. The battle is joined.  

In the 1840's,  Rudolf Virchow applied the microscope to the study of disease. Through the lenses he saw how  cells of disease invade the organized structures of the normal. These images became ( and remain) the paradigm of disease. They fit the pattern of tzoraath. We can imagine that the abnormal invades and disrupts; the disease is driven by its life forces and overcomes the defenses. Visualizing the disease process in these terms is problematic. It ascribes the cause of disease to undefined powers  and the temptation to assign feelings to the behaviors of these cells, emotions that mirror our own, is overwhelming.  The origin of human drives is inscrutable, a mystery that is camouflaged by a theory of evolution; and that theory has its own struggles and prejudices. To see what is there is revealing - not explanatory. 

Virchow's contemporary (and student) , Robert Koch, identified microbes, foreign invaders, as the agents of many important diseases. Bacteria, since they are not the products of  human cells, have their own agenda of proliferation.  The human (diseased) host is a source of nutrition and shelter for the independent bacterial purposes.  Disease is a (class) struggle. The modern person lives in balance with this microbial world, for the most part. The "normal" defenses are usually quite adequate.  The emergence of pandemics is rare ( far less frequent than I would predict based upon the huge number of microbes).  How these scourges disappear remains a mystery. 

Each new discovery in biomedicine has offered the ultimate fantasy-free explanation of the cause of disease. The area covered by each new model is usually very small. Mutations in DNA actually explain very few ( if any) cancers. Cytokine patterns generally  fail to explain immune diseases

The parsha begins with the ritual status changes ( days of purity and impurity) and the sacrificial rites associated with the birth of babies. It then transitions to tzoraath for the bulk of the chapter. The baby is the a proliferation that generates an organized, beautiful, one of us. The complex and dangerous processes that make new cells, form organs, and expel children has worked. The peril of the process is recognized by the ritual. 

Is the life force agnostic? I believe not.