d’var torah
LUBEROFF SHARON (SHERRY) on April 6, 2023.

Adored daughter of the late Lillian and
Nate; Dear cousin of the Engber fam-
ily; Devoted residence of KenCrest
Services. Sherry will be missed for her
sweet smile and pleasant disposition.

Contributions in her memory may be
made to KenCrest Services, 960 A
Harvest Dr. #100, Blue Bell, PA 19422.

GOLDSTEINS’ ROSENBERG’S
RAPHAEL-SACKS www.goldsteinsfuneral.com
TANNENBAUM ELAINE RUTH (nee Brown)-April 6,
2023 of Margate, NJ; beloved wife
of the late Charles Tannenbaum and
the late Robert Wolfe Tepper; loving
mother of Susan Svigals (Dr. Paul)
and Sally Ware (Everett); cherished
grandmother of Bobby, Julie, Calvin
and Lucy; devoted sister of Shirley
Friedman (The late Milton). In lieu of
fl owers, contributions in Elaine’s mem-
ory may be made to the Alzheimer’s
Association, http://www.alz.org or a
charity of the donor’s choice.

JOSEPH LEVINE & SONS
www.levinefuneral.com WOLFE
DOROTHY “Dotty”, 102, of Haverford,
PA on April 5, 2023. Dotty is survived
by her daughter, Carolyn Spivak,
and grandson Paul Arthur Spivak.

Predeceased by her parents Jacob
and Helen Wexler (nee Klein); siblings,
Cece (Wexler) Cooper and Arthur
Wexler, and her husband, Martin
“Marty” Wolfe. In lieu of fl owers, dona-
tions may be made to the Quadrangle
Employee Appreciation Fund, The
Quadrangle, c/o Felicia Gonzalez,
3300 Darby Road, Haverford, PA
19041. THE DONOHUE FUNERAL HOME
www.donohuefuneralhome.com May Their Memor y
Be For a Bless ing
Th e Philadelphia Jewish Exponent
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215-832-0700 Holy Taboo
Rabbi Ezra Weinberg
C Parshat Metzorah
an something that is taboo
somehow be holy?
Taboos are everywhere, even
in the Jewish community. The interesting
thing about taboo subjects is that you
often don’t realize they are taboo until you
start talking about them. And sometimes
you don’t even realize something is taboo
until you go through it yourself.

Here is one example: I never realized
that divorce was taboo in the Jewish
community until I got divorced myself.

More often than I could have predicted, I
experience an almost allergic reaction to
the topic, the equivalent of treif. A lot of
people don’t want to talk about it — which
is a succinct defi nition of taboo.

The Torah, on the other hand, is not
shy about diving into matters we might
consider taboo. The book of Leviticus
was extremely deliberate in handling
matters outside the bounds of what was
acceptable within the community.

In the sacrifi cial system, which was an
ancestor to Hebrew prayer, ritual objects,
as well as people, were assigned two
possible statuses: Tahor and Tameh,
which roughly translate as pure and
impure. Or as we might say today, kosher
and treif.

These designations are a signifi cant
reason these chapters are referred to
as the Holiness Code. These chapters
helped clarify the idea of holiness, a
divine trait that humans could access.

This leads me to question where the
intersection was between Tahor and
Tameh? Between holiness and taboo?
Do seemingly opposing designations
have underlying features and threads
of connection? Parshat Metzorah helps
make a link!
Repetition in the Torah, no matter how
subtle, clues us to something interest-
ing in the text. In one specifi c ritual in
Metzorah, the repetition is not subtle.

Parshat Metzorah describes the fi nal
stage of purifying someone who has
been contaminated by Tza’ra’at — a scaly
skin disease. After being exiled for seven
days and ritually cleansed and deemed
fi t to rejoin the community, there is one
more fi nal purifying ritual. It says, “The
priest shall take the blood of the guilt
off ering and put it upon the tip of the right
ear of the aff ected, the thumb of the right
hand and upon the toe of the right foot.”
(Lev 14:14)
This purifi cation ritual is almost an exact
repeat of a ritual six chapters earlier. In
parshat Tzav, it is Moses who places the
blood on Aaron and his sons. And where
does he put it? Also on the tip of the right
ear, the thumb on the right hand and
the big toe of the right foot! (Leviticus
8:23-24) from impurity. I like to imagine holiness
as a divine quality that we have only just
barely glimpsed. Perhaps holiness exists
as a continual invitation to transforma-
tion. For us today, what if we could see
the potential for holiness in something
that is taboo, a modern-day version of
what we used to think of as impurity?
How might injecting some holiness into
an experience rife with shame and social
avoidance shift our perspective?
The good news is that our tradition
already does this. Circling back to the
example of divorce, the ritual of a get is
considered a holy act of transformation
in Judaism. As a Jewish community, we
relate certain life events such as birth,
Repetition in the Torah, no matter how subtle,
clues us to something interesting in the text.

Same ritual, diff erent context. In this
case, this is not a ritual to cleanse the
unclean through contagious skin disease.

This is the fi nal initiation rite for Aaron
and his sons into the priesthood. Virtually
the same ritual. The former for welcoming
back the most defi led while the latter for
consecrating our most holy.

By using the same rite of passage,
one could argue the Torah is demon-
strating an unusual bond between Tahor
and Tameh. We usually think of them as
repellent ideas that are fundamentally in
opposition. But what if we made space to see them
as inextricably linked? The Torah does
just this. Through this blood-centric ritual,
the most outer circle, the contaminated
sick, is linked to the most inner circle, the
holy priesthood. I do not believe this is an
accident. The idea of holiness has to be more
than simply a status diff erentiating itself
marriage, death, conversion and even
divorce as elevations in holiness.

Holiness is not a concept reserved
for the most pure among us. Holiness,
and the associated rituals, is expansive
enough, as we see in Metzorah, to include
even those outside the camp. ■
Rabbi Ezra Weinberg is a Philadelphia-
based rabbi and a practitioner of confl ict
transformation. He is the founder of
ReVoice: A Journey of Discovery for
Jewish Families After Divorce. The Board
of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia is proud
to provide diverse perspectives on Torah
commentary for the Jewish Exponent. The
opinions expressed in this column are
the author’s own and do not necessarily
refl ect the view of the Board of Rabbis.

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