Tazria–Metzora: The Protection of the Mikvah

In this episode of More to the Story, I reflect on the Parsha of Tazria–Metzora and the way the Torah describes a process where something internal begins to reveal itself externally in the body, in the home, and in the life a person is living.

I speak about how we often respond to what surfaces by trying to manage or fix what is visible, without turning toward what is actually being revealed beneath it. The Parsha offers a different framework, one that sees this exposure not as punishment, but as a blessing and part of a process that brings what is out of alignment into view.

The Torah then speaks about the purity of the mikvah for certain circumstances. I speak about the mitzvah of mikvah and the process of the female cycle, not only as a halachic structure, but as a rhythm of return. A space where a woman is held, where what has been carried can be released, and where there is a sense of protection of not taking in what does not belong, of creating a boundary from negative energy, and re-entering from a place of clarity and connection.

This Parsha becomes an invitation to move through the process as it’s given, to see, to recognize, and to continue toward alignment.

Lea

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Okay, welcome to More to the Story. I'm Leia Raboshkin Wolf. Thank you so much for joining me today. We're gonna go into the Torah portion, which is actually a double Torah portion this week. And the name is Tazriah, and the second one is Mitsorah. But before we go into the actual Torah learning of the week, I want to welcome us all to ground ourselves in the energy that's moving through the world today. And for me, what I'm noticing is that we just finished the holiday of Pesach, Passover. And I've noticed like three main themes in the people that I've been interacting with since the holiday finished. And there are some people who are so grateful that it passed over. Like holidays have the reality of bringing up loneliness or financial strain or isolation, wanting to be a part of a community, but not, you know, bringing a person to interact with family members who they have a difficult history with. So a lot can come up. And so there's a lot of relief and happiness that we passed over Passover. And then on the other side, there are people who are feeling depressed. They feel like they had a high of getting dressed in beautiful clothing for eight days and eating beautiful foods and stepping into community and prayer, talking to God every day, like with this designated time for holy and beautiful connection for themselves and their family, taking off time from work and being really, really present to life and the Torah's way of life. And so there's this low now, like from the high to the low. And then there's another group of people who are just like physically worn out from hosting and socializing and cooking and cleaning and preparing, right? And there's this like this physical exhaustion. And um, I'm just holding space for that that that post-holiday energy moving through the Jewish community right now. And it feels like there's a sensitivity. Like when I checked within my heart this week, today actually, and I try to presence myself with what was in me, I noticed like this vulnerability and this sensitivity, like extra sensitive. Things feel I feel extra raw. And um, I'm also noticing that tonight is khafhras nisan, which is koach nisan. It's the 28th day of the month of Nisan, and 28 also um translate as kafres, which is 28, also means power, strength. And so we're gathering together and holding space to bring forth this Torah portion on the 28th of Nisan, which is the strength of the month of miracles and of redemption. And I welcome and pray that the energy that we bring forth today, like we we have the last final days of the month of Nisan available to us, and may this gathering um welcome blessings, like all the redemptive miracles that we pray for a whole year. We have these last few days to be a vessel for. And my prayer is that uh Hashem will choose to bless this gathering and this Torah learning that we put forth and um protect our troops, our war in Israel and the entire world, right, wherever it's needed. Um, and the last point I want to make is we're approaching Rosh Khodash Ear, which is on Friday and Shabbos. It's a double day of Rosh Kodash. This upcoming Friday and Shabbos marks the new month of Ear. And the Kabbalahs teach us that Ear stands for Ani Hashem Rufeka, I am Hashem, you are healer. And so we go from the month of redemption and we go straight into the month of healing. And it's beautiful and very apropos that the parsha, the dub, the portion that we speak of, talks about leprosy. In Tazriya and Mitsurah, we're going to go into the Torah's details around somebody who speaks gossip, they gossip or they slander about another person, or there's also another category of someone who acts haughty. And these three categories of undesirable traits are going to result in a person finding leprosy on their body, on their home, or on their clothing. And so we're learning this teaching as we go into the month of Ear, the month of healing. And um, whatever healing we need as a people in a modern day way, may it come gently but powerfully with a lot of love and a lot of clarity so that we can each clean out what's inside of ourselves and we'll we'll go through the deeper meaning. Actually, lastly, I want to say that as this is a double parsha, being that it's a double parsha, I'm feeling like there's a twin energy in this week. There's double energy, there's double strength, there's more than the typical. And so it can feel very, very intense and cause rawness or vulnerability because there's so much to receive. And so just that awareness and that clarity hopefully can anchor us into understanding why our souls are might be going through more than the usual, and um we can steady ourselves in the knowledge that a lot is coming through for us and a lot of light and a lot of teaching. And now we'll go into um the actual parsha. So in last week's parsha, last week's parsha was Shemini, and we actually read that, we read that quite often over Pesach with how many times we took out the Torah scrolls, but we did not have a podcast on it. So I'll say one note about it just to incorporate it within our necklace of Torah portions that we've been stringing together from the start of the Khemish. Um, so in in the Torah portion of Shmini, Arun finally takes over. He's the high priest, he's the Kohin, and so he finally takes over the service in the tabernacle in the Mishkan. And in before that, Moshe had been the one, you know, preparing it and teaching, and then finally, finally, Arun is the one that comes forward, and the you know, the rolls are handed over to him, the reins are passed. And he he steps into it, and right after he, you know, initiates, um, we learn that two of his sons go ahead and they make their own offering, one that was not asked for by God, and they end up passing away as a result of them bringing this strange fire that God did not request of them. And um, so Nadaban Avihu, these two Kohanim, these two sons of Aaron, pass away. And what I can say about this, my feeling that I that I felt in connection to this Parsha was that these two Kohanim were never mourned because their their father, Aaron, wasn't really allowed to mourn them. He was in the middle of a leadership role of welcoming the Mishkan, the service of the Mishkan. And Moshe told him, You may not take off to mourn, you may not shave your head, you may not rip your clothing, you may, as was God's command of him, that right now you're you're carrying the weight of the Jewish people on you. You stepped into this role, and so no, you cannot mourn. And it almost feels like it's the responsibility of the Jewish people to mourn these two holy men because everybody in their family was initiated into service. They were all Kohanim and they were all priests. And so the week that Hashem's presence comes back into the world from the time of Adam and Chava and Ganidin, and we finally bring God back into this world, and the Mishkan and the fire comes down to eat the to eat the sacrifices, and these two souls cannot be properly honored. And this is just my you know, my young heart's opinion or feeling, that it was almost on us. And then at the same time, we read about these Tadiikim, the Rabbi and Khasira says that they were great, they were holy and they were righteous and they were pure. And we also read about them on Pisah, which is a time of festivity for so many people. It's not a time for mourning. So it you don't to me it felt like their souls and their energy want to be acknowledged, and we hold space for them after. And then um the last thing, the parsha ends off, you know, after we learn about the highest high, we learn about God's presence coming back down onto the people. And then the Torah finishes off going through which birds and which insects are impure, and that if a person consumes them, they would become ritually impure. And it's like, how do you go from the highest highs of talking about God's presence coming down into the world and ending off with like which creepy, quirly insects are going to cause ritual defilement? And it feels like it feels so um imbalanced. And um, I was talking to a woman and she shared like a beautiful insight um that resonated with me. After you have a very high divine experience where you engage with the light and you you have this godly light-filled experience, you come back down to the world and you're not the same person. And the things that would have you could have tolerated before might not be the same. They might, you may have elevated yourself or God initiated you into this elevation where now hanging out with those people or in those environments or in that way would feel ritually impure to you. Like your soul was shown a certain way of a certain aspect of godliness. And so you you sometimes have to re-examine what causes your heart and your soul to be blocked up where you can't feel the godliness and the light inside of you. And I thought that was so beautiful because it leads perfectly into this week's parsha, where the Torah starts off and it says, When a woman, um, when a woman will have a child, or if she miscarries, she will become ritually defiled for seven days if it's a boy, and 14 days if she's a girl, if it's if she has a girl, a female. And um ritually defiled, you know, I don't love any of the terms that I saw. Like some people will call it impure. Um, I I haven't found a terminology that sits best yet. Maybe as we talk, it will come forward. But um, and I I would love to share something about this, but I'm gonna hold off and I'll wait till the end um after I share like the text of the like the bullet points of the parsha, and hopefully someone will remind me if I forget to go into this idea of why would a woman who has a child who gives birth and passes forth life be in the same category as a woman who miscarried, right? And she's not giving forth life, and yet both of them are put into the same category of ritually impure. And the ramifications of being ritually impure in temple times meant that you couldn't enter into the holy of holies, into the sanctuary, into the Mishkan at all, the courtyard of the Mishkan, or the Besamikdash, if we're talking temple time, and you also couldn't eat the meats that you're of your sacrifice, because only somebody who was in a ritually pure state was welcome to eat holy foods and to go into certain holy locations, you know, within the world. And then I find it so interesting how the next pasak after that mentions that if the woman gave birth to a baby boy, the child is circumcised eight days after he's born. And there's no connection to ritual impurity or not, like there's no concept, but it almost feels like to me how like if the Torah is going to talk about the potential of a baby boy being born, it will not pass over the the like the opportunity to talk about circumcision because of the gravity of what circumcision for a male is. And it like it has to me, it has no connection to being ritually pure or impure around this woman. And um yet the Torah like presses on us that you know from from what I see here, it's like one element, like this mitzvah is so vast, like the mitzvah of brasmila circumcision, it's beyond vast. But one element of it is around a holy sexuality, holy masculine sexuality, that your sexuality should be channeled in a holy and pure and sacred way. And so to me, it was like, oh, we're not gonna pass up an opportunity to remind a mother and father and child how important this mitzvah is for our for our people and for yourself. Now we, the Torah comes back to the woman who had a baby and says that after seven days, she should immerse herself in a mikvah, in a body of water, specifically prepared rain water that's prepared in a certain way, measurements and everything. Um, and then after she immerses, she needs to wait a period of 40 days if it was a male, and then 80 days if it was a female, in order for her to be able to re-enter the Mishkan, the sanctuary, and eat consecrated foods. She wasn't considered ritually impure after she immersed after the seven or fourteen days, but she was like in this in-between period from the 14 days to the 40, or it's from the 14 days to the 80 days past, where she was like in this in-between status. Um, I do have to say that nowadays we don't rule in this way. Like the modern-day halakhic ruling of these laws vary, like the rabbanim, the rabbinic um courts over time, with temple times um changing and us not being living in the land and us not having holy foods to eat in this way. Like the modern application does vary, and you can learn these laws differently, like in like it's called the Kitter Shochun Arach, the Autar Rebbe rope, like the modern, you know, application of this, but this is the way God gave it over to Moshe, as like the laws within the Torah themselves. So some of them are, you know, very similar, and some of them vary in practical application. Okay, so once this woman, you know, completed her 40 to 80 days, she brought a sheep as a carbon ola, as an ascent offering, as well as a carbon gatas, um, which was made from a pigeon or a turtle dove, one of the two types of birds. And um if she wasn't able to afford a sheep, she was able to bring two birds instead of um a sheep and a bird. And I found this to be interesting that the ascent offering, her carbon olah, was, you know, brought in connection to her purity and her baby being born, whereas the carbon chatas, the sin offering, was brought as an atonement for chava for what happened in 8 sadas. And, you know, I've been you know really holding space and paying attention to like the interaction of Chava and the Itzadas since we read it in Parsha's in Khumish Barashis. And it's it's like this mystery that keeps unraveling inside of me, where like I every few days or weeks I think about it and like something moves a little bit. And what came through to me, you know, when I was reading this um teaching of the Rebbe about Chava and the Itadas, how every woman who gives birth, because there was pain and because there was blood involved, um, chava was connected to that reality as a consequence for what happened by the tree. And um she brings the sacrifice to atone for what Chava did. And what I was sensing is like there's a bit of chava in every single woman. Like every single woman is chava, every single woman is invited to a tree of life or death, every single woman has the ability to um to make a move the way Chava did, to do something, and her every child she bears is connected to that reality. Um, and and maybe soon we can go into it more. Okay. Then comes the conversation about Saras. So we spoke about the woman who's ritually impure from her having children, and now we come to this conversation about leprosy. And the Torah tells us that you know, somebody who gossiped or slandered or acted haughty may find that they would they would find a white streak of like a wounding or like um what's the word? A white spot that looked like a wound. And um it could have red streaks in it, there were different descriptions, and they were able to find it on their clothing, on their skin, their clothing, or their home. And depending on how severe their action there was, that's where they would find it. And so the first, you know, the first um place they might find it is on their home. And then if it was more severe, they would find it on their clothing, and then if it was even more severe, they would find it on their act on their on their body, their physical body. And we'll go through um the process and then we can talk about um you know the the meaning behind all of it. It says if someone sees these spots, they need to go to a coin. If it was on their body, they would need to go to a coin um who would examine it and look for indications if it was growing, you know, what was happening to it. If he saw, the coin saw that it wasn't spreading, the cohen would quarantine the person in a separate house for seven days and then check on him again after those seven days to check to see where it was holding. And if there was no growth, he told him, wait another seven days. And on the 13th day, the Kohen would come to examine him. If there was no further growth, he would, it would be proven that he was not someone who was who had Surat. He had another condition called a mispacha. But if it did grow, then he would be considered someone who had Surat, and the Kohen would pronounce him ritually impure. Somebody who had Surat was again not allowed to come into holy locations like the Mishkan, and they were not allowed to eat holy foods. But more than that, anybody who interacted with them carried the risk of taking on this dark energy and this negative energy. And so therefore, we have all of these laws about the quarantine and that insular process that the Tsarat, someone who had Tsurat, was commanded to. And he was alone, um, not with other Tirat, people with Surat, literally alone, like in word, solitary confinement. And um he was told that he should keep his hair growing long, rip his clothing, cover the lower part of his face with like a cloth up to his lip, his mustache, and if it was a woman, up to her lips. And um a cohen would call out in a loud voice, defile, defiled. And he would remain in this situation until his lesions healed and his body healed. And now I'll talk a little bit about, you know, what is this? Like, what is this um reality where you have a Kohen who is known to come from a place of love? Every time the Kohanim give the priestly blessing to the Jewish people, prior to that, they give a blessing that it should come be ahava from a place of love. And their their their founding father, Aranha Kohen, was known, like Ohifshalam Virudiv Shalam, he he ran after peace, he pursued peace. He was known to try to bring unity and oneness between a couple who were, you know, going through friction and tension or a friendship that was, you know, going through troubles. And so, you know, the what I'm what I see and what I've heard about this was that the only person who can make an announcement that you are defiled or that you have something difficult going on on your body is somebody who is sourced in love. And that was the requirement. You can't have a random Stranger or somebody outside of your heart space come and point out to you the areas in your life where you have growths forming that you need to face and heal. And so that's the number one lesson that I see here. That God's, you know, uncomfortable process of initiating a person into back into alignment, the basis of all of that is a place of wholehearted love. And um, when you go further into this, it says that, you know, who was somebody ugat Sarah? Someone ugh sarat was a person who gossiped, right? They were spreading information that was not theirs, that didn't belong to them, to the community or to family members. They were bringing separation between a husband and wife, going around and sharing information that would cause a rift between a marriage or a friendship. And um, it says that the sages called the Tsarat Beer a walking metaphor for death, right? It's very strong language. That's how I felt when I read it. Like you call him a walking metaphor for death. And, you know, what came what came through for me was, you know, instead of looking at this as, you know, God is so demanding and so strict and very punitive, the the inverse of that is like, look how much God values unity and respect and oneness and people minding their own business. Look how much God will, the length that God will go to to tell a person you have no right to talk about a fellow. You have no right to get in the way of another person's marriage. Like, this is how strict my my camp is holy when people assume the best about each other, when people are aligned with their God-given soul's mission down here in this world, that they don't have time to be idle and be bored and sit around and chat and schmooze, where they're not, you know, um in more command of what comes out of their portal of talk, of speech, of malchus. And um, you know, when you see it from that angle for me, that felt like wow, the Torah really wants us to take such care. God is teaching us how to take such care. Um, and then I actually also saw how the Rebbe had a teaching here where he said that, you know, who was someone who got Surat? It would be someone who had high character and moral excellence who sinned via gossip, slander, or hottiness, and um they have some evil inside of them, and they have been working on purging all the darkness from their psyche, and now God gives them the supernatural miracle, miraculous condition, and like shows them on the outside what's happening on their inside. He's giving them a mirror to know what's happening within themselves so that they could face this moral defect inside of themselves. And you know, when I was talking about this and holding space for this, I was thinking like, so which is it? Is it a punishment and a disease, or is it God's gift to a person who is working on themselves? And my my understanding is like it is what you choose it to be. If you want to see it as a disease and as a punishment, you can. And that's an option, like that's a vantage point that you can view it through. And if you want to see it as, wow, this disease is coming forward onto my home or onto my family or on myself, and God is communicating to me, and God is giving me the opportunity to up level and to ask myself, what caused this disease, right? Disease, disease, like Louise Hay has the her thing with disease. Like, what brought this on us? Why are we so diseased in this home or in this family? And to use it as, you know, if everything that comes from God is good, what is here for me to learn and grow with it? And I, you know, I feel like as a human being, we could dance between the two. There are times when we can feel like, how why is God so punitive and why is this so hard? And and then, you know, we can bounce back into our soul and see it from another perspective and go with the two. Okay, that was the conclusion of the first parsha. And now we go in that Tazriya, and now we'll go into Parsha's Mitsurah. And um, Parsha's Mitsura goes deeper into the process of how do you purify someone who had sarat? You know, what happens after he was quarantined? And it says that the Kohen would go out to the camp to examine him because he wasn't allowed to come into the camp. So the Kohen went out to him to greet it, you know, to hold him. And once he was confirmed, you know, um, once he was examined by the Kohen, the Kohen would ask someone to take, you know, two birds on his behalf, on the behalf of the person who had the Tara, two living birds, together with one unpeeled cedar stick, a strip of scarlet wool, and a hyssop branch. And he would, the cohen would take the bird, one bird, slaughter it, and catch its blood in an earthenware vessel that was holding spring water, and then take the living bird, tied with the scarlet and the hyssop branch, and dip it within that bowl, and sprinkle it on top of the back of the hand of the tsurat bearer's hand seven times. And then they would take the living bird and send it off into the field to go on and live. At that point, this leper, this Mitsurah, was allowed to go immerse his clothing in a mikvah, and then he was told to shave off his all his hair, his facial hair, his hair, and then immerse his own body into a mikvah, a body of water. And at this point, he is purified. He's allowed to come back into the camp, but he's told that he should not be intimate or she should not be intimate with her spouse for another seven days. She should they count seven days to become intimate, to be intimate again. After these seven days pass, he, if it's a man, he shaves again, immerses his clothing and his body again. And then on the eighth day, he's told to bring two male lambs and one female lamb that are in their first year of life. One lamb will be the guilt offering, the other will be an ascent offering, and one will be a sin offering. And all three of these animals came together with a grain offering and a wine offering. The koin would take this person and place them at the entry point of the courtyard because they're not allowed in yet, and face them there, and he would slaughter the first animal, and some of the blood of the first animal was put onto the person, the leper, tsurat beer, onto his right ear, right thumb, and right big toe. Then the cohen would take the oil on his left hand and dash it seven times towards the holy of holies, and the rest of the oil was put onto the purified person's ear, right toe, and thumb. And the remainder of the oil was put on his head. Following that, the female lamb was offered as a sin offering, and then after that, the male lamb as an ascent offering. And that was the conclusion of his process. And the Torah, you know, finishes this segment off by saying that what what app what about the people who can't afford three animals for their sin? Right? Where does it leave the people on a different financial standing point? And we're told that one male as a guilt offering together with two birds would fulfill the requirement that would allow this person to have their process to you know fully complete their ritual purity process. Um, and then the last you know section here talks about what happens when, if it wasn't on a person's body, what happens when the tsarat is found on a person's home? And Hashem actually, you know, teaches there's a teaching here that before the Jewish people came into the land of Israel, the land of Canaan, there was a nation, the Amorites, and God told them that they, as a result of their sins, they're gonna, you know, be sent out and the Jewish people are going to come. And they had a plan that, you know, once the Jewish people sinned, they're gonna be able to come back and take back the land. And so they left a lot of wealth, like a great considerable amount of wealth, and they buried it within the walls of their homes. And so, you know, prior to Moshe teaching them these teachings about Tsarat that might they might find on their home, the Torah is also showing us, this is not in the text of Torah, these are the sages' commentaries on it, that it's almost like find the good in the situation, realize that if Tsarat is found on your home and it comes to a point where you need to demolish your home, don't worry, you're gonna find great wealth there. So that you know feeds into this idea of is this a gift from God or are you being punished? Right? So the actual process, um, if the homeowner sees there's a growth or a lesion on their home, he must go and tell the cohen that he sees something that might be. And he's told that he shouldn't confirm what it is because once he confirms it, everything inside of it would take on the status of being ritually impure. And so he should say it as a possibility. And um, when the cohen comes, he's also cautious of when he makes his announcement and gives his declaration because if possible, he would tell them to take out whatever they can from the home before he made his verdict that the home carried leprosy on it. And then came the process of if the growth was on the walls of the house and they meet the speculations and the requirements, the house would be quarantined for seven days. No one would be allowed to live inside of it. And then the coin comes back after seven days, and if the lesion disappeared or turned lighter, or the area could be scraped off, and the coin announced that the house is root of defilement, and they can come back into it. If it's spread, then the house needs to be purged. The stones that are in that area are to be removed and they're taken out of the city to an area that's unholy because anything around it would take on their energy. Um, it says that the workers must scrape out the house from the inside near the vicinity of the growth, and new stones and new mortar need to replace the old. Then the new house, now the house needs to be quarantined for another week, and then after seven days, the coin comes back and checks it. If there is further growth at that point, then the entire house needs to be demolished, and we take all the material of the home and we move it outside of the camp to a defiled place. And anybody who would enter the home would become defiled. If a person laid inside of this house or spent more than four minutes inside of it, they would take on the energy within it, and they would be required to immerse their garments in the mikvah in purifying water. And to ritually purify the home, like let's say there was an announcement, the coin said, Okay, this house no longer has this impurity, this sarat on it, and you can purify it and move back into it. The owner would take two birds next to his home with a seed, a cedar stick, and a strip of scarlet wool and hyssop near the house, and they would do that process to the bird, ripping it, but that was not in the holy of holies or the sanctuary, that was um right outside the home. And then, so that's like the you know, the major topics that are spoken about in this parsha. And then the last bit is about different um, what's the word, discharges that come from a male or female's reproductive organs. And so the Torah first goes into a male and then goes into the female, and it says that there's uh defilement contracted by men via abnormal semenal discharges. If his reproductive organ emits an unusual discharge, anything that he touches or lies on, a saddle, earthenware vessels that he used and he carried becomes impure. If um what so what's the process for him to become pure again? He goes to the mikvah and he waits until nightfall, and after nightfall, he's but he's ritually pure again. It says that a woman becomes defiled as well. If a man touches a woman, right, and he was ritually defiled, she would be obligated to go to the mikveh as well because she would have contracted this energy through him and become impure. And then it talks about a woman who has normal or abnormal discharges from her reproductive organs. So now we're talking about her menstrual blood as well as non-menstrual blood, which would be like an abnormal discharge. And both are deemed to, you know, make her ritually impure. And she must refrain from touching or letting others touch her, and she has to remain in a state of separation for seven days, right? Where the man had a one-day, she has a seven-day waiting period. It does say that if a man has relations with a woman during this time, oh, it says he becomes ritually defiled for seven days. So if he had abnormal discharge, he was impure for one day. But if he is intimate with a woman and she was ritually impure, he would be enter the state, this seven-day um situation. And then lastly, it says non-menstrual discharge. Um, after seven days of counting, once it seizes, she can bring two birds to the Kohen as a carban, and that would complete her process and her um to become ritually pure. And so that's the you know, that's the end of the Torah's teachings and the verses in this week's parsha. And I want to talk about um two ideas in connection to this. Um, okay, so you know, concluding, you know, the verses and the teachings in this parsha, what stands out to me is how much of a person's life was guided and impacted, and all of it was centered around would I be able to step into the a holy Laphisa Mikdash or the temple? Would I be like all of this work and all of this checking and all of this care and the Kohen having like this hard art like process of guarding people's ritual pure status of purity, also that a person would be allowed to enter into the the courtyard and the Besemakdash and be able to eat the foods of the Besa Megdash. And so I'm seeing what you know how pivotal, like what an anchor to Jewish life in temple times, in the times when they were traveling in the desert, like life really revolved around the temple, where you had to be so careful with your ritual status, also that you would be able to bring a carbon and be able to go into God's presence in his home, right? And um I feel like that's very like powerful and very telling of what life was like back then, like keeping yourself so pure and so elevated and so um aware of what energies you have been interacting with, so that if you did want to come to the Vesa Mikdash and have bring a gift offering or bring bring a sin offering, you had to be so careful with who you were as a person so that you would be allowed to have this opportunity. And you know, in modern, like the modern application of this that I can think of is like the Torah is sharing with us the reality that God created us with. We have a part of ourselves that gives life, and there's a part of ourselves that brings death. Like we that in my understanding, there's a mechanism and living from a soul, which is brings us one step closer, life-giving, and then there's another part of us, our animal soul, who very often brings us into the state of smallness and safety, and it just wants to hide and be safe and small and not product like just and very often it can lead us to take a step out away from life and towards death, and to become aware of which part of your heart you're living from, right? In a given moment, did I take a step towards life or did I take a step away from life? And I feel like you know, when the Torah tells us a person who had sarat or a person who was ritually impure because of the discharge that came from their body, they become like orbits of dark energy, like they're carrying a death energy that came out of their body, and anything that they interacted with would now carry and take on a charge from them. And the the knowledge that what we carry inside of ourselves is very powerful and it has an impact in our to our surroundings. And for us to know our power in both directions, you know, know our power that we're in a when we're in the space of light and life, to realize like, wow, we're circulating life in our when wherever we go today. And if we're not, to become very aware of like it's my personal responsibility to pray to God that I have a breakthrough around this depressive energy. It's not just my depressive energy that it's emitting from me, it's not just my anxious energy, it's not my suicidal energy, it's not just my wherever, whatever I am carrying, I'm a part of a whole. And I have uh there's a ripple effect of what comes out of me. And so it's in everybody's good that I call on God or I call on a sister or I call on somebody to be able to help me with the death energy that's coming through me. And you know, I had this understanding recently. My husband was telling me, um, we were talking, he he learned this uh discourse of the Rebbe in honor of the Rebbe's birthday, um, or in connection to the Rebbe, and we were talking about the Rebbe was talking about, you know, um holy energy versus dark energy, and we got into a conversation about mikvah, like ritual waters. And I remember, like, you know, after I started doing plant medicine, I remember telling my husband, like, you know, life is really hard, but God and our sages and our Arabayim, they really gave us real tools to support us with the heart. And I got very emotional about mikvah. Like I was feeling the deeper meaning, I was experiencing and watching the deeper meaning for for this commandment and this um opportunity that's given. And, you know, mikfah for a man and a woman is very, very different. Like a men can go into the mikfah during the day, multiple times a day if they need to. I think it's suggested that a man goes once a day, and men are also allowed to go in a swimming pool. Like, right, it's they have more options, whereas a woman is told to go into the mikfah, you know, after she counts, you know, seven days clean from the end of her cycle, and it should be at nightfall, and it should be under certain conditions, and she has to prepare in a certain way. And what I want to share about that is like one element from the men and one element from the women. From the men's standpoint, I remember like the experience of seeing energy. Like I was in a I was in a medicine space and I was seeing the way energy moves. It was almost like laser beam lights were coming out of everything, like the flowers had laser beams coming out of them. A person had different color and different wave patterns of energy coming out of them. And when a person goes into the mikvah, what they're doing is they're making themselves unavailable for energy to attach to them. They exit the world, they're off grid. So anybody's negative slander against them, anybody's projections of what type of person I am when this person goes under the water, I'm not here to buy into it. You can no longer dump your stuff on top of me. And on the flip side, I stop maintaining my projections onto other people because I'm not in this world and emitting those limiting beliefs onto another person. And so it's like you come back into the womb, you come back into the Womb of God, you step out of the world, you lay flat so that your head is not higher than your heart and not higher than your organs, your reproductive organs, all of you is equal. And you come back into the state of humility. No one's better, no one's greater, no one's less than. We're all here, we're all present, we're all here to serve and support. And I in that conversation with my husband years ago, I remember thinking like, if only men knew that God gave them this mitzvah, like this mitzvah of the ritual waters, because their battle is so hard and it's so fierce, like going up against sexual energy and maintaining sacredness and maintaining truth around it and channeling it for holy, it's the work is there's no words to describe the what has to go into that process. And it was hurting me that, you know, because so many of our, you know, so many people experienced really like religious trauma, Torah being taught in this way of bringing a lot of pain. And so a bunch of men are walking around the world, and probably women, who don't have the medicine to help them in their process. And so, you know, we're here now and we're talking about this purification process, and it's an opportunity for me to share how passionate I am about this help, this aid, this assistance that God gave us in this challenge and in this battle. And there was a, you know, there was a reason why Chabad, like Rabbeyim, and teachers really pushed for their followers to go to the mikfah once a day, Shabbis, holy opportunities as often as they can. And you're literally giving yourself and your family and your environment the greatest gift because you constantly clean yourself and you come into you know, into humility, you come into like the purification for yourself. Um, I think that the more you believe in it, the more powerful you feel its impacts to be. But, you know, I I'll talk about um energy also for a minute, and then I'll talk about the women in mikvah. So I I became you know more aware of energy after my husband was, you know, working through his recovery process and and with my own healing and seeing what I radiate, seeing what different people bring into my home. And there were times I would come into my home, like if we weren't there, and I would say, like, there's an energy present here, like, and I would start like channeling from my heart like different prayers to like clean the home of the energy. I would like start sweeping all the walls of like the home with my fingers, trace everything, and say, like, I I with God's help, I command all the energy in this room, needs to leave at once. If you have gifts to leave behind, you're welcome to. All negative energies need to be dispel right now. I am the Akarat Habayat. I am the owner, I am the woman of this home. I get to command all energies that are in this space. And I was working with a healer at the time, and she told me how she would take, um, whenever she would go to the beach, she would take ocean water and fill it with two bottles. And whenever she noticed that her home had a dark or heavy energy in it, from herself, her family, her guests, whatever life brought her, she had this process where she would take a pot and she would fill it with Epsom salt, and then she poured on top of it, I think it was hydrogen peroxide, I believe, but I'd have to double check what it was. And she burned, she would light it on fire, or maybe it was acetone or something like look like flammable, and she would burn it, and all the energy, and she said, like I she said like tahilim psalms, and it would like pull together the energy of the home. She would take that. This was a pot that you don't use for cooking, like it was specific for cleaning out home from dark energy, take it out, flush it in the toilet, wash her hands, and then she would take the ocean water and mop her home with it, like pour it over her home, and have in mind that she's cleansing her home from all the energies inside. Um, and then there was another one, the more like a more, I would say, you know, accessible one is to take sage or palo santo and burn it and like move through your home, go from corner to corner, go from the floor to the ceiling, and collect all the energy and pull it outside of your home. And I think that this parsha comes to teach us that energy is very, very, very real. Like we all know when we come out of someone's space, if we feel uplifted or if we feel like we're gonna cave or we feel off for some reason. And it doesn't always mean that it's about the other person. It may be about us and the lessons and the teachings that God is gifting us to become aware of. But if you know that your home is not emitting a high vibration and a high frequency, there are real tools to support us. I would say that, you know, the mikfa and like prayer tahilim, having a gathering of men or women in your home with the intention of purifying your space, throwing a dance party with your kids, with like take out instruments and just have in mind we are creating high vibrations in this home. This is our home, this is our space. You can say a prayer to command the energies in your own space. Um, but it's very real. Like this Parsha has so many teachings that I didn't spend so much time on talking about how if the man who had seminal discharge touched an item, what would happen? Like the process of taking those items, certain had to items had to be shattered if they couldn't be purified, others all had to be washed out. Like items also take on energy, and they they they carry, they're carriers of whatever energy it is. So I'll I'll circle back to um the women for a minute, women in mikvah. Um what I want to share about this topic, and it's its own class, and not everything I'm you know that I feel about this am I willing to share today, or you know, like on a podcast. So I just want to share uh at least one part. And this also came like after doing medicine and just being really being able to tap into what are these ceremonies that God and his the gift of his Torah, what did he leave us for in terms of guidance, in terms of support? And what what I came to realize is that a lot of people are doing the thing, they're they're connected to the actions, and yet it's not giving life, it's not giving passion, it's not giving a certain vitality, like the way you would imagine, the way the Torah is promising that it would. And so I was curious, like, why, if someone is making kiddish, why don't they feel sanctified? If someone is going to mikvah, why don't they feel light and clean when they come out? Right? And um, what I was seeing was that we could really be showing up to these rituals with so much more presence. Like we can demand more from them if we are willing to demand more from ourselves. And what I like something practical that I can share was that I the way I saw it was that when a woman is invited to mikvah after her cycle and after she completes her seven days of counting and preparation, and she finally comes to her evening where she's literally invited into oneness with God, back into the waters of Ghanadin, to be held in the like amniotic fluids of life itself, of God's God's liquids, right? Her fluids, her ocean. It's literally her womb. And here, I'll say it beautifully. A woman came at the house of Morpher Shadis right before Pesach, and she sheared that she wants to receive a lot from Pesach, but she realizes that if she wants to receive, she's gonna have to let go of a lot to make space. And I feel like that really captures the idea of going to mikvah. If during your bleed, you were willing to let go of a lot consciously, right? You realize every day that you're bleeding, something else, you're releasing something else, you're letting go of something else, something else is dying. It's time to say goodbye to certain beliefs, experiences, friendships, ways of being, parts of life, and you watch them literally move out of your out of your womb, out of your temple. And then during your seven days, you are uploading yourself. What am I inviting in? What am I initiating? What do twice a day I'm given this mitzvah to pause and realize and remind myself that I am in my seven clean days? I'm in my seven counting days. What am I calling forth? It's literally like a woman is an entire world, and the world was created in seven days. What did God put into the world in these seven days? And you could literally upload yourself with what did God put in on the first day? He separated, he made space. What did he put in on the third day? He created oceans and trees and plants and flowers. On the fourth day, he created luminaries, right? You could make sure that those parts within your own being are alive by reaffirming them, by saying, You're inside of me, and then some, right? What do you need in your life? What do you want to upload into yourself as you're preparing? And um, when you finally come to the water, there's a time to what I was seeing was like a lot of the preparation that we're asked to do on our bodies is also to give us time to pause and reflect. Like it's a time when a woman is supposed to be by herself in a bathroom, preparing. And so she hopefully she has a quiet moment in her life as she gets to like pamper her body and cure for herself. And it should give her time to be able to go through her life and remember what she let go of that month, what she went through that month, and what she's welcoming in. And what I was seeing was she can literally, like before she goes into the mikvah, she can take like physical rocks or objects and say, like, this is what I want to let go of, right? What are the things that she has been juggling? She's been wearing so many hats this month, all the of the things that she's responsible for and taking care of. And what is she willing to put down and say, like, God, I was never in charge of this, I was never in charge of my financial situation, I was never in charge of my child's learning capacity, I was never in charge of my fertility journey, I was never in charge of my health, whatever, right, whatever she's holding with weight. And to be able to surrender all of these balls that she juggles and say, I'm putting them down and giving them back to you. I'm surrendering them. I'm giving room for you to re-enter those parts of my life because I've been holding them so tight that you may not have been able to get in and hold me where I've been praying and hoping that you would come. And she puts all of these down and she lets go of them and she goes under the water and she welcomes God back into all of those parts of her life. Um I was seeing how this mitzvah has the capacity to really ground us in our truth and in our strength. And I what I what I am comfortable saying is that if this mitzvah is really, really, really hard for you and you're allergic to it, that is not your truth. There is no way that something like this, like realize that it's not as rigid as it seems, that if it needs to be done differently, there are ways to work with it so that it can become a comfortable and supportive part of your life. And I'm happy to talk to you about it one-on-one if you feel like reaching out. If it's something that is really pressing in your life. Like I've spoken to so many women and shared experiences and stories of a way to make sure that this mitzvah is a source of. Like I remember um telling God, like after I did like a few very, very, very difficult medicine journeys, and I said, like, I didn't grow up with medicine journeys. This is not a part of my heritage. I didn't, I never never heard of a grandfather of mine who had to swallow four or five grams of psilocybin mushrooms and go into hell and go find the parts of his psyche that are infected, where monsters live, where demons run. I never heard that he had to go and do this by himself alone in a room. Like, why is this my story? And I would like go, and very often when I was going to mikvah, it was usually a time when I was in a heartfelt prayer. I was very raw, I was very vulnerable, I was very, and so often I would pray and be like, why can't I find you down here in this world? Why do I have to go into mushrooms or whatever the medicine was at the time to be able to clean myself out so deeply, to then be able to feel you so deeply? And I would pray, like, give me something down here in this world to connect to you with. And um the the answer came, it was mikvah. Like Hashem showed me and I was guided on how to be able to take this mitzvah, and it was always here for us. It's it literally is a way to interact with divinity and to be held by it. And the prayer, like pray for it, have pray that the the right kavana, the right intentions come to you. Pray that you are able to tap into the gifts that the Torah has given us and the sages have given us so that we could, like all of these ceremonies that we have, a Britmila or a bat mitzvah or a bar mitzvah, like these are all moments to interact with God and with the divine. And I think that if we're not experiencing like a heartfelt, your heart is not like making somersaults when you're in the presence of a bris, or you're you get to ask, we I want that. You get to, I don't want to say demand, but I would say like you get to say, what do I have to do to be able to experience you right here? This is a holy ceremony. We're taking out the Torah. If you can't feel your heart, you've got to say, God, show me how I can feel my heart in the presence of your greatest gift. I get to feel God here. He's here. This is the holiest place. And I think you'll be we are shown, I am shown, what blockages might be in the way so that I can experience it. Um, you know, I'll circle back to what I shared about women in the beginning when I said, like, why is a woman who gives birth to a child considered as ritually impure, right? And um, you know, when we were doing the last part few partios, we spoke a lot about carbano, different sacrifices. And um I I held back, I I held back from a truth that I was feeling in my heart. And I think it was like the last podcast we did right before Pesach, and I was thinking, you know, I opened up the Khlemish to prepare, and I was like, oh, it's sacrifices again? Like we've done this for three, four times again. Like, why are we still talking about the same thing? And then I said, if that's my attitude, let me ask what may I may I have missed if God's giving me another opportunity to talk about this. And what came through for me was that you know, the sages say that the modern day version of sacrifice is prayer, that in place of being able to come to the temple and bring, have this oneness and this elevated, this you you come into the most beautiful and elevated space in the world. You're around people who are the most elevated, they're Kohanim, they're completely segregated from worldly needs. They get to stay in their like heart, soul space their entire lives. They're completely designated, like they're like they're radiating this high vibrational energy. You come into their space, you literally see godly realities happening, fires coming down in the shape of lions, God accepting people's um people's um sacrifices. The energy itself must have felt like so redemptive. People were being forgiven and giving thanks there. My nephew came to the maloka with my sister-in-law this Sunday for my daughter's birthday here at the House of Moor. And I told my sister-in-law, like, go to the back, check out the maloka. And she walked in with her four-year-old son, and she was like, she took a deep breath and she said, Um, Erin, do you what do you like? Do you feel do you feel what's here? It feels so holy. And he took a deep breath and he's like, he's like, Yeah, the energy. Like he used the word on his own, the energy here. My sister-in-law doesn't even know what we do at the House of Moor. I've never had a chance to chat with her. And she walked into the Maloka, and right away she felt a presence of energy, like my four-year-old nephew confirming. So you can imagine what being in the Mishgan felt like, being in the Besamakdash, the energy that was present there. And our sages say that in place of us being able to achieve what was achieved in that place, our prayers, us speaking about the karbano and talking about reading the passages about the karbano that are included in our siddr, but they're literally God's dialogue to Moshe and Arun and the Kohanim, that will take the place of the sacrifices in the times when we don't have a Mishkan or a Vesa Mikdash. And what came to me was that you know, women are not obligated in prayer, especially women in child rearing years. We are not um limited to time. And so any mitzvah that is dependent on time, almost all mitzvahs that are dependent on time, except for a few, we are exempt from. And, you know, my understanding of reading all these carbonos and seeing like how much of the carbon revolved around blood, the blood of the animal, the blood of the animal was collected and collected and collected and brought into the holy of holies. And this person had this intimacy and this oneness with God, this presence. And I was thinking and feeling into the reality that every time a woman has her menstrual cycle, she's bringing an offering. And it very much ties into, you know, what we spoke a little bit about Chava, Eve, and the It Hadas and the curse that is put onto her. And, you know, just like we asked the question of, you know, is the person who has leprosy is he being punished by God or is he being invited into something greater? Is he being welcomed into an like initiated into up-leveling his reality? And so God is showing him where in his life needs to be cleansed and purged. And I feel like everything that was said about Chava, we get to ask the same question. Was Chava cursed? Or was she showing us and leaving signs for us of opportunity to flip on its head? And, you know, we're told that because of her we bleed, and because of her we have pain. But what's if because of her we bleed and because of her we have pain? Like what's if we can flip it and realize that every time you have your cycle, you're told that you're not available to your husband. And actually, a woman who had her period, and like it actually says it in this week's parsha, she was not allowed to serve anybody food. She was because if she touched it, she created ritual defilement. She was not allowed to sit and socialize. She was because she would infect people. She was not, in some cultures, she was even told to wear certain clothing to make it known that she had her cycle so people wouldn't come running towards her to touch her and to hug her. And um, we had a women's circle here, and a woman from our community, Basi Baruch, shared this beautiful teaching about periods, and I'm gonna go into it. And at the circle, a woman shared, like, what's with the shaming of the woman who has her period? And I said, like, what's if it's not shaming? Like, whoever said that having your period is something to be shamed for? What's if the Torah was saying, this woman is doing something so divine, she's doing something so holy right now. She's literally being the portal to remove darkness from this world and from her family. She's literally being a godly vessel to clean the world. She's like, what, you know, what's your most expensive ear purifier and ear filter? I know when we were dealing with mold, the prices go really, really high when you want to get a very expensive good ear purifier in your home. That is literally what your woman is doing every single month that she gets her cycle. She's purifying the world, and God and the sages are giving her the protection that she needs to be doing this hard work. Don't ask her to serve her family and don't ask her to go to social events because she's doing something so divine and so godly. She's doing something so Not available for the mundane realities, and she deserves to be in a category of her own where she is supported to be able to do this. And you know, her blood, like when she's actually bleeding, they say I'm reading this incredible book. It's called Wild Power. And um, the author, there's two authors. The first one's name is Alexandra Pope, and I don't remember the second one, but if you search Wild Power and put the last name Pope, you'll get the right book. And it it speaks about the menstrual cycle and how to access the gifts and the light that are inside of it. And I could not recommend it more. What I'll say is that there they speak to something that I have felt within myself, that at a certain point in your cycle, you come to the darkest place, you come to death, you come to purging of darkness. And according to Chasidis, according to the Kabbalah, wherever there's the most concealment and the most darkness, there lies the most infinite amount of light available to you. Like God is just beneath that thickness and that layer. And usually, you know, it's untapped, it's been untouched. People have been too afraid to move through that barrier, that layer of darkness, to the light that's available. And the light that comes, that is birthed from darkness, is brighter than regular light. And it's a light that will come into your life and rejuvenate you and fill you back up with life-giving light if you were able to be present with it. And you know, there's there's many levels of choosing to become conscious of your womb, right? All of this is taking place in our a woman's temple, which is her womb. And you can, there's different levels of presencing with what's happening inside of you, and you can grow with it. Um, that's that's personally like a journey that I'm on, where I'm searching for you know how to expand my knowing of this. The chassidis really hints to it, like in so many of the teachings about the moon and the woman and the womb and the her cycle, like it's pointed to in like the samatserakhs, my markay. It talks about the woman and her reproductive cycle and her womb. And I feel like if anybody wants a deeper human, broken down understanding, um, this book is an incredible, incredible gift to understanding what's happening inside of you. In short, I'll say, you know, one concluding thought for this podcast. Um every month, a woman carries an entire year inside of her. She has all four seasons where when she's when she's on her cycle, she's going through her inner winter. It's a winter time, it's time for hibernation and privacy and insular energy. And she moves out of that and she comes into her spring, seven days of spring, or eight days, or you know, nine days, it depends on a person, where they're coming back to life, where whatever was, you know, being planted in the winter with your consciousness of what's dying, so what's being rebirthed, you start to hear of like your new mission for the month and your new um powers that are being birthed inside of you because of what you let go of. And from your spring, at the top of spring, you come to your ovulation, right? Where this new egg, this new potential for life is available to you. And your hormones and your inner world are all um in support of what's being asked of you. And then from your ovulation, from your spring, you go into your autumn where things start to. I'm sorry, I think I missed summer, summer, right? From spring into summer. At summer, you're like you're more comfortable. You're like you're more comfortable in your motherhood, in yourself, in your mission. You're like within your own skin, comfortable within your own skin. And I think you're able to enjoy some of the work that you put forth in your summer in your winter and in your spring. And then from summer, you go back into autumn, where you transition back into letting go, letting go of your ego, letting go of life, letting go of the goals that you had in mind, and then you're meant back into your cycle and in your period. And all of this is to say that a woman is her body is so divine and so holy. And God, you know, it says that it's we have it here in our shool on top of our our ankodesh, Hashem said, Make for me a sanctuary and I will dwell in them, right? And our our teachings, like what's with this grammatical incorrect plural versus singular. And um, the sages say that in the like in this time, God says, You become the sanctuary, and I will come and dwell in every single one of you. And to me, this is a huge, huge key to understanding how we become this temple for God. I feel like it's already happening inside of us, especially around what gives us life and our cycle and birth and motherhood and losing a child, and you know, back to this idea of like, why does the Torah portion start off with the woman who, if she has a child or if she loses a child, she got comes into, she comes into um impurity. And I also forgot to mention, you know, at the end of um Mitsorah, it says that every time a man ejaculates, he also comes into a state of impurity and he has to go and impurify himself in water, and a woman too, like in temple times. So it's really, you know, in short, so we could conclude, um whenever we interact with life and there's an egg available, the passive experience of that is that we are now on the shadow side of that. And to clean that, the energies that are associated with death and with like right after a woman has a baby, the potential for life is no longer there. She has a baby, her body literally cannot carry another baby, and so there's loss of life. She's not in a state of life giving. She just gave birth to life, but the potential for life is also not there. And right after a man gives seed as well. And so, anytime we are on the shadow side of life, we're told, you know, you're now operating in darker energies, and purify yourself, step back into the light and clean yourself. Um, yeah, thank you so much for coming and holding space for this week's parsha. Thank you.