Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: How Spiritual Impurity is Similar to Expulsion from the Garden of Eden

[Music] hi everybody and again it's good to uh have a little bit of a live audience again we're coming out of uh covet hopefully in relatively good health uh we are of course in the month of er we just began the month of er and in the supreme court it actually says that eeyore is an abbreviation it's a remedy to an abbreviation of a pasuk in parchas vishalak anni as the aleph hashem's name and the rage is rafah i am the lord i am the god who gives you reform and therefore it says the month of er has a segula that it brings health into the world so our prayer is that indeed that should continue to be the case and in particular uh we once again are praying and learning uh for a reforged leima for binyamin israel ben khanita again a young man that's been struggling and uh hashem now nothing's getting better but he still needs our prayers and our fellas and our learning and may all of the torah that we learn and it's filos uh be for a reformer for him israel and that's just gem we should only see broncos and good things before i begin the main subject of this year i want to say two things first is maybe just a little bit of a tiny little addition to what i said last week when i talked about shira shirim which is written in very sexual romantic way in the arts world treated it as an allegory and i was making the point that even though it's an allegory for the love between claudiuso and hashem but gifter points out you have to be capable of a human relationship in order to understand the spiritual nature of loving god you can't love god unless you're capable of loving passionately another human being but just want to point out uh because some people feel that uh i might have been criticizing art school because people have bashed art school for this for many many many years for decades quite literally i just want to point out that arts girl's decision to go with the allegory was actually made by one of the great great godola israel of the 20th century reviaco kaminetsky and he felt that it was very very important to give the allegorical interpretation so that people would not look at it as romantic love literature but he did say he did say that a literal translation should be incorporated in the commentary so uh the common accusation that people make that art scroll ignores the literal translation is quite literally not true if you just look at it you'll see they did not ignore it so i did want to point out that although uh i do believe very very strongly that you have to understand the pshat in shira shira in a literal way in order to get the allegory because if you think about it an allegary can only be understood through the vehicle in which it is being conveyed even as a matter of literature that would be the case so the shot is very very important art school did have a very firm foundation for the decision that it made and again i personally was okay to have a one conversation with karnesky in my life which lasted around three hours and it's something i will never forget he truly was an amazing gundam and a man of not only torah wisdom but of life wisdom and tremendous tremendous kindness so he zipro to say anything that would denigrate any decision that he made the second thing those of you uh that are here in your shalom are here in israel uh just uh around a half an hour ago or 40 minutes ago may have heard the siren uh that went for a minute or it was a two minute i don't know how long it was but uh that siren is very very significant uh yomad smud this year is being observed on thursday because shabbos would be the official day we don't do it on shabbos on friday so we observe it on thursday and as you know in the state of israel and many places in the u.s and other countries the day before yo matsumot is yomasi caron a day that we remember the sacrifices of those who gave their lives for this country and for the jewish people particularly in the army but not only in the army although all of the different people that have died for medinak israel and for ami israel and this is something that i hope very much should not depend on one's political or even religious ideology people that have sacrificed their lives for the jewish people are in a very very special position in allah and in fact there's a famous story with the zaman arabic who had his yeshiva in by it fagan kotori maya pagan and bhai began is right near mount turtle the military cemetery and one of zalman's tall medium told him he was going to spots up north to daven at the graves of the tsadikim the arizal ravios the great great sadiq and spot so if zalman arbach said i don't know why you have to travel so far whenever i feel the urge to pray at the grave of ethic i go to the military cemetery at mount turtle and i pray by the cover of a young man or woman who gave their lives for the jewish people and they are righteous saintly people in whose merits brachos will come to chloe's room now there are different versions of the story some say he even said it if the soldier was not religious others say a religious soldier i i don't want to take a definitive position on that because i i i cannot vouch for the different versions of the story but the overall idea that ahayal that died from medinat israel is considered to be a righteous person who died al-kinashashem was affirmed by uh a goddaughter who was you know very much a haredi guttel uh a gundle of israel in a most traditional way and this is a philosophy that i think all of us have to embrace uh and uh one of the reflections that all of us must have on both yamazi quran and anya mahatsma is an overwhelming sense of gratitude gratitude of course to the almighty first and foremost that after almost 2 000 years the jews are enabled to come back to this holy place and this special place and also gratitude to all who create the infrastructure you know obviously we know there's a tremendous amount of attention between religious and secular in israel we fight over a lot of things but even as a religious person i have to look at whether it's the army whether it's the police whether it's the fire whether it's the janitors the maintenance people whatever it is they create an infrastructure that allows the flourishing of the religious and torah life that we do have and as a result we owe identify correct itself to all who have created the environment that allows us to live and accomplish whatever it is that we do accomplish and i've quoted this pussac numerous numerous times so forgive me for for repeating it but it is a present in mishlai kamayam upon him upon him as water reflects the face that you show the water so too the heart of man reflects that which you show it i look at some water reflects back my face i see the face that i show the water i show the water a smiling face it greets me with a smile so too the heart of man reflects back that's which we show it if i can show my fellow jew even if he's secular even if he's far from talking i can show him a sense that i appreciate where he's coming from i appreciate his contribution to ami israel and not israel then he will appreciate our contribution from the religious angle and the like and the other way around if i look at my fellow jew with denigration and beetle nullification he will look at me in the very same way i mean part of why we never really get resolution of religious and secular issues is that the nature of political discourse in israel and lots of religious secular this is true on all levels is demonization of the other side that is not your side meaning it's not simply a question that the other side is wrong but the other side is abysmally ignorant evil like whatever whatever it is well obviously if i'm going to be called on my leg i'm going to look at the other side in kind of the same way they may use a different vocabulary i may say parasite you call me a molecule i'll call you parasite you know whatever the religious secular is and the impasse never gets broken and part of why that is so is kamayam upon him upon him the face that we show the other is the face that we're going to get back and therefore we have to break that impasse in one way or the other and i think you must see quran where we remember the sacrifices of those who gave their lives for the jewish people and yamaha smooth again whether you have music or not there are halachic issues about the omer and yomatsumata you know obviously one should follow whatever sock their rav or their posik gives them i'm not going to get into he'll quote yamaha's mode that there itself is an interesting issue with bracha without baraka okay you know these are issues that have to be handled by various pisces but the overall notion of gratitude to god i think is kind of a non-negotiable norm in terms of what we look at and gratitude not only to god of course especially to god but to the human beings that work so hard to create the blessed environment that hashem has given us after almost 2 000 years of not really being able to have a jewish state you know it's interesting that the rambam says in hilf chanukah that the holiday of chanukah was established it's very very fascinating if you ask anybody they'll talk about rededication of the temple they'll talk about the miracle of the candles the rambam says it's an amazing rambam actually that the holiday of chanukah was established because it celebrates the re-establishment of jewish sovereignty over the land of israel and that was the occasion to make a holiday now keep in mind that the hasmonean monarchy was largely not a righteous monarchy they were persecutors of the persecutors of the sages i mean you might say why am i celebrating that so what you see from the ramban perhaps is that jewish sovereignty is something to celebrate even if your government is not always going to be so pro torah that's regrettable and sad when that's not the case but there's still a cause for celebration something you think about uh does that rambam connect to you matsumoto i think i think that it does but again you know in the united states one of the main interviews if any of you ever want to uh apply for a rabbinical position be forewarned that one of the common questions uh in the interview process particularly in my modern orthodox synagogues is what's your position on yo matsumoto so for now i will plead the fifth or at least i've retired from the active rabbinates i don't have to give you a whole talk about it maybe some other time but as i say i think the issues of how well and not are actually secondary peripheral technical issues uh they should not be allowed to obscure the major point which is one of of gratitude and appreciation and that that is something that all of us must have so those kind of a preliminary point that i want to talk about and particularly uh yomazi karan i guess i should say that our learning should be dedicated lizzie caron elizabeth for those who gave their lives for ami israel and died we appreciate their sacrifice and we look up to them as as people who were committed to a cause that was greater than their own individual selves and were willing to give up their lives for something that was greater may their memory be a blessing now the topic i wanted to talk about today is connected to the parsha and the parsha really has two topics both of which are very very interesting and in fact i'm a little misup as to which to talk about maybe i'll try to talk about a little bit about both of them uh the first is a shorter discussion about childbirth a woman that gives birth to a child and then we move into the labyrinth complexities of the laws of leprosy which is one of the most complicated uh halachic structures in the entire torah it's quite amazing it's been pointed out that you know the main institutions of judaism like shabbos and tatras are dealt with in relatively anita roth family purity are relatively few verses when we come to sauras the torah seems to go on and on and on and on with so much detail it's really very fascinating uh but the common denominator between yoladet which is a woman that gives birth to a child and sarat is both of them are under the paradigm of what are called the laws of tumor the laws of impurity they are illustrations of concepts of tumor so let me just spend a few moments talking about the concept of tumor right tumor certain things are tome translated typically as impure certain states are tar pure and reception of al hirsch points out that tuma is primarily connected to death in all of its forms now this is not so obvious obviously a lot of tumor comes from death the paradigmatic case which is not dealt with in these particles is tumat mate a dead corpse a corp that corpse is always dead a corpse conveys impurity okay that's budget dead animals unless they're shepherded they're chef that if you eat a hamburger you're not tummy if it's a culture hamburger uh a schected animal does not a schected culture animal does not convey impurity but a dead animal that either a kosher animal that wasn't shakti people don't realize this you touch a non-kosher steak and there's no there's no sin you're committing but you actually become ritually tame that's called the tumor of navella the difference between tomato mess a corpse tuma and tomat navaila animal tuma is tu matamat is seven days you tell me for seven days to bail is only one day so there is a difference in in tumor so those are obviously connected to death but some of the others are less obvious if a man has a seminal emission he is tame for one day well where's the death there well it's potential death because the seamen could have gone to produce a life it didn't there's a form of death a woman is anita she is tamaya the feminine well where's the death well the shedding of the uterine lining uh is uh a potential pregnancy that could have it could have nurtured a pregnancy which it did not leprosy sarat is a form of death because once again the flesh gets consumed right everything with sora a misogyny a leper is considered like a dead person so all of tuma is connected to death although i'll get to childbirth in a moment now tuma doesn't exclude you from that much i mean after all all of us are considered tommy today we've been in cemeteries and we don't have the red heifer to purify us we're tami well so what a tummy person can dive in a tummy person can learn a tummy person can go to show a tummy person does all the commandments okay so what is the significance of being tummy really there's only two significant disabilities of being tame one is you're not allowed to eat the corbanos when you're in the state of tuma or truma anything holy like truma if you're calling corbanos which we don't do today and the other is you're not allowed to enter the temple area now there's lokas what part of the temple mount is the temple mount et cetera so that's why there's an argument but certainly it is indisputed that there are going to be portions of the temple mount that we cannot enter today because we're in a state of tune so tuma is what you might call a disability it disables you from entering the temple and it disables you from partaking of corbanos and refersh points out that this stems from the connection of tuma and death because tuma is always connected to death death comes when we violated god's word and we were expelled from the garden of eden the earthly analog of the garden of eden is the basa mikdash so when we encounter death we are reconnecting to adam's sin and we have to be expelled from the temple grounds because the temple grounds is the garden of eden in which death does not allow us to partake that's the basic idea of tuma tuma is a reconnection in a negative sense to the sin of adam and therefore the consequence of that reconnection to that sin is the expulsion from the holy abode of god until we become pure that's the basic idea now based on this paradigm though there's something a little peculiar and that is one of the categories of tuma that the torah recognizes is a woman who gives birth to a child a woman who gives birth to a child is tamaya now this is interesting it depends if she gives birth to a boy or a girl if she gives birth to a boy she is tamaya for 40 days if she gives birth to a girl she is tamaya for 80 days now just to clarify this a little bit there are two different levels of tuma in operation here there is the tumor that prohibits her to her husband and there is the tuma that prohibits her to the temple so let me just clarify this with respect to the husbands if she gives birth to a boy she is tamaya for seven days and for a girl she is tamiya for 14 days so the tumor number one which is the prohibition to her husband is a seven and fourteen meaning after seven days of a boy she can go to the mikvah and resume relations with her husband after 14 days from the birth of a girl she could go to the mikvah and resume relations with her husband by the way let me point out that bismarck has that is almost never the case because a woman is still bleeding so typically a woman after childbirth does not go to the mixer for maybe up to six weeks five or six weeks so the seven and the fourteen are almost never applied but they're in the books but after the seven and fourteen for an additional 33 days 33 and 7 is 40 for a boy and an additional 66 days for a girl that's a total of 80. she cannot go into the temple nor can she eat sacrificial food so in terms of her exposure from the temple it is a 40 80 as opposed to a 7 14. the 7 14 is with respect to her husband the 40 80 is with respect to the base on mikdash and at the end of that time she brings a sacrifice so she's considered to be tamaya now the question is if the definition of tuma is some type of connection to death then why would a woman who gives birth to a child be tamaya in that sense it's the other way around she has brought life into the world not death so there are a few things to keep in mind first of all you got to keep in mind that the halacha that a woman has the tumor of a yoladas is even if there was a stillbirth so in some cases indeed there is death but that's not really a full answer because okay she's tame when there's a stillbirth but she's also to me when there's a live birth so you really haven't fully answered the question but do keep in mind that in some cases of yoladets uh stillbirths will in fact be there but the other thing is that once again with repurchase paradigm we can fit this in pretty well because references point is that reconnection with death reconnects us to the sin of other marisha and therefore we need to be expelled from the garden of eden well keep in mind that when a woman goes through the pains of labor she is also reconnecting to the sin of adam and because one of the punishments of that sin was in pain shall you give birth to your child so once again childbirth always recalls the faith of adam and khaba and therefore there is that reenactment of that sin there is that expulsion from the garden of eden right that's i think it actually fits the paradigm very well but jeff hirsch himself says another thought that is actually very very um unusual maybe counter-intuitive he says that even the birth of a child is a form of death because the life that was within the mother's body is no longer there in other words there was a life in her this life is not there you know it's interesting la havdale um charles dickens writes i mean love told me whether he wasn't jewish obviously in his introduction to david copperfield he writes about books are like children and when you finish a book it's like you're sending your child out into the world but when you send your child out into the world there's a certain sadness that you're no longer connected in the same intimate way right there's always kind of that you know we want our kids to grow up we want their kids to become independent right even when a parent sends their child to the first day of school first day of haider maybe they're relieved they finally got him out of the house that night that might be some but there's a certain sadness you know we're not going to have that same connection that we have which means as every stage of life it's a very profound observation in every stage of life there is kind of a death of that old familiarity that you had because you're going on to something new so sir first says that birth is in effect a death experience because the life that was within the woman's body is no longer there and with this referesh even explains the very very interesting anomaly of why is the tumor period which i had not yet explained why is it double for a girl over a boy for a girl it's 80 days for a boy it's 40 days because rehearse says if we look at the idea that birth equals death then you can understand that when a girl is born there's more than one death happening because here's the difference you know there's a difference between boys and girls a girl is born with her ovaries already there all the eggs that she will ovulate produce in her lifetime are already in her body so in a sense within every girl is not only the girl's own life but all of the potential life that she would be able to produce that's not true for a boy because a newborn baby doesn't have sperm yet sperm is not produced until around puberty or whatever it is therefore with a girl there's the notion of a double death in fact you should know that aborted fetuses can sometimes be the source of egg donation you can actually harvest eggs from aborted fetuses and use them in fertility treatments i'm not discussing a lot i'm just telling you medically what can be done which actually means that a child that was never born into this world could actually be the mother potentially of thousands and thousands of offspring uh so like who was your grandmother well she was never born you know she never existed but she was the source of life right that that's how it is so that's a little bit of what you need to know about the laws of yolanda that in the time of the basa miktash ayolandez brought a corban on day 41 after the birth of a boy and on day 81 after the birth of a girl now all right so we explained why there's tumor right why there's impurity but why is there corban after all not every tumor has korban for example the tumor of of touching a human corpse i'm tummy for seven days i got to be sprinkled with the ashes of the red heifer but i don't have to bring a corbett too much mace doesn't have a cordon so why a corban so the logical answer you might give is well a carbon for a woman in childbirth is a thanksgiving corbin a corbin soda not true first of all that obviously wouldn't work for a stillbirth but even for a live birth the carbon is not a todah the a korban is a sin offering why is sin offering well one possibility would be once again that the travail of labor is a reconnection to the sin of other marijuana but rashi brings a more pragmatic reason that the torah was concerned that a woman going through labor might have sworn in her pain she'll never do this again and that's an improper oath so she has to bring a carbon to a tone for her swearing that i'm never going to go through this uh through this again right so so therefore it's a corbin and a burnt offering it is not a corbin toad it is not a thanksgiving thanksgiving offering okay so that was the first uh topic i wanted to talk about briefly just to familiarize uh yourself with it and again let me just repeat that the rule in the torah that after seven days after the birth of a boy the woman can go to the mikvah and the man can have relations and for a girl 14 days is not is largely not practiced today simply because generally speaking a woman is still bleeding from childbirth after that point and she cannot count her seven days until after the bleeding stopped so so practically the seven and the fourteen are not observed uh bismarck bisman has that but again theoretically they are in the torah in fact i don't want to get too technical uh under the torah even if she's bleeding after the 7 and you could resume intercourse with her because that blood does not have the status of nida blood that's very unique the blood of the 33 days after the seven or the 66 days after the 14 has a very unique status that is called dam tohar blood of purity it does not carry the status of menstruation of neither but the rama already records that we treat it like needle bleeding and therefore we don't allow mikvah till that blood stops so that the law of damtor is really why it takes so long until a woman after childbirth goes to the mikvah because we've essentially abolished muhammad because of confusion it's like a fence around the torah so people shouldn't get confused with regular anita we do not follow the leniency of dam tohar bisman okay now the next subject which the torah devotes not only the rest of the parsha most of the parsha but also even the next persia uh is the institution of saras now i've been i've been using saras i've been calling saras uh leprosy but you understand yeah okay but you understand that leprosy is not really an accurate translation there is a disease in modern times well it's not called leprosy that much but it was called leprosy now it's called hansen's disease but the leprosy of uh that's the modern medical condition does not at all correspond with what the torah calls leprosy in fact the closest disease to sauro arts is psoriasis it even sounds kind of the same and there is indeed a condition there sarat is a skin condition uh and it has various parameters it has to be a white whitish color and it has to be a certain size etc but it's very very clear that although saras is a physical condition it is not a medical problem it is a spiritual problem saras was given to a thrust can exist on three entities there of the person there's the saras of the house kind of a mold on the house and then there's the saras of big on garments and each of them have their own complicated procedure for how do you ascertain their impurity and how do you rectify and purify and the light and khazal tell us that saras is a special form of divine punishment for various abyros sarat of the person comes because of lashon the evil things you say about other people that the word mitzso is [Music] he says bad things about others so lash and hara was the primary reason why there was saras of the person greed and selfishness is why there's saras of the house because you're hiding your possessions from charity and the light when your house gets surround you have to remove all your possessions and expose them to the outside and gaza arrogance is saras of the garments because clothing is often a way that we exhibit arrogance so in a sense the ramban points out a very interesting observation that saras is a gift of god giving you feedback as to what you need to correct in your life and that's why he says saras correlates with prophecy but now it's not a prophecy we want to get but when prophecy lapsed in obvious realm we don't have saras either so today we don't have ceres we can have psoriasis we could have dandruff we could have different conditions but halachically it's not saras because saras as a special divine message correlates with navula you know i taught law school for many years now in law school unlike many college courses you only give one exam at the end of a semester sometimes at the end of the year there is no feedback in the middle of a course and one of the frustrations that students always have is they'd like a little feedback they'd like to know how they're doing they'd like to know because if they don't really know what their problems are until the very end of the course they don't have a way of correcting it at that point right so people urge give quizzes every week or whatever it would be and sometimes in spiritual life we wish god would just tell us if hashem would tell me what i need to do that would be wonderful a little guidance a little feedback saurus was that feedback and you know if you went to a novi or whatever it is it could be fine-tuned exactly what what needed to be corrected so therefore saras was actually a gift that's why it only existed in heritage israel there was no institution of saras outside of israel that's why it only exists when there's prophecy etc now in saras in fact the ramban who himself was a great doctor the rambam proves that soras is not a medical problem you see you you might be tempted to look at it as an early way especially with covet as an early way of dealing with communicable disease because one of the things that the mitsura is is quarantined so you might figure ah we're dealing with ah amazing the torah understood contagious diseases and prescribed a ritual of quarantine so that actually might be a way of looking at it but the rambam who himself was a great doctor refused to accept a medical paradigm for suras because he argued number one that the sarasota of the torah is not contagious it is simply a spiritual i mean maybe it's contagious spiritually that you could pick up bad habits but saras itself is not contagious number two uh the one that decides all the issues of saras is a calling not a doctor cohen is a religious official and number three he points to an interesting anomaly which wouldn't make sense in a disease paradigm that the mishna says in massachusetts negan which is a whole tract date dealing with saras that there are certain times of year that if somebody exhibits these symptoms of a method the koala does not declare him to be a mitsura because that would ruin the it mentions let's assume that a person is celebrating numbed up with his family and all of a sudden he notices a white splotch on his skin the cohen is not supposed to declare him even sora till after the young tough is over the same thing is true if he's a son or a talmud who gets married and it's during the seven days of rejoicing he or she because a woman could be a macerator like miriam sees the white splotch the koa does not declare them on the tsara till after the shabba brachos not to take away the symbol now the roundabout makes the paw if you're talking about contagious diseases then this is a danger to people how can you allow this to exist but if you understand that the quarantine here is not a medical emergency quarantine it is a penance and a punishment for spiritual reflection okay so we can push it off a little bit we could say okay we're going to get to it but we don't have to do it right now because there's a mitzvah so because of all of this the rambam says that the whole ritual of mitsura is not a medical procedure at all it is about spiritual reflection and in particular the idea of the quarantine that for a period of time he has to be isolated from people is that a person should introspect and understand the devastating power of words people say lashanara and they think as just idle gossip but the leshanhara can destroy lives lashanara can break spirits and we want the masari to understand how devastating hara is by making him suffer a certain isolation and a certain stigma also it's mila can i get me them because if he thinks oh community is not important so what i broke up something big deal let him experience what it's like to be isolated and lonely and then he'll understand the old saying well there's an old saying that's not true sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me but in reality it's often the opposite the bones that the sticks and stones break can often heal especially when you're younger right the bones are better shaped but the hurt of the words can remain your whole life i remember years ago seeing an interview with richard nixon now richard nixon had already resigned the presidency of the united states because of watergate at least the older folk remember this so he's been he went through the ringer i mean he was president uh for one and a half terms i mean he went through major major experiences of the 20th century and he was talking about playground taunts when he was in sixth grade that he still remembers hurting him i mean how many it's really scary you think about this how many decisions of world leaders world leaders life and death are being made because they have a certain anger or resentment over the way they were treated in fourth grade this is not as absurd as it sounds and it may not be a conscious thing this president doesn't say i'm going to bomb this country because you know somebody hurt me in fourth grade that's not the way it works but personalities are formed by these types of experiences and that has real world repercussions in real time the rest of one's lives so the mitsira suffers isolation and quarantine number one because he is a danger to the public he's a cancer that we want to both ways we want to protect the public from him that's one aspect and number two we want him to understand that words create divisions and let him feel what it's like to be separated now it's also the case that the missouri has to spend a lot of time with a cohen because a cohen represents the media of our own our own is o haev shalom ferro de follow the lover of peace the pursuer of peace you see the ideal of judaism is not to be quiet this was an interesting story you know the time the great happy time where we saw mayor cohen who died in 1933 wrote the book literally on permissible gossip not permissible gospel the laws of los angeles whole book it's amazing that we have whole halachus of los angeles and uh there was a man who wanted to visit the habitat to see how righteous he was and was a talkative person he would say a lot he would talk about torah and stories and musa and ideas and had a son-in-law who was such a saint he would never say a word he would be quiet all the time so the guest remarked later that he was initially much more impressed with the son-in-law than he was with the time because had such years shamayim not to say anything improper that he didn't say anything at all seems to be very casual but then he realized that that was part of the greatness here you know god gave us speech god gave us the ability to communicate god doesn't want us to simply allow that capacity to atrophy so what's the message the message is not suppress your speech and be silent but use your words for good and positive ways use your words for torah use your words to build people up use your words to give people courage and and confidence don't use your words to destroy says death and life are in the hands of the tongue that means the things you say can kill you the things you say can give you life but it's not just physical life and death but spiritually our words can kill people our words can crush people and our words can build people up it's an amazing thing you know especially as parents certainly anyone that's a parent has to be very very cognizant of how a harsh word could destroy a child and in marriage could also you know destroy a spouse in various ways got to be careful about this so that we want the material to hang around the kahane who at least in theory exemplifies the ohiv shalom for rhodef showman okay so now what i want to trace is masaira is very very complex because there are many types i've already mentioned saras of the person saras of the garment saras of the house within soras of the person there are many types there is the saras on the skin there's saras on the hair there's saras where there's a burn or a bruise which has slightly different kawakus and all of these have different waiting periods and the like and it's uh it's really a labyrinth it would be impossible to go through all of these but what i want to go through in a little bit of detail see how much time i have yeah i'll have to do it a little quickly is i want to go through the most common leprosy and that is simply called sarat or habbassar sarat on the flesh that means it's not from a burn and it's not from a bruise and it's not in a hairy area it's simply a splotch that's on the skin and i want to go over the process in a little bit of detail so you'll understand what it is and then maybe try to offer a symbolic meaning of what it represents the person wakes up one morning and he sees on his hand let's say a white splotch so he doesn't know what it is he is holleringly obligated to go to a college who will determine whether this is halachic leprosy or not so his first kiev is go to the cohen to check it out again he will not have to do this during yomtov or shabbos or shava brachas but in a regular day he goes to the coming the kauai checks it and if the cohen is not it's only he may have to get a israel to guide him but the calling has to be the postsec here even if he's getting his input from the israel the coloring checks two things is it the requisite shade of white because it has to be a certain shade of white and there are many different gradations and is it a certain size it has to be the size of a big beam assuming oh so one second so if it doesn't meet the color standard or the size standard end of story it's not soras go home nothing has to be done but let's assume that it meets the size and the color standard so at that point the colleen quarantines the man for seven days okay the man has to be quarantined for seven days at the end of the seventh well actually on the seventh day the calling checks now if one or one of three things happens he is then declared to be an absolute messiah those are called simonim signs of impurity either the nega has grown bigger that's called pisayon or the nega has a black hair in it that turned white actually two black hairs that turned white that's called sarlavan or and this is a little counter-intuitive if in the middle of the mega there's developed a patch of clear skin that's a semitone so if on day seven one of those three things has happened to the nega he has now declared a permanent it's not a permanent he's declared a definitive missile and he remains in quarantine until the nega goes away that could be a week that could be a month that could be a day but until it goes away and after it goes away he counts seven days and brings carbohydrates what if on day seven you don't have those three signs of tumor so he then remains in quarantine for another seven days and then you check for those three signs and if he has any one of those three signs then he is upgraded or downgraded to a definitive missile he's tame until the nega goes away counts seven days brings a corbett what if however at the end of the second seven day period he still has its arrests he still has its arrests but he doesn't have one of the si monet tuma he goes home he goes home okay he has to bring uh birds he has to be somewhat of a sacrifice but he doesn't have to be in quarantine anymore so essentially the way this works is that saras initially causes a quarantine but he doesn't get upgraded to a definitive mitsara unless there are one of three simanetuma on either day seven or day thirteen the reason the reason i say day thirteen is because when you count the second seven days you count day seven as day one of the next seven days so it's day seven day day thirteen okay so if he has the simone tuma on either day seven or day 13 he remains a leper until the nega goes away and he counts seven days and brings corbett three corbanos if he doesn't have a symmetoma he actually goes home even if he still has the actual surress so this is a complicated paradigm this is only one of the many types of suras but i want to in the few minutes we have i want to explain a symbolic meaning of how you understand this here is the idea the masara gets the saras because god says you have some spiritual work to do you have to reflect you have to think you have to introspect you have to do chuva and you need to be in isolation to give you that time to reflect and also as i said before to realize the magnitude of what you did to hurt people and to also isolate you from spreading your poisonous venom in the community so you know how dangerous flesh and heart is to spiritual integrity so when a person goes through introspection one of the things that happens is we often have defense mechanisms like you know if i'm supposed to look at the things i've done that are incorrect so it's human nature that i look for various excuses and the simone tuma is a physical sign that your introspective process is defective and you need to go back if you don't have a semen tumor that means your process is going okay so even though you still have the negative you still have the sin we can let you finish the process at home that's the basic idea the semen tumor is a sign that you're not ready for outpatient treatment you've got to remain in the quarantine environment now what are the defense mechanisms that we have so one might enumerate three of them and each of them correspond to the sim and tumor defense mechanism number one that a person might have is denial i did nothing wrong yeah i said lesnar about the guy number one the guy is a bum of course that's not a hatred per se number two it's the truth that's also not a hector but people said everything i said was true number three he deserved it number four he talks bad about me these are mechanisms in which i didn't do anything wrong i don't acknowledge to myself responsibility for my decision denial what is an english term that we use for denial white washing so the first cement tumor is of course because we have a hair but let's say you have something where you have hair is when the black hair turns white so that is what god is saying hey you you're not ready to go home you're living in a state of denial you have not yet acknowledged your hate go back in there think about it somewhere so sar lavan is a semen of tumor because it connotes that you are in a state of denial not taking responsibility for your hate because you're not acknowledging it again we're not talking about acknowledging it to other people but you haven't acknowledged it to yourself you haven't been honest with yourself that's the siloam now there's another defense mechanism that a person has which actually works in the opposite direction there may be such a hyper awareness of guilt that the person is immobilized and fields they are not capable of getting better why should i even try to do juva i am so addicted to my average that i've reached a point of no return this is actually the opposite of denial denial is when the person paints a picture that there's nothing wrong in what i did the second stage is where a person is so overwhelmed with the guilt of what they did that they feel there is no hope of changing that is the second symentoma which means the nega grew bigger as if to say i've sinned and i'll keep on doing it because that's just the way i am it says by other mauritian that when other mauricio when god asked adam a reason why did you eat from of course god god knows the reason but he's entering into a conversation why did you eat from the tree the fruit of the tree that i told you not to eat from so the measure says that adam said to god i ate and i'll eat again so that's kind of shockingly disrespectful i didn't i'll do it again but i've always felt that i understand this statement not as a defiance statement but there's a statement of infinite pain i messed up and i'll keep on doing it because i don't know how to stop i'm out of control so that is symbolized by the expansion of the mega the rat just grows bigger so once again hashem's message is go back and think about that life is not hopeless you're a free agent you have the capacity to make things better things don't have to be bad just because they're bad now so that's the second message now the third message or the third defense mechanism is a little different it's not denial in which i convince myself i'm right and it's not the hopelessness of being overwhelmed with despair but it is what you might call emotionally distancing i don't allow myself to think about it maybe because it'll be too painful i just don't want to think about it that's kind of emotional distance obliviousness that's symbolized by the middle of the rat is surrounded by clear clean flesh as if to say you don't allow that awareness to penetrate your inner consciousness once again the message that god says is go back and think about it so now it's a beautiful thing that the semane tuma just as the saras indicated a sin that needs introspection this simone tuma tell the person are you really committed to this process the white hair or the two white hairs actually means you're living in denial the expansion of the nega the fact that it grew a little bigger means you have a sense of hopelessness and despair and the misha mithya means the clear flesh in the middle indicates emotional distancing you're simply not thinking about this you're not allowing it to penetrate your consciousness you're surrounded by rock but you're not letting it go into your heart and therefore go back into quarantine masha ainken if after two weeks he doesn't have the sim and tumor he still has the mega there's still work to do but god says you're doing the process correctly you can do the work at home you can finish the work at home you don't need to be committed to the institution so to speak right so that's kind of a way of symbolically understanding the process of of the of the tsaras okay so as i say this is only one type of the saras but uh hopefully it'll give you a little bit of of an understanding and i think i also find that if a person sometimes has a symbolic understanding it's easier to remember the details as well so that's kind of a nice benefit because otherwise we just the details of saras just pass through our heads and we don't really picture it well but if you have a sense of the meaning that it might have so you can remember the details a little bit more so anyway i want to wish everyone a khodeshtov and uh yamasi karon hopefully we should again think about the sacrifices of eric israel yo matsumut we should be grateful for hashem's blessings and then the month of the year generally may be a month of ani hashem hashem or your healer maybe a month of refuge or foreign israel and for the whole world so thank you for coming [Music] foreign