Parashat Tazria-Metzora – Patience, empathy and care

Hope you had a fantastic week! Friday April 28, at the regular time of 7:00 PM we’ll have our song filled and inspiring Kabalat Shabbat.

Shabbat morning services as per our schedule of second and fourth shabbats are on the following dates – May 13, May 27, June 10, June 24, July 8 and 22, August 12 and August 26.

Sunday Funday this Sunday April 30 at 10 AM. NOW enrolling for next year! Tell your friends about our one of a kind school, where children learn in a natural and holistic way and always with yidishkeit ! Our team of teachers and clergy is unbelievable and the children truly develop a love of Judaism.

We would also like to sincerely acknowledge Tam for her amazing gardening class with the kids last week and Joakin and Yesenia on the stellar job they did beautifying the front yard.
We are having a class on leading Mussaf, the additional prayers following the morning shabbat and festival services. The first class will start on Wednesday May 3 at Beth El at 7:00 PM and be taught by Cantor Ben-Moshe. The class is open to all so please let us know if you are interested and let your friends know.

Our Annual Meeting is Sunday May 21 at 4 PM. Come be a part of this beautiful congregation and find out all the latest happenings. See why people view this shul as a family and community of caring people. Everyone makes a difference!

Professor Ami Pedahzur Special shabbat speaker Friday May 5!

Come and hear Professor Pedahzur who will give a fascinating talk about his latest research into the Six Day War in Israel on it’s 50th anniversary. You will be sure to hear some amazing and little known facts and definitely be inspired. Professor
Pedhazur is the Arnold S. Chaplik professor in Israel and Diaspora Studies and
Professor in Government at the University of Texas.

Candle lighting in Austin is at 7:49 PM

Friday January 6, Rabbi Daniel Septimus CEO of the Austin JCC will likewise be our guest speaker at Beth El.

Cantor Ben Moshe’s Message

This week we read the double parshot of Tazri’ah/M’tzora’ which talks about the disease of Tzara’at, usually translated as leprosy. Our Sages interpreted this disease as a punishment for lashon hara’, speaking ill of someone. This disease was actually regarded as somewhat of a blessing-it was an immediate outward sign of one’s wrongdoing, which could then be atoned for and corrected. Too often, we are unaware that we ourselves are engaging in lashon hara’, and blind to the damage that our words can cause. Let us rather engage in lashon hatov-good speech. May our words only promote love and harmony among people. Shabbat Shalom and Hag Ha’atzmaut Sameah, Happy Israel Independence Day.

Hazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe

We certainly had a meaningful Earth Day last weekend at Sunday school. The children learnt how to rehabilitate plants with Ms. Tam and each child was given one to take home. They re potted, trimmed, planted herbs and really learnt a great deal. Huge Toda Raba to Ms. Tam for her time, donation of plants and amazing enthusiasm.

Parshat Tazria-Metzora: The burden and gift of empathy
BY RABBI NOAH ZVI FARKAS | APR 26, 2017 |

For the past eight years, I have led a study group for physicians. Every few months, we get together for good food, some wine (OK, lots of wine) and to discuss issues like medical ethics.
About three years ago, several of the sessions clustered on the idea of whether doctors could have empathy toward their patients. As one of the doctors wrote to me: “Can you (should you) act empathic when you don’t feel it? Is it okay not to feel it? How can you feel it in every encounter when you see 25 patients, one after the next, day after day?”
This week’s double portion, Parashat Tazria-Metzora, very subtly raises these same questions. Of all the weekly readings, these two in the book of Leviticus are by far the most medical, dealing with topics like afterbirth, seminal discharges, skin eruptions, burns and sores. How do we make sense of these conditions? How do the rabbis understand them?

To begin, it is necessary to make an apology. For hundreds of years, religious scholars and rabbis have associated the theology of sin and guilt with that of disease. Often, in order to make a moral point about gossip or some other social ill, rabbis link this section in Leviticus with the text in Deuteronomy where Miriam criticizes Moses and then is struck by a skin eruption. Their conclusion tells us that to be declared tameh (literally unclean) is the same as being unfit ethically. To be sick is to be wrong, and to be debilitated makes you an abomination to both your fellow human beings and to God.
When we graft morality too heavily onto purity and wellness, we cause more suffering while ignoring the sanctity of the sick. To be unclean is not to be immoral.
One does not have to go far to see the danger in this thinking. How many would-be mothers are made to feel that something is morally wrong with them if they cannot bear children? How many people who have cancer feel that it’s a punishment for some unknowable crime?
When we graft morality too heavily onto purity and wellness, we cause more suffering while ignoring the sanctity of the sick.
Learning with my congregation’s doctors made it clear to me that they share much with the ancient priests of Israel, actually. The priests of our far-reaching past were twice burdened, first by God to be the caretaker of the Divine-human connection through the rituals of the Mishkan (Tabernacle), and again by the people themselves, who presented to the priest all manner of physical ailment. The same is true for the doctor who embodies the knowledge of science and then takes that knowledge and encounters real people.
Where they intersect the most is in the realm of human connection, the critical role of empathy. The parallels between doctoring and priestly work, the heady stuff of bearing witness to the most profound moments of human suffering, find their greatest expression in the empathic need for mutual recognition.
The word “patient” comes from the Latin meaning “to suffer.” The patient suffers and wants to be seen as a validated person in the eyes of the sacred authority. The priest/doctor can give validation through empathy, while feeling that they have been given a gift by being cum pati, with those who suffer, for their own life has been validated as consequential. Such is the dual gift-giving of being in service to one another and why the rabbis caution us to treat the sick with dignity and honor, for it is at the foot of their bed when we visit with care and love that God’s presence resides (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’ah 335).
Lastly, we know from Leviticus itself what role empathy plays out in the act of holiness. The central theme of the Holiness Code, found a few chapters later, is that empathy itself leads to holiness. “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) is one of the great cornerstones of Western morality.
This plays out nicely with those who have been healed from their sickness. After the priest sees them and welcomes them back to the community, a sacrificial rite is performed. The patient is brought to the literal center of the community and anointed in the same manner with the same rituals that anoint the High Priest over the people. Both priest and patient are bound together in this ritual of mutuality.
The ethical stance on sickness found in our Torah is not to see how the ill are immoral, but how those who suffer illness provoke us to become more moral by responding to their suffering in the same manner as the priest — with empathy, patience and care.