Today's Torah portion opens with the ritual implications of childbirth: "When a woman gives birth to a male..."  The miracle of birth, that human beings can produce life together is itself a significant religious event, often the closest a person comes to feeling God's presence in an immediate and overwhelming way.  That kind of miracle, poised on the border between life and death, divine and human, makes us question the basic assumptions of what it means to be human: what does it mean to be a man or a woman?   Read more...

Our ancestors, like others in the ancient Near East, suffered from frequent eruptions of a variety of skin diseases, called 'tzara'at.' Many of these 'leprosies' were quite severe, and they carried a severe social stigma in every culture in the ancient world. Countless stories in the Bible and the Talmud attest to the dread consequences of this illness and the devastation it could bring into the lives of individuals, families and communities. Read more...