Parshat Tazria, (Leviticus 12:1-13:5), 3/23/14

My dad said you could never move too slowly. After working with this for a week with my students, I called my dad and told him we had it figured out. “What,” he said. “What you said...that we could never move too slowly.” “Oh,” he said. ”I've never heard anything so stupid.”

So what about this waiting period for woman? Is it too long? Is it moving slowly? What is the meaning of this parshah?

It is living life very precisely according to rules. The rules themselves are somewhere between ill-construed and foolish, but the consciousness and intentionality are important. Besides, women need time after childbirth to recover and to bond with their baby.

Levitcus 13 deals with skin diseases. Again it is about intentionality. There are reference to conditions that are skin deep and those that are deeper. When it is deeper the kohen pronounces him unclean. Is this a metaphor for our behavior?