by Rabbi Avi Billet
Someone commented online that for the first time, rabbis will have something to relate the parsha to, with so many people experiencing isolation. It’s certainly a cute comment, but I don’t think it’s particularly true. The experience of the Metzora is a far cry from what we are doing. Honestly, for us to really experience the Metzora we’d have to have true isolation – no phone, no Zoom, no facetime, no posting or commenting on things on the Internet. And we’d have to not be living at home with our family – but instead be in a tent on the outskirts of town.
And honestly, the Lashon Hora is still going on. Nasty posts online, nasty comments, calling anyone in government that we don’t agree with names, or people in other (or our own) Jewish communities names. We justify it all, of course, because we are right, and THEY ARE WRONG, and their wrongness MUST be called out!
Actually, the opposite is true. The lesson of Tazria-Metzora and of Lashon Hora is to hold your tongue, and now your fingers on a keyboard, and choose instead to do whatever is possible to uplift and inspire. If you follow or listen to people on the Internet who do not uplift and inspire, and who foment hatred towards others, or who call those they disagree with names, it is time to stop following those people. As we are finding, life is too short to be dominated by those who are not lifting us up and inspiring us.
More to the point indicated in the title – the parsha begins telling us about when a woman gives birth. If it’s a boy, “On the eighth day he is to be circumcised.” (12:3) Note how the Torah does not say to spend $20,000 serving mountains of food (where the extras will go to waste), hiring a DJ, hiring a photographer and videographer – it says only to circumcise the child.
Far be it from me to tell people how their money should be spent. And certainly there is great merit to honoring a mitzvah such as Bris Milah. Particularly when we consider the sacrifice that many Jews in history had to undergo to make sure to maintain Bris Milah in our ranks, it is entirely understandable why some of us would go more than all out to celebrate and to honor the bris. (Note how a distinction is being made between honoring the mitzvah, and celebrating the birth. Anyone can (and should!) make an appropriate celebration of the birth of a girl as well as a boy. The bris celebration is a celebration of a great mitzvah, and not the celebration of the birth of a boy specifically.)
Do we honor other mitzvahs that we had to sacrifice to maintain in the same way we honor Bris Milah? If we do – wonderful. If we don’t, why don’t we? And if we shouldn’t, then why is this mitzvah honored more than others? While I don’t have the answer to that question, I can share with you a powerful lesson I have seen in the last few weeks.
Because of quarantining, brisses are taking place in private. Family may be on Zoom, but the only people present at the bris are the immediate family and the mohel. “And on the eighth day, he is circumcised.” Just like the Torah says. No bagels, no blintzes, no omelet stations, no French toast, no salads, cheesecakes, no mini pastries, no cappuccino stations.
Sometimes, simplicity is the most beautiful celebration of all. Parents are finding that the joy in having the simcha comes less from being a host to a party that is over in an hour, but in realizing that we are doing this – even in privacy – because we are part of the Jewish people. That realization gives us strength, and brings a kind of joy that is often lost amid the pomp. People are still sharing their simcha! But then they turn off the computer, and bask in the joy that comes from being surrounded by those who need to share this moment together most of all: Mother, Father, their other children, and God, to Whom we owe the gratitude of all joy we experience in our lives.
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