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Tazria—Metzorah (When a Woman Delivers—The Leper) Parsha – Weekly Torah Portion

Leviticus, 12:1-13:59 – 14:1-15:33

This Week’s Torah Portion | March 23 – March 29, 2014 – Adar II 28 – Nisan 5, 5774

In A Nutshell

In the portion, Tazria (When a Woman Delivers), we learn about laws related to a woman who has delivered. If she delivers a boy, she is considered impure for seven days. On the eighth day the boy is circumcised and the woman begins a 33 day purification period. If the woman delivers a girl she is considered impure for fourteen days, and the purification period lasts 66 days.

The portion also details rules concerning afflictions. A person who is infected with something must come to the priest, who diagnoses the sore and knows the rules concerning each of them.

The portion, Metzorah (The Leper), is dedicated to the rules concerning leprosy, and what to do when one has been infected with it. A leper who has healed must be examined by the priest, then bring two birds. The priest slaughters one bird and dips the other in clean water.

The end of the portion discusses the impurity of nocturnal ejaculation and the rules concerning a woman in menstruation—anyone who touches her is impure until the evening.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

Why are the rules in the portions described in such detail?

The whole Torah is an instruction by which to correct our nature. Man was deliberately created with an egoistic desire; this is why we want everything for our own good, as it is written, “For the inclination of a man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis, 8:21). Creation itself is the evil inclination, the sum of our negative qualities. The inanimate nature, the vegetative, and the animate around us are completely neutral—neither good nor bad. It is managed by the laws of nature that act instinctively on all its elements.

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Glossary – Tazria—Metzorah (When a Woman Delivers—The Leper) Parsha – Weekly Torah Portion

A Woman in Labor

This is the will to receive that has received the power to develop and beget new acts of bestowal in every man.

Circumcision

The circumcision is a correction of a newly born desire. If it is a man, he must go through a special correction in his prevailing, to stop him from using his Sium, Yesod, in order to touch the Malchut where the greatest, and worst desires can be found, and which can be corrected only at the end of correction. Therefore, one who wishes to be Yashar El (straight to God, Israel), must make a circumcision, meaning limit ourselves from using the desire to bestow beyond the point of one’s Yesod. We also determine these signs as customs in our world.

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What are the Spiritual Worlds?

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains, that initially a single desire to receive was created, which as a result of the influence of the creating pure, bestowing force, evolved through four stages, until a raw desire is formed, which senses its total opposition to its source.

As a result of this unpleasant sensation of total opposition the desire restricts itself then builds a “self-control” structure, with a Rosh (head), with a single purpose, to direct its future development in a way of achieving full similarity with the source.

As soon add this “self-control” structure, called “the Partzuf,” is born, the system of “Creation,” begins to sort out the “unemployed” (non-similar, unable to bestow) desires on its waiting list, placing the weakest, easiest to handle desires at the top of the list, and the most intense, unruly ones at the bottom. Creation divides these desires into four categories, similar to the four stages in the evolution of desires. It refers to each category as an Olam (world), from the Hebrew word Haalama (concealment), since these desires must be kept separated and concealed from the lights until they can be operated correctly—with the aim to bestow. Thus, the desires with qualities most similar to Stage One are called “the world of Atzilut,” those most similar to Stage Two form “the world of Beria,” with those most similar to Stage Three forming “the world of Yetzira,” and those most similar to Stage Four becoming “the world of Assiya” (see diagram). For short, they are called “ABYA.”

When Kabbalists describe the spiritual realm—where desires work with the aim to bestow—they usually divide it into worlds and describe what happens in them (how desires actually receive). Therefore, they often refer to everything that precedes the worlds of ABYA as a world as well, and call it “the world of AK” (Adam Kadmon—the primordial man). In a way, the world of AK parallels the Root Stage, or Stage Zero, in the evolution of desires.

Note that our world is not mentioned among the spiritual worlds. Because our world is based on egoism, and the worlds in Kabbalah reflect levels of bestowal, our world is not considered part of the spiritual (with the aim to bestow) system.

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What Is a Partzuf?

In “What Are the Four Developmental Stages of the Primordial Desire in Creation?” we discussed the emergence of the desire to receive in Stage One, and the desire to give in Stage Two, as offshoots of the primordial desire to give in the Root. We also showed how because of its desire to give, the desire to receive was reactivated in Stage Three and maximized in Stage Four. Maximizing the desire to receive caused it to want not merely to enjoy, but to actually become like its progenitor—the Root Stage—and even to have the status of the Root Stage’s primacy. The subsequent realization that this was not (yet) possible induced a sense of inherent inferiority in Stage Four, which induced a restriction—elimination of any sensation of pleasure (light).

Also, because Stage Four’s real desire is for the Root’s primacy, it does not settle for the unbounded pleasure received in Stage One. Instead, it wishes to obtain the nature of the Root, the Thought of Creation, and consequently the Root’s primacy.

Thus, the elimination of pleasure in Stage Four is neither a result of its inability to receive, nor a consequence of the Root’s inability to give. The Root gives incessantly, but the desire to receive does not want to receive something as degrading as charity (as described by Ashlag in “The Giving of the Torah”). for this reason, because Stage Four wishes to acquire the giver’s thought and become like its Creator, its restriction is an offshoot of its decision to not receive unless with the intention to bestow, as this reciprocates the Creator’s desire to bestow.

 

The Structure of a Partzuf

To achieve that, Stage Four builds a three-part mechanism, called Partzuf (face), to determine if it should receive light, and if so, how much, with the aim to bestow at any given moment opportunity. The top section of the Partzuf is called Rosh (Head). Its task is to determine how much of the abundance (light) is to be received by the desire to receive. The desire to receive itself constitutes the bottom part of the Partzuf, which is called Guf (Body).

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What Are the Four Developmental Stages of the Primordial Desire in Creation?

In “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Baal HaSulam divides the onset of Creation into five stages and one restriction, but we can cluster them into three groups. Think of the first two groups as a car and the fuel for its engine, and imagine that the third group is the driver.

The first group contains only Stage Zero, the Root. This is the desire to give, the energy that creates and sustains the car called “Creation.”

The second group—Stages One and Two—builds a “platform” for evolution. This is the car itself. In a sense, the platform that the two stages have built resembles what Richard Dawkins described in The Selfish Gene as “The primeval soup,” the oceanic substrate that contained the ingredients for life’s inception.

The third group—Stages Three and Four—is “the driver.” Its role is to start the engine of evolution—the interaction between the desires. As we will explain below and in the next chapter, the restriction is the wheel with which creation is driven toward its purpose: discovering the Thought of Creation.

 

Stages Zero and One

In Kabbalistic terms, the existence of a desire to bestow without a desire to receive is called “the Root Stage” or “Stage Zero.” The Root Stage is immediately followed by its mandatory offshoot—“Stage One”—the desire to receive, which is permeated with the abundance given to it by the Root, the desire to bestow.

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