Noah was a righteous man of his generation. We don’t what others were like and if it is a compliment to Noah or that he was being compared to other biblical characters.  We do know that Noah did just as Gold commanded him to build an ark by precise dimensions 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high and to have the animals seven pairs of every clean animal and bird and two pairs of every other animal to keep their species alive onboard the ark with him. You can wonder if he, or his family members, felt remorse about those that were left behind. Noah could have told everyone to build their own ark, but we can only imagine about that and the impact if the ones that G-d wanted destroyed actually survived the great flood.

The rains fell for 40 days and 40 nights and then the water swelled for 150 days to flood the world. After 40 days Noah sent a raven and it returned. Then Noah sent a dove and the dove returned. Then after another 7 days the dove returned with an olive leaf. Then after another 7 days Noah sent the dove and it did not return indicating the ground had dried. So again Noah is relying on an animal, the dove for his safety to leave the ark.

Then G-d makes a covenant with Noah, his sons, and every living thing that never again would a flood destroy the earth. G-d set the rainbow in the clouds as the sign of G-d’s covenant with the earth.

There is a lot of symbolism in this portion 40 days and the number 40 is one of the mystical numbers and of course, the rainbow is always an eye catcher when we see one and has come to symbolize luck.  There are huge rains and floods that destroy homes and large areas, it is always a warning to heed when the weather report includes flooding being possible on roads.

I will end with a posting on Facebook this week called ‘Everything I need to know about life I learned from Noah’s Ark”. 1. Don’t miss the boat. 2. Remember that we are all in the same boat. 3. Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark. 4. Don’t listen to critics, just get on with the job that needs to be done. 5. Have a reliable source check if the coast is clear, only then proceed.

6^th Annual Kehillat Chaverim Blessing of the Animals – October 24, 2020

Eternal G_d, Creator of all life, help us to respect all your animal creations in our world.  Please guide us to protect the sanctity of all the animals in our homes and in our hearts.  Our G-d and G-d of our fathers, bless my wonderful and beloved___________ (pet’s name).  In animals we find great expressions of your love for us. Thank you for providing us with such great friends and loyal family members.  Our pets bring so much happiness to our homes, may they continue to have long, healthy, and happy lives.  Blessed are you Oh Lord, our G-d for creating all animals that have become such great pets, friends, and family members for us. Amen.

Covid-19

Let us also pray for the animals that are in homes where the owners have become ill with covid-19 and may not be able to care for their pet as well as usual. Also let us pray for those who have lost jobs or have reduced hours at work due to the pandemic and are unable to provide enough food for their pets.

Healing Prayer for Our Sick Pets

May the one who blessed our ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, bless our pets who are ill ________.  May the Holy One, source of all blessings, be filled with compassion for them, and grant healing and recovery, strength and fortitude.  May they receive a swift and complete healing from heaven, a healing of the soul and a healing of the body.  May this be soon and without delay and let us say:  Amen.

Memorial Prayer for our Departed Pets- Barkzheit

We would like to take this time to remember our beloved pets, devoted friends and loyal family members.  We have sadness in our hearts but also joy from our experiences with our pets. We are here to celebrate the lives of our pets. We remember the playful times, the quiet moments and the love we shared.  We spent many days together on long walks, dining together, celebrating happy and sad moments over the years we were together. When we lose a pet there is a special place in our hearts that feels empty.  However as time passes, we realize that animals have a way of showing us about loving, loyalty, joy and friendship.   Whatever we have shared in our pet’s presence can never really be lost.  These are the memories of our friends that we will always treasure.  Pets are wonderful creatures and thank you to G-d for creating them and providing us the opportunity to share our lives with them. Amen

Ki Tetzei means when you go. This portion is filled with laws and regulations to establish moral and legal order of the land the Israelites will enter. There are more mitzvot in this parshah than any others, 74 of the 613 commandments are found here. The parshah also includes acts of tzedakah.

The reading begins with saying that if you take captives in war and an Israelite saw among them a beautiful woman that he wanted to marry, he should bring her to his house, have her haircut, nails trimmed, give her new clothes and spend a month lamenting her parents. So capture her, bring her home, give her an extreme makeover and some time. Then he could marry her, however if he no longer wanted her, he had to release her and not sell her as a slave. So this is giving a woman some rights and her freedom if he no long wants her.

A famous mitzvah is that if you come across a bird nest with eggs of new borns with the mother sitting on them, take the young but let the mother go in order that you fare well and have a long life. There is compassion toward the mother bird, that she must not witness her eggs being taken.

Judaism shows compassion to animals. The Talmud calls this mitzvah the lightest of all commandments. Why such a great reward, long life, for a light mitzvah? The commentary on this is that all mitzvot have equal reward that is not easy to calculate.

The Torah places humanity above animals. It mandates respect for all of G-d’s creatures, forbids causing unnecessary suffering to animals and idealizes the state of peace and harmony among all living things. Nefesh chayah, living soul, refers to animals as well as to humans.

The parshah mentions that when loaning money and you take an item as security to repay the loan, if it is a cloak, you must return it to the person overnight so that he is not cold and this is an act of tzedakah.

The Torah mentions that every act is of immense significance. No act is trivial. When you observe kashruth, even when you speak, you can say words of encouragement or malicious gossip. Each act is important and we have many decisions daily about how to act and therefore opportunities to do mitzvot and acts of tzedakah or not.

The Garden of Eden had perfect balance and harmony among people and all living creatures. Maimonides said in the laws of repentance that every person should consider him or herself as perfectly balanced between good and bad and the world is perfectly balanced between good and evil. According to the sages, the next action you do, however trivial, can tilt the whole world to the side of good and life or the side of evil and death. We see that today so often from those that ignore the warnings of covid and carelessly expose themselves to being in large groups and not wearing masks, they may be superspreaders, and society as a whole is suffering the consequences.  So each act that we chose to do or not do has a potential for doing good and fulfilling a mitzvah and doing acts of tzedakah from which all can benefit.

Tazria is about the laws for ritual purity regarding childbirth, leprosy, and garments.   I read the parshah looking for something of interest to me.  Those of you hoping to hear about leprosy of the skin, will be disappointed. The most interesting thing to me is that Tazria and next week’s Parsha, Metzora, are the least studied and have the least written on them, obviously due to these topics.   When I prepare for a dvar I like to find what the great Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel has said about it, but I couldn’t find any references by him so I decided to reference the great Jewish comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

I will focus on the third section about Tzara-at, disease of garments.  Tzaraat of garments  discoloration, only occur on natural color garments that are white.  The reason is perhaps a dyed garment that became discolored was due to a flaw in the dye processing, or uneven color, if not dyed, so since it is not clear how the discoloration happened, it is not considered tzaraat.. from Toras Kohanim.

Tzaraat is mistaken as leprosy but is some form of a mysterious, infectious skin disease, that may no longer exist, possibly some form of melanoma. It is unclear just how this would affect a garment. The text says if you suspect tzara-at on your garment, show it to the Kohen, who then quarantines it for a week, and if the problem still exists it is tzaraat.

Tazria mentions Tzaraat or discoloration on your garment, whether wool, linen or leather as a spiritual disease.  We would discard clothes that discolor and couldn’t look good any longer.  Of course today if your garment is soiled, we have chemical spot removers, washing machines and dry cleaners. No one would go the Kohen, the high priest or rabbi if their clothes became discolored, unless it is Cohen, the dry cleaner. I love the Seinfeld line about the old Tide commercial. The commercial says “Tide gets blood out of your shirt”.  Jerry commented on this, “maybe if you have blood on your shirt, laundry isn’t your biggest problem”. More about that later.

I suppose in these ancient times, people perhaps only had one or two garments and had to figure out how to make the clothes look better and remain functional. We don’t think of a spot on clothes as a spiritual disease, but this parshah mentions that it indicates being ritually impure. The spots or discoloration on the clothing are a sign of sins.  Nachmonides said Tzaraat is not a physical malady but a spiritual ailment of the body and also caused by several transgressions mostly gossip.

A midrash says the Tzaraat occurs 3 ways. First to the home, if not remedied then to the garments and if not remedied then to the skin. With that in mind, it’s pretty important to remedy this garment problem before it reaches and infects the skin.

The Talmud mentions sins of tzaraat: Evil gossip or lashan hara, murder, false oaths, illicit relationships, arrogance, theft and stinginess.  Most well known is evil gossip.

Lashan Hara, gossiping and speaking ill of others, is considered quite bad and to refrain from it improves the quality of life and apparently quality of your clothes.

Does the fabric on its own cause a discoloration to notify you of a spiritual disease or is G-d signaling the owner of the garment of a spiritual problem, so it can be remedied?  The ancients believed G-d has sent this signal.  Imagine you have a discoloration appear on clothes, I would think this often happened due to sun and sand damage.  But the text indicates it is because you said evil gossip or one of these other sins and you have a chance to clean up your act, change your ways and get on with life happier as a result and thereby, avoid home, clothing and skin infections.

As promised, back to Seinfeld. There was a Seinfeld episode when Elaine, not a Jewish character, seemed blue and her neighbor, the rabbi, invited her over to talk.  In confidence she told him that she was jealous that George got engaged, but she hadn’t said anything to George or anyone else except the rabbi. The rabbi gossiped to everyone he could find in the neighborhood about Elaine. She heard about this from several people, even neighbors she didn’t know, quite to her embarrassment.  Imagine the tzara-at on that rabbi’s garment. This comedy is so funny because these things happen. Rabbis and other people repeat gossip and things told confidentially to them, and sometimes the rabbi’s behavior is the source of gossip.  So according to my understanding of the Torah portion Tazria, when there is a tzara-at on your garment, laundry is not your biggest problem, it is spiritual disease.