Parashat Tazria — She conceives (bears seed)
תַזְרִיעַ
Tazria (תַזְרִיעַ) means "she conceives (bears seed)" — taken, as every parashah name is, from the portion's opening words in the Hebrew.
The Readings
Torah Leviticus 12:1-13:59 Read →
Haftarah II Kings 4:42-5:19 Read →
B'rit Chadashah Matthew 8:1-17 Read →
What Happens in Tazria
When a woman conceives seed — tazria — and bears a child, the Torah begins its purity laws where every human life begins. After a son, the mother is unclean seven days, and on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised — the covenant sign keeping its appointment regardless of any other law; after a daughter, two weeks, with the days of purification doubled. When her days are fulfilled, she brings a lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or turtledove for a sin offering — and if she cannot afford a lamb, then two turtledoves or two young pigeons. That poverty clause is the offering Miryam brought at the Temple for Yeshua, quietly marking the family of the Messiah among the poor of the land.
The rest of the portion is the diagnosis of tzaraat — the affliction long translated 'leprosy' but unlike any natural disease, striking skin, garments, and (in the next portion) house walls. Its examiner is not a physician but a priest: he shall be brought to Aharon the priest, or to one of his sons. The criteria are precise and repeated like case law: a swelling, a scab, or a bright spot; hair in the plague turned white; the appearance deeper than the skin. When the signs are unclear, the priest shuts the person up seven days, looks again, and if needed a second seven — the Torah building patience and second looks into judgment itself, refusing to condemn on first appearance. Spreading means unclean; fading means only a scab, wash and be clean. The strange logic of the raw flesh follows — partial affliction defiles, yet if the tzaraat covers the whole body head to foot, he is clean — and cases multiply: the boil, the burn, the scall of head or beard, the bald forehead. Some rise healed; some are pronounced utterly unclean.
The one confirmed as a metzora bears his condition publicly: his clothes shall be torn, his head bare, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry, 'Unclean, unclean.' He shall dwell alone; outside the camp shall his dwelling be — cut off not only from home but from the sanctuary at the camp's center. Tradition, hearing metzora as motzi ra, 'one who brings out evil,' connects the affliction with lashon hara, the evil tongue, remembering that Miryam was struck with it for speaking against Moshe: the skin becomes a mirror of the mouth, and the isolation fits the sin — the one who separated people by words is separated from people. Even garments can carry the plague: wool, linen, or leather with the greenish or reddish mark is shut up, washed, torn out, or burned in fire. The portion leaves the afflicted outside the camp — and the next portion opens with the way home.
Main Themes
Purification and the gift of new life The eighth-day covenant of circumcision The priest as examiner of affliction Uncleanness that isolates — outside the camp Tradition teaches: tzaraat and the evil tongue
Key Events
· The purification of the mother after childbirth
· The eighth-day circumcision
· The offering of the lamb or the two birds
· The diagnostic laws of tzaraat in skin
· Quarantine and priestly re-examination
· Tzaraat in garments
Key People
The priest The mother The one afflicted with tzaraat
Key Verses
Leviticus 12:3 Read →
“In the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.”
Leviticus 13:2 Read →
““When a man shall have a swelling in his body’s skin, or a scab, or a bright spot, and it becomes in the skin of his body the plague of leprosy, then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons, the priests.”
Leviticus 13:46 Read →
“All the days in which the plague is in him he shall be unclean. He is unclean. He shall dwell alone. His dwelling shall be outside of the camp.”
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