Tazria-Metzora

My mother secretly hopes that I'll become a doctor and give up this stupid punk rock stuff. Maybe if she sees this video she'll think it's for Med school and I'll be off the hook for a while.

This week's video is about period blood and semen and boils and leprosy. It makes a week of eating matzah REALLY delicious sounding.

The Torah does this a lot: you get into all kinds of deep, personal, spiritual stuff. Then all of a sudden, you're talking about the dumbest things like Hebrew fashion tips, how to properly clean a lesion and what to do if your neighbor's bull accidentally kills one of your animals.

I think there's a connection between the sacred and the profane and that punk rock and Judaism uniquely understand it.

Punk rock has taught me that, in life, you have to put up with a lot of crap to feel something genuine. That the only way to rebel against the authority figures who think you're too stupid to have a mind of your own, is to get into all the dirty parts of life that no one ever talks about: drugs, sex, violence and even blood, to get to something real and truly hardcore. Lou Reed did that in the 60's, singing songs about Heroine while the Beatles were singing songs about falling in love with pretty girls. The Sex Pistols talked about anarchy when the BeeGees were singing white boy soul music for John Travolta movies. Go figure!

Judaism is the same way: it's a rebellion against the Death Cults, teaching that we need to gloss over the important things in our world to focus on some eternal life somewhere else. Judaism makes you understand every dirty part of your fragile human life, because living is what life is all about!

Do you know why G_d gave us life? Because he wanted so badly for us to live it.

And that's what this parshat is doing; by getting you through all of life's dirty bits, all the gross things you don't want to hear about, you come through a stronger, happier, better person than you were before.


Parshat Shemini Video!

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