Community Magazine April 2012

The Mysterious Second Bird The Torah outlines the procedure whereby a messora – person stricken with sara’at – regains his state of purification, and thus becomes permitted to reenter his city and resume normal life after his period of seclusion. As we read the rituals entailed in this process, we find, on the one hand, standard and familiar features such as the offering of special sacrifices in the Bet Hamikdash. But there are also some very surprising aspects of this process, including a seemingly peculiar ceremony involving birds. The Torah requires the messora to take two birds, one of which is slaughtered, and the second of which is then sent away. Although we are familiar with birds being offered as sacrifices, we never find anywhere else in the Torah this kind of ceremony involving birds that are brought only to be set free. Rashi explains for us the relevance of birds to the purification of the messora . Birds chirp freely and indiscriminately, making noise without restraint or control. In English, the expression “sing like a bird” means to divulge secrets with little or n coercion. Birds are thus a symbol of the gossiper, who speaks without discretion, spreading unflattering and hurtful information about other people. The slaughter of a bird symbolizes to the messora the need to put an end to this destructive “chirping” tendency, and discontinue his verbal indulgence. What Rashi does not explain for us, however, is what the second bird in this ritual represents. If the bird symbolizes chatter, then why Dedicated inmemory of Mr.&Mrs. Jacques&Rachel Gindi  RABBI ELI J. MANSOUR Verbal Potential W e all remember the fairytale of Pinocchio and his nose, which grew longer with each lie he told. But long before this Disney animation, the appearance of physiological symptoms as a result of improper speech was a real phenomenon. Nestled in the middle of the Book of Vayikra is one of the most intricate and difficult sections of the entire Humash – the section dealing with the laws of sara’at , a skin disorder often identified as something resembling leprosy. Unlike leprosy, however, the cause of sara’at was purely spiritual, rather than physical; a divine punishment for the grave sin of lashon hara – gossip and slander about one’s fellow Jews. Putting aside the perplexing nature of a physical disorder that results purely from sin, perhaps the most confounding aspect of this section is the ritual by which sara’at is cured. 12 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE