Skip to main content

Parsha Poem: Tazria / תַזְרִיעַ

וַיִּקְרָא / vayikra / Leviticus 12:1-13:59:  Read ithear it.

Printable PDF version here.

Parsha narrative overview here
Copywork and parsha activities available at this page – updated weekly.

Inspired through my exhaustion by this tidy vort from an old teacher, Rabbi Neal Loevinger, though I don’t claim to have done it any kind of justice.


image Well, Shmuli was watching an old guy named Dan,

And he said, “I have never seen a lazier man,

Just look at him trudging so slowly along!” –

Not knowing his knees and hips weren’t strong.

 

But Shmuli did not care a whit for the cause –

Just judged others quickly, without any pause.

“How that girl eats!” he’d exclaim over salmon,

Not knowing she came from a land of great famine.

 

As Shmuli walked out in the streets of his town,

He’d mentally stop to observe and jot down.

“Why, that spoiled boy!” he’d proclaim very quick,

Not knowing the boy had lately been sick.

 

“But me, well, I’m another tale altogether,

Just strong and robust in all kinds of weather.”

“How thoughtful I am!” he’d reflect silently,

“If only those people would listen to me!”

 

To look at a person, you might think you know,

All of their reasons just from what they show.

That’s what you might think, but you wouldn’t be right;

You never know someone just from what’s in sight.


What’s outside is not what is inside at all;

The part that we see is impossibly small.

So we cannot judge others nor see ourselves true;

We have to leave that to the experts to do.

 

image Just who is an expert?  Well, that’s hard to say.

We don’t have those experts around in our day.

But kohanim could do it and that’s what we learn;

When it comes to judging, it’s never our turn.

 

You might think a skin blob was Tzara’as, or not,

You might sit and wonder about a white spot;

You might catch a glimpse of a friend’s freckled arm,

And see him anew with a sense of alarm.

 

But then you would stop and remember the rule;

No matter how much you’d learned in a school,

Tzara’as was not about what was outside,

But what lies within – that’s your only guide.

 

It’s more than skin deep, which a doctor can’t heal;

It’s about your neshama, so kohanim reveal.

So hold off your judging, dear Shmuli, at last;

Knowing you can’t judge your friends quite so fast.

 

שַׁבָּת שָׁלוֹם!

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

לימודי קודש/Limudei Kodesh Copywork & Activity Printables

Welcome to my Limudei Kodesh / Jewish Studies copywork and activity printables page.  As of June 2013, I am slowly but surely moving all my printables over to 4shared because Google Docs / Drive is just too flaky for me. What you’ll find here: Weekly Parsha Copywork More Parsha Activities More Chumash / Tanach Activities Yom Tov Copywork & Activities Tefillah Copywork Pirkei Avos / Pirkei Avot Jewish Preschool Resources Other printables! For General Studies printables and activities, including Hebrew-English science resources and more, click here . For Miscellaneous homeschool helps and printables, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you just want to say Thank You, here’s a

Hebrew/ עברית & English General Studies Printables

For Jewish Studies, including weekly parsha resources and copywork, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you enjoy these resources, please consider buying my weekly parsha book, The Family Torah :  the story of the Torah, written to be read aloud – or any of my other wonderful Jewish books for kids and families . English Worksheets & Printables: (For Hebrew, click here ) Science :  Plants, Animals, Human Body Math   Ambleside :  Composers, Artists History Geography Language & Literature     Science General Poems for Elemental Science .  Original Poems written by ME, because the ones that came with Elemental Science were so awful.  Three pages are included:  one page with two po

Are Jews an "underrepresented community" in children’s publishing?

I applied for a writing award yesterday. I'm not going to get it, but that's not what I wanted to share with you. Here's what I wanted to share. This box:   I stared at this box for a long, long time. And then I decided not to check it. Even though I believe people like me truly are underrepresented, we probably wouldn’t fit the definition in other people's minds. Why? Well, because we're European. Because we are white. Because as everybody knows, Jews control the media. (do we???) If anything, some people say, Jews are over -represented in publishing. And yet. Some definitions are careful not to include people like me. Like this random definition from the State of California which defines underrepresented for some very specific business purposes as: "an individual who self-identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, or who self-identi