By Brady Winrob

This week we read Parashat Metzora. In this Parashah, God continues to instruct Moshe on the expectations of him and the Israelites. This section deals specifically with ritual impurity. God explains to Moshe how to deal with someone who possesses a skin disease, how to clean a house that has suffered a plague, and how to cleanse a person with genital discharge or during their menstrual cycle.

The first thing I noticed about Metzora is the consistent use of the words ‘unclean’ or ‘impure’. When someone was ill, they would be solitarily confined for a period of time until they were deemed pure by the priest. When people engaged in sexual relations, even after bathing they (and everything they touched) would remain unclean until the proper multi-day purity ritual was performed. During the entire menstrual cycle a woman would remain impure, and anybody who touched her would need to pursue a purity ritual as well. She would remain impure the entire length of her cycle.

This Parashah opens up an interesting chance for us to consider how we understand health in the movement. And no, I’m not opening the door to insults about the amount of showers we take at Miriam. We have a water shortage. What I’m asking is: what stigmas exist in the movement surrounding health? We’re obviously not physically isolating our chaverim/ot who are on their periods, but I’m wondering about if and why we’re internally judgmental of things that seem unconventional or imperfect based on society’s standards. While the practices in this Parashah might seem out of date, in some ways I can see how the mindset of isolating and othering has carried over and affects us even now. of push each other out?

One way I think these assumptions manifest themselves is through our perception of mental health. A lot of our chaverim/ot struggle with their mental health. While I think most people would agree that mental health is very stigmatized in our society, I don’t necessarily see the movement as an exception. Sometimes, in hadracha settings, we push ourselves mentally and physically harder than we might be able to handle, and expect everyone to do the same. We often forget that people have limits, and those limits do not characterize one’s ability as a ma’apila or madricha. This is not to say that challenging ourselves is wrong by any means, and I feel it should be encouraged, but understanding personal boundaries is an integral part of this growth process. I’ll close with these thoughts: how can we, together, create a safer space for our chaverim/ot who might feel excluded from or unable to meet this expectation? How can we make this process more inclusive than that of Moshe and the Israelites? How do we de-stigmatize the issue of mental health and allow the discourse of the importance of self-care into our lives? How do we manage our struggles alongside the movement’s demands that are made of us? How do we bring each other in instead