Our combined reading this week, of the portions Tazria and Metzorah, speaks a great deal about types of purity and impurity. Even something as beautiful as childbirth means that the mother is no longer carrying the baby, and that brings with it impurity. But there is also impurity of blemishes on the skin, clothes or houses, and of various emissions.
Today, we do not have a Holy Temple, the red heifer to purify us, or the blemishes that cause impurity. So our understanding of the concept of purity is reduced.
When we think of holiness or purity, we are likely to think of religious symbols, a person in clerical clothing, or the Holy Temple itself. Our Torah portion is telling us that purity is, in reality, something deeply personal. Purity is a state towards which each of us can strive, and only we can tell how we are truly doing. Do we think about holy or mundane matters? Do we strive to G-d’s will or what is to our personal best advantage? All of these are signs of our level of purity that are rarely visible to others, but constantly obvious to ourselves.
Consider further that no one else could tell if a person entered the Holy Temple while impure, unless the blemish of Tzara’as was visible on them. So even at the time of the Temple, purity was something a person had to know and judge within himself.
The Torah is guiding us to look deeply within ourselves, to set ourselves on the path of purity, since no outside force can guide us as effectively as we can within our own minds.
