Tazria – Torah with Joseph

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom, my name is Joseph Shulam and together with Brad TV, every week we do the Torah portion that is being read in all the synagogues of the world. This next Shabbat, the Torah portion will be in Hebrew called Tazria and the English translation is “She conceived,” and it comes from Leviticus chapter 12, verse one, and it ends in chapter 15, verse 33 of the book of Leviticus.

The portion of the prophets that is being read in every synagogue next Shabbat is from 2 King’s chapter four, verse 42 to chapter five verse 18 and continues in chapter seven, verse three to 20 of 2 Kings. From the New Testament, we are reading from Matthew chapter eight, verse one to four.

This is a difficult portion of the Torah because it deals with several issues that are not so seemingly relevant to the Christian world. And I’ve been a believer for more than nearly 60 years, and I never heard a sermon in any church from this portion of the Torah. Why? Because the two major topics that are delt with in this portion of the Torah are a woman who gives birth and the process of her purification, and then the purity laws concerning leprosy, which is one of the main causes of impurity in the law of Moses and in the community of Israel during biblical time, during the Old Testament time, and during the New Testament time as well, it’s also in the New Testament, but mostly people don’t know and don’t discern it because they don’t study so much the law of Moses.

So I’m going to read from chapter 12, verse one through four, so that you get into the topic:

That’s Leviticus chapter 12, verse one to verse four. Now you would say, how is this teaching relevant for Christians today? For Jews, obviously it’s relevant because we are still watching the purity laws of the Torah. And in fact, we have some commandments in the New Testament that rely on our faithful watching of the purity laws of the Torah. So here you have it, a woman conceives and has a male child. On the eighth day, he gets circumcised and she stays impure for 33 days. And then she goes to the temple and gets purified, goes into the mikvah, which is baptism, immersion in water. She washes and then she’s purified and can continue her normal life and her normal relationship with her husband.

Now, this text is of great importance in the New Testament, but like I said, because most Christians don’t study the Torah enough and don’t dig deep enough, they miss it. I’m going to read now a passage from the New Testament. From Luke chapter two, and I’m gonna start from verse 21 to 24 of Luke chapter two:

Before He was conceived in the womb, the angel, I’m just elaborating this, in Matthew chapter one, the angel comes to Mary and says, “His name will be Yeshua, because He will Yeshua his nation. Will be savior because He will save his nation.” So when the baby was born in Bethlehem, they gave Him the name that the angel announced, and Luke knows this story and he repeats it. And he says clearly that when, the eighth days after his birth were completed, He was circumcised. I want you to realize this, dear brothers and sisters.

Yeshua was circumcised on the eighth day as God commanded Abraham long before the Law of Moses was given on Mount Sinai. God commanded Abraham in Genesis chapter 17, to circumcise all the males in his camp. And he circumcised himself, and he circumcised his children, Isaac and the other children he had. So Yeshua was circumcised, on the day that the Gospel of Luke chapter two, verse 21-22 tells us of, clearly.

Next verse.

In other words, when the days of the purification of his mother were completed, that’s 33 days, they came to Jerusalem from Bethlehem, not from Nazareth. They were still in Bethlehem. They came to Jerusalem, which is about six miles, not terribly long, and she was purified.

Mary was purified, and the baby was dedicated according to the law of the Lord. That’s what it says. And it’s quoting from our text. “Every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord.” In order to be holy, they had some procedure that takes place, and that is a sacrifice has to be offered according to the law, and Mary and Joseph offer a sacrifice.

What is the sacrifice that they bring in verse 24? They bring two doves, turtle doves, or two young pigeons. Now that’s very interesting. It tells us something about their financial situation, about their social status, because a rich person would bring a bull. A middle class, upper middle class, would bring a sheep or a goat. The lower middle class would bring two turtle doves or two pigeons.

Joseph and Mary brought two pigeons, which means that they were not rich and they were not dirt poor, because the dirt poor people would bring just a handful of meal, anointed with a little bit of olive oil, and that would satisfy the Lord in the process of their purification. Yep. So that’s what Mary and Joseph did. And it’s clearly in the text of Luke, it was all done according to the law of the Lord. But what does that tell us?

First of all, it tells us that Joseph and Mary and baby Yeshua, baby Jesus lived an obedient life, if I put it in modern terms, a very Orthodox Jewish lifestyle. That’s what it tells us. They did everything according to the Word and to the Law, to the Torah of the Lord. Something that, you know, we must remember. We must remember that there was no Christianity, that the only thing that existed for the Jewish people in the land of Israel and around the globe, wherever they were, in Asia Minor, in Greece, in Rome, in North Africa, in Egypt, in Iraq, Babylon of that period, they all observed the Torah and argued about it, which is our national sport and discussed it and tried to discern and to glean out of the ancient text how to apply it in their own day.

We should be doing the same thing. We should be doing the same thing, but I am fascinated by the fact that Luke saw fit to tell us that Joseph and Mary went to the temple after the days of her purification were complete, that means after 33 days after the birth, and they brought two turtle doves or two pigeons. It tells us that they were not wealthy and they were not very, very poor. They were lower middle class, blue collar workers. He was a mason. It doesn’t say whether he was a mason of stone or a mason of wood, you know, a carpenter or a stonemason, just a mason.

And she was a housewife. Mary was a housewife. She didn’t live so far from her mother and father who lived in Sepphoris, the capital city, the capital Jewish city of the Galilee, that was about four miles away, three and a half miles away from Nazareth. Nazareth was kind of a suburb of Sepphoris. So here is a direct connection of our Torah reading this week with the text of Luke chapter two in the New Testament.

Very relevant, and it would be difficult to understand Luke chapter two, the story of the birth and the circumcision and the purification of Mary, as it is mentioned in Luke chapter two, without knowing the source, which is chapter 12 of the book of Leviticus. And that is amazing. It’s amazing because Luke is considered to be the only non-Jew among the writers of the New Testament, if it is the same Luke that was discipled by the Apostle Paul and one of the seven Gentiles that Paul brings to Jerusalem in Acts 21, then he’s Luke the doctor, yeah, and he’s a Gentile, and he accompanied Paul from Asia Minor to the land of Israel, together with the other six Gentiles that are mentioned in Book of Acts and mentioned in Titus and also I think also in Philemon.

And so Luke the Gentile is giving us the details of the birth and the purification of Yeshua and of his mother Mary, what Matthew doesn’t give and Mark doesn’t give, and John doesn’t give. Why don’t they give them? Well they presume, they’re Jews, they presume that everybody would know, that every other Jew would know. Luke, who is a Gentile, actually gives you the details from the Torah and quotes from the passage in the Torah, Leviticus chapter 12, because he has in mind, the non-Jews are going to be reading his gospel.

Okay. There is after the dealing with the birth and the purification and the ceremonies that go along with it, the next topic in our reading deals with the diagnosis of one of the worst diseases in the ancient world, leprosy. Leprosy is almost eradicated from the world. I grew up in a neighborhood that was very close to the Jerusalem leper colony. And in the end, there was only one leper. There were more nurses and doctors in the hospital for the lepers in Jerusalem then patients because they got cured.

Antibiotics and modern medicine found a solution for that kind of leprosy, Hansen’s Disease in medical terms, and the Torah deals with it. We have several chapters in our Torah portion that deal with the diagnosis of leprosy. If the wound is white, or if it’s not white or it’s red, if it grows any hair, and if the hair is white, and if the hair is not white, dark, how to diagnose the leprosy and what to do and how to cure and how to not to cure, how to diagnose the leprosy.

Now, we have a very interesting story in the New Testament, in Luke chapter 17, verses 11 to 18, that relates very much to our portion of the Torah. Here is a story from Luke 17:11.

That is a fascinating text that, you know, people who don’t know the land of Israel and don’t know the, the geography of Israel, can’t appreciate it. I can appreciate it because I’ve traveled that road by a car many many many times and a little bit also by foot, sections of it at least.

Now, why would anybody walk through some area from the Galilee, from Nazareth, to Jerusalem? It’s a much more difficult road than going through the Jordan Valley. The Jordan Valley, you leave Nazareth, you cross the Jezreel Valley, you’re going to the Bet Shan Valley. You get to the Jordan River, it’s almost flat all the way to Jericho. No big mountains, no big valleys, along the river. And then you’ll get to Jericho, you turn right. You climb up the hill to Jerusalem. Most of the people from the Galilee traveled that road, through the Jordan valley.

Why not through the Samaria area? Several reasons. One of the reasons is you go up the mountain, down the mountain, up the mountain, down the mountain. It’s much more difficult. But when do you want to travel and walk through Samaria to Jerusalem? Only one, one season of the year, and that is springtime. Why? Because Samaria and the hills of Samaria and the mountains of Samaria and the valleys of Samaria? Ah, beautiful.

We’re right now here in February or the middle of February, and yes, it’s beautiful. One year, we had in our congregation, a woman who is a world famous plant biologist. World famous, and one winter, we decided to go not to Samaria, but to the Judean desert and survey the flowers after a very rainy year. We counted, in one square meter, in other words, in ten square feet, we counted 103 different species of wild flowers that blossomed in the desert after a very rainy year.

And right now, some of the hills of Samaria are covered with beautiful red flowers, what Yeshua called the lilies of the fields. Yeah. And they are from the poppy family, the poppy seed family. And they’re covered with red. Beautiful, beautiful season. And Yeshua wanted to travel through some area to Jerusalem, I’m almost sure during springtime. Summer is too hot. Okay. So He is going through some area and 10 lepers meet him. The lepers meet Him going through a certain village.

We don’t know the name of the village, and the 10 Lepers see Yeshua and come to Him and by name, they say, “Yeshua, Master, have mercy on us.” How would these 10 lepers know his name? And how would they know that he’s the master? And how would they know to ask Him for divine mercy on their illness, on their leprosy? I’ll tell you how. We, and most Christians, when they think about Yeshua, they think about poor, persecuted, rejected Messiah. But no, when you read the text of the New Testament and the Gospel especially, you find out that Yeshua was well known.

He was well known in Samaria, He was well known in Jericho. A blind man that knows that Yeshua is coming is begging Him to be healed. Why? Because they knew Him. Without television, without radio, without smartphone, the name of Yeshua was well known throughout the land of Israel, and especially in the Galilee, because in Luke chapter two, we find out that He preached, no Luke chapter four, that He preached in all the synagogues in the Galilee. That means that He was welcomed by the crowds in the synagogues.

And when the people heard Him preach, they praised the Lord. He was a great rabbi, a great teacher of the Torah on Shabbat in the synagogues. So Yeshua heals them from leprosy, but it doesn’t pronounce them healed. Why not? Because he’s observing the Torah. He’s not a priest. He’s not a priest. He’s from the tribe of Judah, not from the tribe of Levi. And He says, “Go, show yourself to the priests.” According to what our Torah portion is teaching. He’s the Lord, the Son of God, the Messiah, but is not taking away the authority of the Torah given to the Levites and to the priest from the Tribe of Levi, from the household of Aaron.

He is respecting the Torah and the institution of priesthood in Israel. And He sends them to be checked, examined, and announced as healed by the priest. All this is in our Torah portion folks, how the priest will discern and the different stages of discernment, whether the person is healed or not healed from leprosy. It’s all, the details are there in our Torah portion, Leviticus, from chapter 12 to chapter 15. So He sends them to the priests to be checked, examined, and declared cleansed from leprosy.

Now they are all in a hurry to get diagnosed as clear, as clean. And one of them, not an Israelite, not a Jew, a Samaritan rushes back to Yeshua, finds Him along the road and says, “Thank you, Lord, thank you for healing me.” And Yeshua says only one thing. “Where are the other nine? Where are the other nine?” I’ll tell you where they are, they’re typical Sabras, Israelites born in the land. And they were so excited about being healed and going to the priest to quickly get, you know, announced clean, tested, and announced clean that they forgot to say thank you.

I’m sure they were grateful in their heart, but they didn’t express it. So this is another lesson that we all need to learn. It’s important to express, express our cleanliness. The next thing that I want to share with you about the leprosy is from the prophets, from the prophets, and that is, we have the story of from 2 Kings chapter four, verse 42 to five verse 18. The story of a man that is called a big important man, the chief of staff of the Assyrian army.

His name was Naaman, and he had made war with Israel. And we have records of that war in plastic, in plaster I should say. And you could see the Laish tablets, the Laish walls from the temple in Babylon that commemorate the battle of Laish and the general who was in charge of the Assyrian army that conquered Judea and plundered the temple was Naaman, was Naaman, and this Naaman got leprosy.

Don’t know where he got it, but he got leprosy and leprosy is incurable. And when he was fighting in Judea, he took a young girl as a slave to help his wife at home. Slave, a young Hebrew Israelite girl as a slave in his house. And this slave girl Israelite, Judean slave girl tells the wife of Naaman, “Listen, I know a way, I know somebody in Israel that can heal your husband,” because she can’t talk to the boss, to Naaman. He’s too important, too big a person. She could talk to his wife ‘cause she serves his wife.

So when Naaman comes home, his wife tells him, “Listen, our slave girl, the Judean said in Israel, there is somebody who can heal you.” So he goes to his king and says, “Listen, I can’t just get up and get myself, you know, get in my car and go to Judea. You know, I need your help.” So the king says, “Okay, I’ll write you a letter of recommendation to the King of Judea, and he will take care of you.” So the letter of recommendation is brought to the King of Judea. The King of Judea tears his hair out, so to speak, he’s scared. He says to himself, “I’m not God, I can’t heal this man.” And I’m not sure that our prophet Elisha can do it either. It’s an incurable disease. Only God can heal him.” But because he got a letter from the King of Assyria, that was his actually, it’s like our prime minister and the President of the United States.

If the President of the United States says to our president jump, he jumps. The same thing was then with Assyria. It was a great empire, and the small little country of Judea. So Naaman loads seven carts with gifts. And he goes down to Judea. He gets to the king. The king tells him where to go to meet Elisha the prophet. He gets to the house of Elisha and knocks on the door, so to speak. And the servant of Elisha, Gehazi, comes to the door and says, my master says, go to the Jordan River and immerse yourself seven times. And God will heal you.

Naaman gets offended. First of all, he gets offended because Elisha didn’t even come to meet him at the door, he sent his servant. Secondly, he said, “What is the Jordan River? It’s a ditch compared to the Euphrates and the Tigris in Assyria, some of the greatest rivers of the world, the cradle of civilization. And you’re sending me to this little peewee creek, tiny little ditch compared to the great rivers? I know in Korea, I’ve been many times in Seoul, Korea and to the Han River.

Oh, it’s a hundred times bigger than the Jordan River. Maybe it’s more than a hundred times bigger than the Jordan River, the Jordan River is very small, at some of its best places, only 10 meters wide. It’s nothing. So dear brothers, Naaman gets offended. He doesn’t want to go, but his servants, the servant, the slave girl in his house and his servants convince him to listen to the man of God, to Elisha, and to get immersed in the Jordan seven times.

And he gets healed and he returns to give gifts to Elisha the prophet. The story continues, but we’ll have to talk about in the future more. God bless all of you. Please read the Torah. Even if you don’t think you understand it, read it, pray about it, ask for God to help you understand it. The Holy Spirit works, he’s alive and well and continues to lead us unto all truths. God bless you all, and Shalom from Jerusalem.