Both halves of the double portion Tazria and Metzora deal with situations in which people are experiencing profound life circumstances — so profound, in fact, that they prevent those impacted from being wholly integrated into society. Tazria begins with instructions for a mother following childbirth: She is to take time apart to be with her newborn before returning to the public sphere. Much of the rest of the double portion addresses the mysterious condition of tzara’at, a discoloration that can show up in skin and hair but also fabric and even buildings, each requiring periods of quarantine.
Although neither of these cases explicitly discusses death, a sense of vulnerability prevails. Childbirth is, of course, always dangerous, even in the best possible circumstances. And while the text doesn’t mention anyone dying from tzara’at, neither does it say it is never fatal or that it will always heal eventually. Rather, tzara’at seems to be a potentially chronic condition, one of the most vulnerable of all human experiences. While waiting for it to (hopefully) heal, the sufferer is also supposed to let their hair grow wild, precisely because it is evocative of mourning, as the commentator Hizkuni explains.
Tzara’at and childbirth are also both experiences that mandate isolation. Even though the solitude observed by a mother with her newborn is very different from the isolation experienced by one with a chronic or potentially contagious disease, both are marked as unusual states in part because of how they set one apart from the group and its rhythms of ordinary life. The same is frequently true of the experience of grief.
In part, this is a consequence of Jewish mourning rituals. During the initial shiva period immediately following burial, mourners are encouraged to remain at home. They receive visitors but do not go out on errands, to work, or even to synagogue, which instead comes to them. Even though this quasi-isolation lifts after a week, throughout the whole official period of mourning — which, for a parent, lasts almost a year — mourners in more traditional communities abstain from parties and entertainment. Although mourners are encouraged to be surrounded by community in certain ways, such as regularly attending spaces to say Kaddish, they are discouraged from other kinds of broader social interaction.
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This enforced social withdrawal reflects a kind of inner isolation common to the mourning experience. Many mourners report that the permission to be absent from life as usual comes as a relief. Many not only feel disinclined to socialize, but in fact feel very surreal and detached in general. Nor, most likely, are those experiencing loss imagining it when they feel like certain people are avoiding them. Isolation is sometimes imposed on those who are in close proximity to death, especially in societies like ours, which are afraid to recognize and confront mortality.
But as in the situations described in Tazria and Metzora, periods of mourning do come to an end, and when they do, there are rituals to help effect the transition. The Torah prescribes offerings to be brought to conclude the new mother’s period of isolation, as well as the ritual of the child’s circumcision if it is a boy. Other situations require immersion in a mikveh. The cleansing after recovery from tzara’at is particularly striking, involving crimson thread, hyssop and a pair of doves or pigeons, one of which is sacrificed and the other released over a stream of running water. The commentator Bekhor Shor explains that the release of the live bird symbolizes a return to freedom of movement, while the dead bird contains the deadness of the disease.
Each period of mourning also has its own rituals for completion. Customarily, the end of the shiva (similar to the Hebrew shuv, meaning “sit”) is marked by a short walk around the block, signifying the beginnings of movement and some return to the outside world. In some communities, people mark the end of shiva by hammering a nail into a board, a demonstrative expression of creation in the face of loss. “The loud rap of the hammer is a sensory alarm clock,” adds Rabbi Anne Brener in Mourning And Mitzvah, her guided journal for walking the mourner’s path. “It wakes up the mourner and penetrates the layers of his or her withdrawal, just as the nail penetrates the board.”
Despite being mostly taken up with discussions of tzara’at, a condition redolent with decay, Tazria-Metzora both begins and ends with life. It opens, as we have seen, with childbirth, and concludes with ritual practices sanctifying sex and fertility. As with mourning, the Torah implies that though death may dominate the middle, in the beginning and the end is life.
This article initially appeared in My Jewish Learning’s Reading Torah Through Grief newsletter on May 3, 2025. To sign up to receive this newsletter each week in your inbox, click here.
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