Some of the Torah’s stranger rites involve pure water in earthenware vessels.
Numbers 5:17, “The priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel…”, doesn’t come from one of my favorite passages in the Torah. This particular verse comes from the Torah’s procedure for a wife accused of adultery by a husband “in a fit of jealousy”. The Torah calls for her to undergo a trial by ordeal. But when I stopped thinking about the awful interpersonal situation the passage contemplates and just allowed myself to reflect on the water itself, this verse inspired one of my favorite watercolor paintings.
I like how the colors seem to indicate light falling uniformly upon ceramic jars holding water. And somehow I managed to suggest light reflecting on the surface of water, maybe even a surface rippled by a gentle breeze.
Last Friday we read another ritual involving water in earthenware vessels. Torah portion M’tzora describes the procedure for a person who has recovered from a strange affliction called tza-ra’at to re-attain a state of ritual purity. This person must bring two birds to the priest. The priest slaughters one bird “over spring water in an earthen vessel”. The priest then dips cedar wood, red stuff, hyssop, and the live bird into the spring water (now mixed with blood) and sets the live bird free in the open country, “al p’nei ha-sadeh”, literally, “upon the face of the field”. (Lev. 14:2-7)
It’s hard to explain exactly what tza-ra’at is. It’s often translated as “leprosy,” but there is no disease that appears on human skin, fabric, and even upon walls of houses the way this Biblical ailment does. It’s hard to explain the exact reasons for the particular ingredients in the Torah’s formula, or why one bird should be slaughtered while the other is set free.
Still, I find something inspiring in the Torah’s language and in its imagery of the bird that narrowly escapes from slaughter, liberated in the open field. Like another of the Torah’s sacrificial rites — the scapegoat described on Yom Kippur, in which one goat is slaughtered while its counterpart is set free in the wilderness — this bird has narrowly escaped its partner’s fate and been released.
Like that lucky bird or fortunate goat, if we have our own health right now, who knows how narrowly we have escaped from terrible danger?
I am reminded of the blessing recited during the Torah service by a person who has escaped from mortal danger (in some communities even a transoceanic flight qualifies as reason for saying this blessing):
Baruch atah ADONAI eloheinu melekh ha-olam, ha-gomeil l’chayavim tovot, sh-g’malani kol tuv.
Blessed be the HOLY ONE, our eternally majestic God, who has been gracious to me and delivered me from peril.
To which the congregation responds:
Mi sh-g’malkhah tov, hu sh’yigmolkha tov, selah!
May the one who delivered you from peril be ever gracious to you and bless you.
So may it be for us.