A few weeks ago, the BBC reported that 72% of doctors have never refused to write a sick note if patients say that their mental health concerns warrant being signed off work. Removing the stress of work may well be exactly what their patient needs. However, support, a way to build back the emotional strength to re-enter the rhythms of life, and a way of closing difficult chapters and opening the next could also be crucially helpful at such a time.
For some, being signed off work could potentially be taking away the only structure in their daily life, which otherwise offers a reason to get up in the morning as well as the only source of companionship. Leaving someone totally alone could leave them in a most desperate state. I’m struck by what else a person needs when life changes beyond recognition, when the uncontrollable takes over, or when our emotions take us into a spiral which affects the physical world around us.
Without in any way wanting to see this as criticism of our massively overstretched and under-resourced GPs or our wonderful National Health Service, it gave me an insight into a modern response far less intuitive and emotionally intelligent than the ancient text of this week’s parasha.
Tazria-Metzora is the curse of the Bnei Mitzvah parasha, the portion no 13-year-old wants! With cringe-inducing topics of seminal emissions, menstruation and birth not high on the list of what is accessible and comfortable for our teens, I was thrilled to be gifted these themes to be able to shed a different light on its teachings.
The text deals with moments in our lives where perhaps our minds and bodies feel disconnected. Times when our emotions may not be reflective of exactly the physical state we find ourselves in.
Whether it is the hormone changes of menstruation, following childbirth, or the uncontrolled thoughts of a sleeping man producing a physical response, the very fact that it is referenced here shows not only that it is normal and not shameful, but also that it is part of everyday life and that we should not hide it or make a taboo of it, but instead respond to it. Our emotional and physical selves need an emotional and physical response.
They come with a two-part response: separation and physical immersion. I love that it is for these moments that we are gifted space away from others and a chance to immerse ourselves in water before returning to the rigours of everyday life. No punishment or judgement needs to be layered on this process if an understanding of wanting to take control of our thoughts and emotions is the desired outcome of such a ritual.
Watching the stage performance of Yentl at the Marylebone Theatre last week (a serious play about life in religious communities and nothing like the Streisand musical adaptation) reminded me not only of the taboo of such bodily functions, but also of the shame that may accompany it, the mystery, and what is often a lack of understanding – not just of the physical self, but of the emotional, hormonal beings we all are. The feelings that we don’t truly understand can leave us with a sense of being out of control.
The men and women of the powerful Yentl story, educated separately and living such different lives in a shadow of bodily secrecy and shame, while generations of commentary on such ritual added a negative judgement, left us regarding ourselves as unclean and impure rather than as ‘tamei’, in need of regulating our emotional selves because of the uncontrollable physical self.
Yet Torah had provided us with a formula for such times, a coping mechanism when body and emotion are not in sync and when we’re left feeling out of control of our lives and needing to get off the treadmill of constant demands. The response to this is to gift us space and the chance to immerse before rejoining others.
Tazria-Metzora teaches us about two states of being, one when we need to be with others and one when we need space and time alone. It doesn’t teach these states with any judgement, just an understanding of what might bring them about. Life is spent drifting between these two states. In the same way as Shabbat is distinct from the working week, both types of time are necessary and normal, so that in life we will be both ‘tamei’ and ‘tahor’. But neither are dirty, avoidable nor permanent; they are just part of being human beings who, by our very nature as sociable, communal beings, also need time alone.
The taboos, the things we didn’t previously understand nor talk about, have shifted — bodily fluids are no longer the taboo they once were, but our need to give ourselves time and space for our emotions, to get us from one state of being to another, has not changed. We should not regard ourselves as unclean at those moments, just holding feelings we would not have chosen or emotions over which we aren’t in control.
How would I describe the state of tamei? The times we want to regress into ourselves when perhaps what we actually need is the support of others. So Torah gives us time and space, with a re-entry ritual, so that the formally prescribed “excuse me from the world” note doesn’t go on indefinitely, but gives us the time and then the way to re-emerge, tahor, ready for the world.
Whatever causes you to feel tamei, in need of space away from the world, we hope that Wellspring, our centre of wellbeing with the ritual of mikveh at its heart, will give you a place to find the emotional support to re-emerge from the mikveh, tahor, being fully present in the world in the way that feels right for you. May the thoughts in our heads and the emotions of our hearts match the way that we are able to physically be in the world.
- Rabbi Miriam Berger is Founder Director of Wellspring UK.