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Shabbat Parashat Tazria Metzora 5773

Tazria | 3 Iyar 5773 | 13/04/2013

Parashat Hashavua: The Place of Tumah in the Human Experience

Sefer Vayikra through Parashat Shemini deals with a description of the divine service and the inauguration of the Mishkan. Parashat Acharei Mot contains a detailed account of the service of Yom Kippur. In our two parshiyot, Tazria and Metzora, a different topic “interrupts”: the various causes of tumah (ritual impurity) that affect man. These can be broken into two categories: those that affect men or women without being a response to wrongdoing, such as tumot related to the reproductive cycle; those that can be attributed to man’s wrongdoing, i.e., tzara’at afflicting the body, garments, or structures.

Ask the Rabbi: Shehecheyanu, Clothes, and Renovations During Sefira

May one buy and wear new clothes, do work on his house, and recite Shehecheyanu during the Sefira period? (I have recently been hearing that this is forbidden.)

Ein Ayah: Peace – The Bridge Between the Religious and the Humanistic

They instituted that one should greet his friend with Hashem’s Name, as the pasuk says: “Boaz was coming from Beit Lechem, and he said to the reapers: ‘May Hashem be with you,’ and they answered him: ‘May Hashem bless you’” (Ruth 2:4).

P'ninat Mishpat: An Agent Who Did Not Make a Client Sign a Contract

The defendants (=def) called the plaintiff (=pl), a real estate agent, to help them find office space to rent. Pl took def to an office, which they agreed to rent after a few days, without having them sign an agent’s contract or discuss the agent’s fee. Pl did not get involved in negotiations for the rental contract and explained that the landlord told him that matters were moving along smoothly. Pl is asking one month’s rent from def (5,000 shekels), as, they claim, is standard and as he received from the landlord. Def claim that since pl did not discuss the agent’s fee and was receiving pay from the landlord, they thought that they were not expected to pay pl. They point out that according to Israeli law, if a client is not signed on an agent’s contract, he does not have to pay, and the fact that he did not have them sign indicates that they were not expected to pay. They add that had they known they would have to pay an agent’s fee, they would have negotiated the rental agreement differently.

Refuah Sheleimah

for

Rabanit Itah bat Chana

Ehrenreich

and

Mr. Shmuel ben

Rosa Shoshana Rosenhak

amongst the sick

of Klal Yisrael

This edition of
Hemdat Yamim

is dedicated
to the memory of
R' Meir
ben

Yechezkel Shraga Brachfeld

o.b.m

Hemdat Yamim

is endowed by

Les & Ethel Sutker

of Chicago, Illinois
in loving memory of
Max and Mary Sutker
and

Louis and Lillian Klein, z”l

This edition of
Hemdat Yamim
is dedicated to the memory of

Rabbi Shlomo Merzel o.b.m,
who passed away
on Iyar 10, 5771

A weekly divrei Torah leaflet: A Glimpse at the Parasha, Ask the Rabbi, From the writings of Harav Avraham Yitzchak Hakohen Kook, zt”l, Pninat Mishpat (Jewish Monetary Law).