We got chicks last week, which already feels a bit unhinged given the stage of life we’re in, but here we are. The chicks are somehow both very fragile and totally resilient at the same time. I keep checking on them – are they warm enough, are they eating, is this too much poop? It’s a lot of noticing, paying attention. Which is what Tazria and Metzora are about too.
It’s hard to feel connected to these two parshas, they relate to skin afflictions, plagues, and procedures that we don’t practice anymore in modern age. But this year, I kept coming back to something Rashi says—that tzara’at wasn’t just a physical condition. It is repeatedly connected by Chazal to inner spiritual/moral states, most often lashon hara—harmful speech. Something misaligned inside is addressed through something visible outside, in a way that forces pause and attention.
That changes how you read much of the parsha. Because it means the Torah is working with a completely different assumption than we usually do: that inner life is not sealed off from outer life. It doesn’t stay fully contained. Sometimes, in certain moments and systems, it surfaces in a way that demands to be noticed.
And in a house with young kids, that feels… uncomfortably recognizable. Because everything shows up. A bad mood doesn’t stay contained—it turns into the tone of the afternoon. A sibling issue doesn’t remain abstract—it escalates unless there’s intervention. My own tiredness doesn’t stay private—it leaks out in how I respond, even when I don’t mean it to.
Nothing stays theoretical for long. It all becomes visible. And if Rashi is right about tzara’at—that the body itself reflects what is happening internally—then motherhood feels like a constant, quiet version of that same awareness.
I see the moment something shifts in a child before it becomes a full collapse. I see the moment I am about to respond in a way I’ll wish I hadn’t. I see the early signs of tension, long before anyone would call it a “problem.” And then I’m just deciding—again and again—whether to address it early, or let it grow.
There’s something humbling about how much of motherhood is just that: noticing earlier than feels convenient, and responding before things harden. Sometimes, small things are how big things begin. And you don’t always know which is which. So you pause (hopefully). You check. You adjust. You check, again.
Like I do with the chicks—hovering a little, watching a lot, trying to learn what actually matters and what just looks loud in the moment. Through Rashi’s lens, it does feel like the Torah is training that muscle: to believe that the inner world is real enough that it will show itself—and to care enough to notice when it does.