Rabbi Jenna Shaw
This week’s Torah portion is Tazria-Metzora: Leviticus 12:1 – 15:33
One of my favorite, radical Hasidic ideas is that God changes throughout the year in alignment with the holiday cycle. The God of Rosh Hashanah, for instance, is the imaginative Creator — the One who helped shape the world. This divine imagination echoes through Vayikra, which describes the creation of the Tabernacle, a miniature world crafted by the Israelites.
In bleak moments, when hope feels distant, the idea of an imaginative God offers comfort and possibility. Around Yom Ha’atzmaut, I often wonder: could the God of this holiday also be one of radical imagination?
The founding of the state of Israel in 1948 was, in many ways, an act of radical imagination. It emerged in the shadow of the Holocaust, a time of unimaginable loss for the Jewish people. Faced with existential questions, Zionism became a response — a vision championed by leaders like David Ben-Gurion, who imagined a sovereign Jewish homeland in British Mandatory Palestine. Their dream was bold: a safe harbor for Jews worldwide, a flourishing of Jewish identity and a national embodiment of “never again.”
Yet even in their visionary dreaming, critical gaps remained. The plan did not fully consider those already living in the land — Palestinian communities with deep roots — or the vast diversity within the Jewish world itself. Mizrachi Jews, for instance, who had lived across the Middle East and North Africa for generations, were not central to the state’s founding narrative.
I often wonder how things might have unfolded if different dreamers had been included. What if the founding vision had centered voices of Mizrachi Jews, who carried unique understandings of exile and home? What if it had included Jewish women — mothers, artists, organizers — who might have foregrounded care and community? What if Palestinian families — Muslim and Christian — had helped shape a vision of shared justice rather than displacement?
Israel’s creation was a moment of Jewish triumph, but also one of deep loss for some. For Palestinians, it marked the Nakba — the “catastrophe” — of displacement, which didn’t necessarily have to be the result. Mizrachi Jews, too, often encountered racism and marginalization. These truths must be acknowledged. Imagination doesn’t erase history — it invites us to revisit it with honesty and ask how we might move forward with greater care.
Parashat Tazria-Metzora offers a spiritual model for this kind of radical imagination. These Torah portions focus on communal responses to tzara’at, traditionally seen as a skin affliction, but understood here as a rupture in social connection. The Torah’s response is not merely about diagnosis or exclusion — it’s about reintegration and healing.
One of the most powerful images is the return of the afflicted person. They are not expected to find their way back alone — they are met at the edge by a priest, not for judgment, but for accompaniment. This moment is deliberate, sacred and communal. Restoration is not about purity; it’s about reweaving what has been torn.
So, what if, as we imagine Israel’s future, we centered healing over power, witnessing over fear, and restoration over exclusion? Tazria-Metzora reminds us that wholeness is not found in erasing brokenness, but in honoring it and doing the hard work of repair.
This Yom Ha’atzmaut, may we encounter the God of radical imagination — the One who dreams of new heavens and earths and invites us to co-create them. And may we have the courage to ask: What could this land, this state, this people become if we dared to imagine again, with empathy, justice, healing and humanity at the center?
May our remembering include all voices. May our imagination make room for all people. And may our celebration be rooted not only in what was, but in the sacred potential of what still can be.
Rabbi Jenna Shaw is a rabbi at T’ruah, The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, leading the organization’s work on Israel. Before T’ruah, Rabbi Shaw worked as the assistant director of schools K-12 at Adas Israel Congregation.
