THEMES of Featured Ascent Lights

Even if things are difficult, it is only because we are in the early part of the farming process. Now we are planting the seeds, and these seeds will soon sprout and blossom into the future and final redemption and the wondrous revelations of the days of the Mashiach.

The fact that the Torah uses different words when describing oaths and blemishes teaches how we can grow spiritually. Spiritual service begins with oaths because these cause us to make boundaries for ourselves in the physical world. Learning how to say "no" to a permitted - but extraneous - desire is the beginning of a sincere relationship with G-d.

One of the priests' tasks was to determine if a sign on a person, garment, or house was, in fact, tzaraat, a spiritual type of leprosy, or if it was pure. Rebbe Michel of Zlodotchov writes that the priests' involvement is a hint about the perfectly righteous in each generation, whose purpose it is to direct us toward better paths of closeness to G-d.

The Talmud tells that three heavenly keys - to rain, childbirth, and revival of the dead - are not given over to an emissary, but are in G-d's hands alone. Because of the power of pregnancy and birth to which G-d controls the key, impurities are kept out until the baby is born. Once the pregnancy ends and the holiness leaves, impure energies are also aroused.