Food Tourah – Tazria-Metzora

April 28, 2025 in Food Tourah

Because life so often happens around food, we’re spending the year exploring the weekly parshiot and finding connections to each week’s Shabbat menu. We have reached the halfway point.  This week’s double portion includes that 27th and 28th parshiot down, 26 more to go!

The focus of these two portions is how diseases that affect the skin, which can also be passed to inanimate objects such as clothing and buildings, can be diagnosed by the priest and remedied through isolation and bathing.  In addition to the talk of leprosy, there are explanations of how blood, through menstruation or childbirth, makes a woman impure. And how the emission of semen, or other fluids, from a man’s sexual organ make him ritually impure.

I think we can unanimously agree that these are the least appetizing portions in the entire Torah.  I decided to focus on recipes that purport to offer healing including antioxidant and anti-inflammatory herbs.  This page includes many recipes to boost your immune system.  The golden turmeric and lentil soup sound particularly delicious.   These hearty “steaks”  are made from cauliflower with paprika cashew cream – said to be anti-inflammatory.  You do not have to be a triathlete to try the fruit crisp recipe on this page full of soluble fiber and antioxidants.  Here’s to your health!

B’tayavon and Shabbat Shalom,

Alison (Baraf) & Sarah (Roark)

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To read past installments of Food Tourah – Click Here.

For a more in-depth look at this week’s parsha, visit Sefaria.com.