Tazria-Metzora
The beginning of Parshas Tazria discusses the birth of a boy or girl. The Gemara states that an infant in the mother’s stomach is taught the entire Torah. Once the baby is born and enters the world, he receives a potch from a Malach and then forgets all the Torah that he previously learned. The Sefer Chachmas Betzalel wonders, what is the reason for this episode: if the child is meant to learn the Torah and know it, then let him remember it, and if not, then why teach it to him?
He quotes the Vilna Goan who writes that the world is full of emptiness, it is lowly, distanced and removed from ruchniyus. Had a person not been prepared in advance by learning the entire Torah, he would have an extremely difficult time to be able to learn the holy Torah and reach to its depths in order to understand its hidden secrets. He would end up limited in his achievement. Therefore, an infant is taught the entire Torah while he is still pure and untainted from sin. At that stage he is indeed fitting to connect to and understand the Torah; this way when he actually learns, his neshama will easily be able to retrieve and return to the full depth of the Torah as he is just remembering what he already learned. This is the meaning of the famous Gemara, “יגעתי ומצאתי תאמין, believe one who says, ‘I toiled and I found.’” The wording “I found” applies to someone who had something that was lost and then found. So too, the Torah was first taught to the baby and then taken away, but when a person toils, he retrieves the original Torah that he had already studied in his mother’s stomach.
The Rama writes that there is a minhag to make a seuda and mishteh on Friday-night after a male is born. People come to visit the infant to taste something there and it is called a seudas mitzva. The Teshuvas Rebi Menachem introduces: the source for this seuda is to be like a mourner’s seuda, because the baby is mourning over the Torah that he learned and now forgot. The Derisha elaborates that this is also a reason why a bris-milah is on the eighth-day, since now the infant has finished his days of mourning and is ready to be brought to a new start, happily. To add, it is well known there is a custom to serve arbis by a shalom zachor. Rabbi Reichal suggested that the round shape of the arbis hints at mourning as the custom for one who mourns eats round-shaped food.
May Hashem help us return to the purity and great depth of the holy Torah and become closer to Hashem!
