Tazria

The portion opens with childbirth. A woman who bears a son is unclean seven days, and he is circumcised on the eighth; thirty-three days more she remains in blood purification. For a daughter, the periods are doubled — fourteen and sixty-six. At their completion she brings a lamb for a burnt offering and a bird for a sin offering; if she cannot afford a lamb, two doves or pigeons suffice.

Then the long diagnostic chapter on tzaraat, the surface affliction the priest must examine. A swelling, scab, or bright spot on the skin comes before Aaron or his sons: hair turned white and the mark deeper than the skin mean uncleanness; if not, the person is shut up seven days, and again seven, and pronounced clean or unclean by what has spread. Case follows case — raw flesh in an old inflammation, the healed boil, the burn, the scall of head or beard where thin yellow hair is the sign, the dull white spots that are harmless, the bald head clean unless a reddish-white mark rises there.

The one confirmed unclean tears their clothes, lets their hair hang loose, covers the upper lip and calls "Unclean, unclean," and dwells alone outside the camp as long as the mark lasts. The portion ends with tzaraat in garments — a greenish or reddish mark in wool, linen, or leather, shut up, washed, torn out, or burned according to how it behaves — with the priest declaring each clean or unclean.