This week’s Torah reading of Tazri’a-M’tsora (Leviticus 12-15) is largely concerned with laws of purity and impurity relating to the disease of tsara’at, usually rendered as leprosy. Not only can this ailment infect people, but it can also afflict clothing and houses, in certain cases causing all vessels within a structure to contract ritual impurity. When a house appears infected, Scripture requires the owners to remove everything therein, and then ask a priest to inspect it, who will then either declare it pure or impure. Martha Himmelfarb examines the reasons for this step, and its significance for understanding the nature of Jewish law:

Last month, Egypt celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, which it had lost in the Six-Day War. Since then Cairo has not used the territory to launch attacks against the Jewish state, but it has once again become a bastion of terror—most of which has been associated with Islamic State and aimed at the Egyptian government. Jonny Essa and Ofir Winter examine the situation in the Sinai, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s recent speech on the subject, and the implications for Israel: