When most people write about or discuss this week’s parsha, Tazriah/Metzorah, they immediately make it clear that the affliction most-often translated as leprosy is a spiritual affliction and not the unfortunate disease carried by the Mycobacterium leprae bacteria. Because of its sever physical manifestation, leprosy was, for most of history, a disease for which people were shunned – which makes it understandable why the disease symptoms described in parsha for which people were sent out the camp was so named. But everything in our mesorah makes it clear that the various types of tzaraas have nothing to do with bacteria or viruses.
One might, however, stop and wonder about Vayikra 13:45: ‘“As
for the person with an affliction: their clothes shall be rent, their head
shall be left bare, and their upper lip shall be covered over; and they shall
call out, ‘Impure! Impure!’” Why is the matzroa covering his upper lip? Many
answers are given, but the Ibn Ezra notes “He shall cover his upper lip so that
he does not harm anyone with the breath of his mouth.” Was there some sort of contagion to Tzaraas
if it was a spiritual affliction?
Furthermore, it is most puzzling that the one who is suffering
for having spread loshen hara is now meant to walk about shouting “Impure.” We
know that lashon hara, gossip and rumors, are toxic particularly because they
end up embarrassing someone and thus, from a theological construct, murdering
them. So why does Hashem put the matzora in a position to embarrass himself
unless he truly is a danger to someone else?
Let us take a step back and contemplate what brings a person
to a state of a tzaraas affliction. Lashon hara – and lashon hara is generally
the result of jealousy. To get to the point of a matzora, not just one with a
suspicion of tzaraas, but truly stricken, one must have had a rather decent
amount of ill-will.
The discussion of the matzora easily makes it seem that one who
discovered themselves in this situation went out from the camp, did teshuva,
and returned home. But sometimes it took longer than the set amount of days.
Sometimes the Kohain declared that the matzora was not yet cured… It was not
just that his physical affliction still remained. It was that the negative
energy was still eating away at his soul. He was still jealous.
Perhaps when this matzora calls out that he is unclean, he
is alerting anyone who nears him that he still has an urge to speak lashon
hara. The dangerous element that the Ibn Ezra refers to is not germs as we
think of them today, but the miasma of negativity, the inclination to feel that
this situation in which he or she finds themselves is, perhaps, not really their
fault or their responsibility.
Until the matzora does true teshuva, the matzora cannot be
healed. True teshuva is not only repenting from the lashon hara and fortifying
oneself not to do so again, but really, in one’s heart of heart, recognizing
why it was done and letting go of what ever pain led the person down that road in
the first place.
There is a pithy statement that acknowledging a problem is
half the battle. Perhaps in the commandment that the matzora call out that he
is unclean is the cure to that fact itself. Hashem understands human nature –
obviously – and this is the manner is which a person can learn to face the
truth of his/her own doing.
We don’t have tzaraas today, but that doesn’t mean we don’t
have to work to take responsibility for our thoughts and feelings. In truth, however,
it just means that it is a lot harder to do so.
Wishing you all a beautiful Shabbas and hatzlacha on the
journey of self-improvement that is living Torah.
