Parashat Tazria - Sat 13 Apr (Nisan 5)

This week’s parsha, Tazria, is one that makes a lot of people want to stay away from shul. Because well, it’s gross. It’s a lot of blood, a lot of talk of purity and impurity and, of course, a lot of vivid descriptions of tz’ra’at, often translated as leprosy.

Here’s one thing we know. Ttz’ra’at wasn’t leprosy. According to Robert Alter, along with many other scholars, quote “Although older English translations represent the Hebrew tzara’at (etymology uncertain) as “leprosy” modern scholars are virtually unanimous in rejecting this identification. The symptoms do not correspond, and there is scant evidence that leprosy was present in the near east before the Hellenistic period. No positive identification with a disease known to modern medicine has been made.” In my own research, I’ve seen some suggest that tz’ra’at may come closest to eczema or psoriasis, but even these are not a perfect match for what the Torah says tz’ra’at.

The Torah describes tzra’at as a scaly affliction, “a swelling or a scab or a shiny-spot.” When someone develops such a symptom, they are to be brought to Aaron or to one of his sons the priests. Then, the process of identification begins. If it looks like it could be tzra’at serious— not just your run of the mill shiny-spot— the priest places them into isolation for a week. During that time, for these unfortunate folks, their garments are to be torn, their head is to be made-bare, their upper-lip is to be covered; and they are to cry out: Tamei! Tamei! And, until clear of illness, they are to remain in isolation, living outside the camp.

Although I know we could easily go into a deep dive on the nature of tz’ra’at itself, I think we’ll get more out of looking at the treatment of those with tz’ra’at. In fact, I think the nature of the disease itself doesn’t really matter at all.

So what can we learn from this today? Is this affliction, and its treatment, as foreign to us as animal sacrifice? Or is there perhaps something to be gleaned from this odd, ancient practice?

Let’s start with the practical. After dealing with a pandemic for 4 years, many of us are quite familiar with the benefits of those who are ill isolating from those who are not. So perhaps, in that sense, our ancient ancestors were simply setting up society for success. If an ill person were to stay in the camp along with all of the healthy people, more people could get sick.  In the same way that we ask people to stay home from WES if they’re sick today, our ancestors asked the ill within their community to stay out of the main center.

That might be the simplest explanation, but it’s far from the only one.  In the Talmud, Arakhin 16b relates this conversation between two rabbis:

Rabbi Shmuel bar Nadav asked Rabbi Ḥanina, and some say that it was Rabbi Shmuel bar Nadav, the son-in-law of Rabbi Ḥanina, who asked of Rabbi Ḥanina, and some say that he asked it of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi: What is different and notable about a metzora—one with tz’ra’at— that the Torah states: “He shall dwell alone; outside of the camp shall be his dwelling” (Leviticus 13:46)? He replied: By speaking malicious speech he separated between husband and wife and between one person and another; therefore he is punished with tz’ra’at, and the Torah says: “He shall dwell alone; outside of the camp shall be his dwelling.”

In other words, the person who has tz’ra’at isn’t just suffering a physical illness that necessitates a period of isolation but rather a spiritually-induced one. By acting unjustly— by engaging in lashon hara, malicious speech, one creates separation. And because of the separation one created, one must in turn be separated from one’s community. In other words, gossip causes isolation, which in turn causes the gossiper to be isolated by the priests. The punishment fits the crime, but, after enough time has passed, the gossiper is still admitted back into the community to try to do better.

In our community at WES, we have a rich history of engaging in the practice of mussar, of working to cultivate positive character traits. Some of you are still part of midah circles that Rabbi Mark started many years ago. And everyone who gets our weekly newsletter gets the midah- the character trait- of the month. April’s is Sh'miat HaOzen—Attentiveness. The work of Mussar is the work of awareness of what we do that adds to our communal life and what we do that might detract from it. The Talmudic cause of tz’ra’at is the lack of that awareness and the acting, instead, from a place of insecurity or selfishness.

Of course, with our scientific understanding of the world today,  we know that we do not generally suffer physical afflictions purely due to our bad behavior. Some people who are kind and patient and generous develop debilitating illnesses. Some people who are cruel and selfish and petty live to be over a hundred. But the Talmud’s treatment of tz’ra’at does remind us that, even if we don’t develop a scaly affliction after behaving poorly, the consequences might stay with us and with our community for a time.

But there’s another way to look at tz’ra’at. While our sages might always default to attributing negative actions to those who find themselves afflicted— to make some form of spiritual justification for what’s happened— it’s also possible that some people in the community just got sick, and looked different, and our ancestors were afraid of that difference. They were afraid of anything that didn’t “fit” into their narrow definition of community.

The people afflicted by tz’ra’at were cast out, whether their affliction was contagious or not, whether they’d done anything wrong or not. And they were not only isolated but forced to treat themselves as mourners, rending their clothing and calling out their impurity so that everyone else could give them a wide berth.

I don’t know how well each of you remember the start of the pandemic. Honestly I think I’ve blocked a lot of it out of my memory, and it’s strange now to look back at some of my writings from spring of 2020 when I was terrified of other humans. I remember going for walks— usually early in the morning or late at night when the sidewalks were mostly empty— and crossing the street when I saw another person even half a block away. I didn’t know who was safe— who was “pure”— and who carried the risk of sickness. And I didn’t want to get close enough to find out.

Perhaps in that time, my avoidance and fear of others made sense— there was a global pandemic after all, and here in NYC it hit particularly hard in the beginning. But how many of us isolate people in our daily lives based solely on appearances or other superficial markers, or based on limited information that we have about their views and values?

Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, the dean of the Rabbinical School at JTS and of course no stranger to WES, wrote a commentary in which she reminded us:

Every year, Tazria urges us to question our own impulses to turn away from what is unfamiliar or frightening to us in the lives, and illnesses and bodies, of others. It invites us into discomfort and impels us to craft responses enabling those who are excluded from the community due to fear and ignorance to find their way in and be honored in the fullness of a being created betzelem Elohim. It prompts us to consider how ancient understandings and misunderstandings of life and death, illness and healing, gender and sex, led to moral understandings and legal systems that we now endeavor to reframe or transform. This week, the Torah calls each of us to seek out and build new pathways which enable those who are marginalized to return, to come back into an ever-expanding camp.

In Rabbi Cohen’s reading, tz’ra’at is about isolation. It’s about not fitting in. It’s about being cast out by those who hold power— not because you’ve actually done anything wrong, but because those who hold power don’t understand you.

What would it mean for us to consider the people within our own communities whom we’ve cast out? From the unhoused people we move away from on the sidewalk to the people who might dress or present in a way we don’t understand, from the first timers in our synagogue who don’t know their way around a siddur to Jews who believe different things about Israel and Palestine than we do, we have opportunities every day to offer grace when our instincts might instead lead us to judgment. We have opportunities every day to welcome people in rather than cast them out.

It is my hope that, as we prepare for Passover in just over a week, and we leave a cup and perhaps a chair for Elijah, each of us can take a moment to consider those who don’t have a seat at our table. I hope each of us can think about how we might expand our hearts further to make room for all who seek to be in community. I hope each of us can, as our ancestors did so long ago, leave the narrowness of Mitzrayim behind. Shabbat Shalom.