Tazria – Metzora / She Will Cause to Grow – A Person Afflicted with Tza’rat
CARLSBAD, California — This week we read a double portion. The first portion is called Tazria, which means ‘She will cause to grow,’ and the second portion is called Metzora, which means a person afflicted with (the disease) Tza’rat.
First a word about why we sometimes read a double Torah portion. As we know we read through the entire Five Books of Moses on a yearly basis. The Torah is divided by weekly portions, and in fact the weekly portions are further divided into daily portions. There are a total of 54 weekly portions in the Torah. A Jewish year, which is based on the cycles of the moon and of earth’s position relative to the sun, typically has 354 days, but during a leap year we add an extra month. This means that a Jewish year can be 384 days. We also must keep in mind that often times a Biblical holiday coincides with Shabbat and when that happens the Torah reading is not the weekly portion but instead the portion associated with the holiday. When all of these factors are combined it comes out that during non-leap years we have more portions than weeks, necessitating the combining of some portions. Hence the double portion is born.
Tazria and Metzora deal with many of the laws of ritual impurity. This particular category of laws include many of the least understood laws of the entire Torah. The nature of the disease, Tza’rat, is likewise greatly misunderstood.
Ritual impurity and purity are known in Hebrew as Tumah and Taharah respectively. They are often times mistranslated as unclean and clean. A state of ritual purity or impurity has nothing to do with hygiene. These conditions also do not (necessarily) have to do with righteousness versus sinfulness. Meaning there could well be circumstances where someone becomes ritually unclean because of doing a Mitzvah. In fact, cases exist where one is commanded to become ritually impure.
It is human nature to try and relate Biblical statuses with current life, but in this case, there are perhaps only broad parallels and certainly nothing directly comparable.
With this in mind we can consider the disease Tza’rat, which, during Biblical times, afflicted one’s home, one’s clothing, and finally, in the most severe cases, one’s body. The person suffering from Tza’rat was sent out of the main camp and placed in isolation. He or she was considered ritually impure and could spiritually contaminate others until they had overcome their status and the symptoms went away.
This disease is not leprosy (Hansen’s Disease). It was caused by engaging in the terrible sin of Lashon Harah – evil gossip. The Rabbis explain that this was a case of ‘Middah kinegged middah’ – where the punishment was ‘measure for measure’ with the sin. Evil gossip is a sin that undermines the community. Speaking negatively about one another undermines society, in fact, it is downright antisocial. The cure for it can only come once the guilty individual is sent out of the camp and forced to be in isolation until he/she can do an appropriate Teshuva – repentance.
Interestingly, a person could have been diagnosed with the disease, but it did not become official until a Kohen, a member of the Priestly class, officially proclaimed him to have the disease. Why was the official word of the Priest needed? Is the Priest considered some sort of doctor? The answered offered is beautiful. The Kohen’s role was to represent the Jewish people as he served in the Holy Temple. In order to do his job effectively he had to have a strong and abiding love of the Jewish people. Remember, the Kohanim are descendants of Aharon HaKohen, the brother of Moses, who was renowned for his intense and ongoing love of the Jewish people.
Being that the very last thing a Kohen would want to do is to declare someone impure and afflicted by Tza’rat, it is precisely the Kohen we want doing so, for then we know the ‘diagnosis’ is coming from a place of love. That is certainly a lesson and mindset we need to emulate. Even when we, G-d forbid, see a real negative in another, we must be absolutely sure that we are looking at him and we are diagnosing him with love.
The connection between these portions and our current circumstances is more obvious than what is comfortable as we grapple with the coronavirus. We are in isolation. We are justifiably greatly concerned with contagion. We are maintaining the social distancing requirements of the government and are praying that a vaccine be created as soon as possible so that we can resume our normal routines and again enter society. It would be wise to take our current circumstances to heart and use this time to actively work on our love of one another; training ourselves to see that which is precious in each person and yearning for the day when we can again be physically together.
Wishing everyone a good and healthy Shabbat!
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Rabbi Yeruchem Eilfort is Director of Coastal Chabads and Chabad at La Costa. Rabbi Eilfort welcomes readers’ comments and questions and may be reached at RabbiE@ChabadatLaCosta.com.