Miriam Klimova
Vayikra 12:1-13:59
Miriam Klimova, Rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, and the Rabbi of the “Shirat ha-Jam” congregation in Haifa.
With time we get used to everything – to bad people around us, to war, to illness… In our life we experience good things and things which are a nice surprise for us, but often also sad and depressing things which we did not expect, which we have not chosen. The mind, as we know, doesn’t like to waste its energy, so that’s why many of the actions we perform take place automatically and we don’t always control our reactions to these or some other events.
When we read Parashat Tazria, it resembles more of a medical book with pictures. It describes different forms of leprosy, it tells us how skin should look like, and even the hair color, to determine if a person is unclean or clean. This sounds quite technical, and yet there is a lot of pain hidden in this parasha. The leper had to enter the camp and yell “Tame! Tame! Unclean! Unclean!” to warn everyone about the risk of infection. But… more interesting is the description which is missing here: the Torah doesn’t mention at all this person’s feelings, it doesn’t tell us what kind of meaning he ascribed to his scream. Was he wailing in pain? “Look at me! Look at me and my suffering! I must live outside the camp. I cannot approach anyone, not even God! Since I’m not allowed to come near the Mishkan – His place of dwelling”.
The Biblical name tzaraat – leprosy – was used to name a new infectious disease discovered in the Middle Ages. Scholars who researched this topic proved that the illness described in the Torah does not correspond to what we know as leprosy. In essence, it’s not clear to us what the leprosy mentioned in the Torah is. Leprosy of the skin – this we can understand, but leprosy of a gate, leprosy of a house?
In this case the sages of the Mishna and Talmud probably didn’t have more knowledge than we do. So they created their own interpretation which was appropriate for their own times and needs. They use the language of the Torah, the words and verses, usually taken out of their context, to teach the society a morality lesson. And so over the course of generations the illness known as tzaraat has become not only a physical condition, but also a physical manifestation of the problem of moral luck. Leprosy – tzaraat – is transformed from a definition of a physical defect into a definition of a spiritual defect which manifests itself as a skin disease. The word leper – metzora – gains a new explanation and is translated as the one who – motzi shem ra – spreads slender and gossip. This makes sense. If someone is forced to live in isolation, they won’t be able to slender anyone anymore, since there will be no one to listen to them.
In ancient times people believed that misfortunes and plagues befalling people were an expression of God’s anger. God punished Pharaoh and He “afflicted [him]… with mighty plagues” for bringing Sarai into his palace (Bereshit 12:17). According to traditional commentaries the link between lashon hara and tzaraat is emphasized in the case of Miriam, who was infected with this disease right after an incident when she spoke dismissively about Moses (Bemidbar 12). But we can and we should challenge the commentary! Based on the text of the book of Bereshit Pharaoh had no idea that Sarai was Abram’s wife. And with regards to the second example a question arises: why did only Miriam get sick, and the others, who spoke about Moses in the same way – didn’t?
In any case, in Judaism the sin of speaking negatively about someone is considered to be one of the most serious sins. Sometimes it is even compared to murder. This seems to be an exaggeration, but it’s hard to overestimate the influence and harm that our words can cause.
A contemporary example of such a situation could be the articles in Polish newspapers published in the last couple of days, in which people describe how they regret that they’ve taken refugees into their homes, how now they don’t have enough room, that it takes a lot of food to feed everyone and that they really want to get rid of these strangers as quickly as possible. We have a situation when someone – who said they wanted to help those who are suffering because they had to leave their homes – after some time is tired of the presence of foreign people and goes to a newspaper to give an interview intended for the entire country in which they describe all their negative emotions. First of all, we should never forget that human beings are not a toy – they breath, eat, use the toilet, they experience emotions, they are afraid, they feel angry… They require something more than just a spontaneous or temporary interest. We should never forget that nobody is perfect, and even if there was a situation when someone was personally unkind to us, this is upsetting and we should tell this person straight to their face that they’ve made a mistake, but can we judge an entire nation based on this, making a generalization about everyone? Aren’t we talking about tens of millions of people with different worldviews, a different upbringing and education? It’s really sad and regretful that we are witnessing how a good initiative to help your neighbor is changing into sowing seeds which can yield the crops of hatred.
We could continue discussing problems linked to negative speech, but instead I want to focus on individuals and our approach towards them.
The task of the priest was only to identify tzaraat, to diagnose if the disease is contagious, and if so, then isolate the infected person from their family and the society.
Whereas today at a spiritual level the role of a Rabbi is completely different than the actions of the priest described in Parashat Tazria. Contemporary society cannot leave people alone with their fears and hurts! We must give them a sense of belonging, we must act contrary to the Torah’s instruction and not keep away from them, but rather invite those who are suffering into our camp.
It seems that every contact with the world leaves us infected… We are distracted, disoriented, restless. It seems that we can at least partially choose what to touch and what to avoid. In other words, to a certain degree we choose the kind of impact the world will have on us. In our lives we experience sad and depressing things that we did not expect, that we did not choose. But only we can choose our approach towards them! Every person chooses their approach towards life and towards the lives of his or her neighbors.
I wish all of us that we make a good choice!
Shabbat Shalom!
Translated from Polish by: Marzena Szymańska-Błotnicka
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