Dvar Torah on Parshat Metzora

As a Rabbi and educator, there is a question which I get asked, in various forms, all the time. It goes like this: It's one thing to believe in the Torah, which is the word of God. It's perfect, divine, absolute. It makes sense to be loyal to it. But the Rabbis are just people, flesh and blood. They make mistakes, have biases, human weaknesses, needs, and concerns. Why should we have to listen to what they tell us to do? Why do they have to be right all the time? This week's parsha, Metzora, which continues to deal with the laws of tsara'at, a disease, mistakenly translated as leprosy,  found in human skin, clothing, and buildings, contains an interesting law, which, I believe, sheds some light on the issue of the notion of "perfect, divine" law as opposed to more human, "fallable" Rabbinic law.

The parsha tells us that when this disease is spotted in the stones of a home, the owner must go to the priest and tell him that he seems to have seen this affliction in his house. The priest then "commands that they empty the house, before the priest comes to see the affliction, so that he will not declare impure everything in the house, and only after that is done does the priest comes to see the house."  The idea is simple: whatever is in the house once the Cohen looks at it and declares it actually afflicted with tsara'at is ritually impure, and must be destroyed. In order to save the household items from impurity and destruction, the Torah instructs us to remove them while they are still technically pure, before the Cohen gets there and has a chance to declare them impure. The Rabbis explain that the things in the house that would be condemned to destruction if they were left there are simple clay vessels - the rest of the material in the house, if declared impure, could either be subsequently purified and used, or used in an impure state in certain circumstances (food could be eaten by people who themselves are in a state of impurity). In other words, this entire rigamarole of saving the vessels by emptying the house before it's declared impure is there to save some very cheap stuff.

The Rabbis point out that we learn from this how concerned the Torah is for the Jewish people's property, in that it comes up with this little legal loophole of emptying the house before the priest can declare it impure just to save some cheap pots.

Now, many people, usually the same kind of people who ask about where the authority of the Rabbis comes from, and why it should bind us, don't like this law either. To them, it feels like legal trickery. After all, they say, if it turns out that the house really is stricken with the disease of tsara'at, why should we use this delaying tactic to save the pots, aren't they really impure? What difference does it make if we take them out before the Cohen declares that to be the case? Is it not empirically the case? This is just a legal trick to save a few bucks!

To which my answer is, Yes! Right! Exactly! The Torah is teaching us, by going out of its way to instruct us how to save these pots, something very profound, perhaps the most profound thing there is to know, about itself: it is here to help. The Torah is here to care about and lend a helping hand to the people who choose to live by its laws. The Torah, not the Rabbis, with their supposedly all-too-human concerns, but the Torah itself, "games" the very system of rules it puts into place in order to give the Jewish people a break. Because it is just that, a system, and the system is meant to be used to do good, as much good as possible. And this is precisely what the system of Rabbinic law is meant to do as well. The fact that the Rabbis must, by virtue of their being human, take human concerns and needs into account, is not different at all from the divine, perfect, flawless approach of the God-given Torah.  When the Rabbis bring human needs into their decision-making process, when they worry about financial strain, human dignity, or hurt feelings, about human sensitivity and pain, they are doing precisely what God, and the Torah, do here, and what the halachic system, starting from the Torah itself and on down to Rabbinic decisions, is essentially meant to do: care about human beings and their basic, simple, needs. If the Torah's legal system can be understood and applied in a way which saves us the cost of a few cheap pots, then that is precisely the way it should be understood and applied. The role of the Rabbis is not to introduce a human dimension to the halacha, but to continue to apply that dimension, which is already found in the Torah itself.

The Torah itself, and not the subsequent process of Rabbinic legislation and adjudication, is the source of the understanding that the system exists to serve its adherents. The system-like nature of the Torah, the fact that legal loopholes and leniencies are there when we need them, the fact that the Torah can be "gamed", as it is in this week's parsha, for the good of the people, if only to save some cheap pots - and do much more than that, when neccessary - is one of the Torah's most divine features. It allows the Torah to forgive, to care, to bend itself to the needs and concerns of its adherents. The Rabbis are as divine as the Torah is if they continue in this loving, caring mode. It is its  flexibility, not its absolute, "perfect", rigidity, which makes the Torah, and the subsequent decisions of the Rabbis, divine.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix