Dvar Torah on Parshat Tazria

This week we read two parshas, Tazria and Metzorah, which are about various kinds of ritual impurity, stemming from the body and its functions and imperfections. These include the impurity of a woman after childbirth, the impurity engendered by certain diseases, and others. Modern students of these parshas point to a concern on the part of the Torah, in these sections, with order, boundaries, and the clear separation of a number of very basic things; the dead and the living, the sick and the healthy, the clean and the unclean, and permitted and  forbidden sexual relations. These distinctions are crucial to the health, holiness, and "order" of the individual and the nation, and must be carefully guarded. It has been suggested that Tum'ah, ritual impurity, is produced by the crossing of these borders; the living coming into contact with the dead, or the eating of animals who kill, or who are wild, and should not be introduced, therefore, into our world of order. In sexual matters, as well, clear distinctions are drawn between those with whom a sexual relationship is permitted, as being part of the natural order of the tribe, and those with whom it is forbidden.

Most of both parshas is concerned with Tzara'at, often translated, incorrectly, as leprosy. Leprosy (Hansen's Disease) is a horrible, ultimately fatal, illness, and is clearly not what the Torah is talking about when it describes these fairly innocuous but apparently unpleasant scabs and scales, which appear on skin, on fabric, and on the walls of homes. No specific reason for the affliction is given. In fact, the Torah treats many of these forms of impurity in a neutral, somewhat clinical manner. Little or no moral judgment is made about the impure person or object (with the exception of some of the non-kosher animals and forbidden sexual activity). Tum'ah, ritual impurity, seems to occur when someone, often accidentally or unavoidably, comes too close to an important boundary, such as that between life and death in the case of one who comes into contact with a dead body, or in the case of a woman who gives birth. Some of the non-Kosher animals are, perhaps, not Kosher because they seem to belong to a group of 'anomalous' animals (they move funny), and do not fit into the usual, common categories.

The impurity stemming from the disease of Tzara'at, and other illnesses mentioned may, in this model, be a result of a blurring of the boundaries between order and disorder, or, as in some of the others, between life and death. A priest is called upon to examine the afflicted flesh (or building, or article of clothing), and renders a decision as to whether this scab or mold is in fact Tzara'at, and the person or object is declared pure or impure. There is no moral weight attached to the disease.

However, later in the Torah, in the book of Ba'midbar, Miriam, the sister of Moshe, is smitten with Tzara'at as a punishment for speaking badly of her brother - she complains about his "Cushite" wife, and about his exalted position, which she and Aharon seem to feel they also deserve. God smites her, Moshe prays for her, seven days go by, and she is healed. From this story, the Rabbis concluded that Tzara'at is a punishment for lashon ha'ra - speaking badly of someone.

What I would like to discuss is the connection between these two things. Why is it that the specific physical condition of Tzara'at, which is also seen as a ritual impurity, is the result of the sin of slandering someone? What is the link between the two things? It seems to me that, although the Torah creates all kinds of borders and boundaries for us with the laws of purity and impurity, boundaries which affect the most basic aspects of our lives and actions (what we may eat, whom we may marry), and will also, in a couple of parshas from here, regulate the many of our human interactions, in terms of fair and unfair behavior, there is one basic area of human activity which resists regulation - speech. Although, earlier, the Torah prohibited lying and different forms of cursing, and will, in a few parshas, prohibit tale bearing, there is, as we all know, an almost infinite variety of ways in which speech can be used for good or for evil. We all know the tremendous amount that can be communicated in a word, a phrase; the damage that can be done, the harm inflicted, or the encouragement that can be given, the strength or love or fear or concern that can be expressed. In short, as the Rabbis say, "life and death are in the hands of our tongues" - our entire lives are in many ways created, defined, impoverished or enriched, by things that are said. Speech is the basic currency of human existence. Because of its centrality and ubiquity, speech resists control. Unlike eating, or having sexual relations, or doing business, which may occur often, but occur as specific, discreet, manageable acts, we talk ALL THE TIME. We talk in ways that resist easy categorization or definition as "pure" or "impure", "holy" or "profane" ("What, what's wrong? What did I say!?).

For this reason, the Rabbis feel that Tzara'at is there to help us render concrete this abstract issue, to make real this very slippery and hard to define behavior. The Rabbis apparently felt that some types of speech needed to be categorized clearly as impure, to be avoided, and so saw Tzara'at as a physical indicator of such impure speech, a symbol, a way to warn us away from dangerous and harmful speech, much as the creepy crawliness of some animals warns us away from eating them, or the dangerousness (blood, childbirth, death) of some experiences sets them apart as impure and worthy of attention, care, and recognition. I am reminded of Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Grey". Just as that story is about the notion of an external indicator of internal truths which are not always discernable, and the gap, in real life, between the inner truth as opposed to what we perceive, so, too, the Rabbinic approach to Tzara'at and lashon ha'ra seems to be about the desire to somehow be able to see, to somehow physically indicate and externalize an activity which carries great weight and importance in our lives, but which  is without physical substance. Speech is hard to assess, control, or categorize. The onset of Tzara'at, in connection with forbidden, dangerous speech, helps us to do that difficult task.

Today, in our world, the rabbinic connection between slanderous, harmful speech and physical illness is not an apparent reality - the Tzara'at thing doesn't seem to work. We are left without the assistance of a physical marker which categorizes speech for us as pure or impure, safe or dangerous, good or evil. Perhaps the Rabbis, by connecting Tzara'at to slanderous speech, are encouraging us to develop a sensitivity to the things that we and others say which enables us to see, as clearly as the priest could see in the scab he was examining in the potential victim of Tzara'at, what speech is healthy and what speech is sick, which words are pure and which are impure, what discourse needs to be rejected and sent out of the camp for being full of death, and sickness, and hate, and what is acceptable, and life affirming, and truthful, in our attempts to communicate with one another.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix