April 18, 2024

​The opening verses of our Torah reading this week, Parashat Metzora, detail the ritual for helping a metzora (one who has been afflicted with the skin disease tzara’at) return to the community after their period of confinement. 

This disease is a perplexing one - it can affect people, buildings, and fabric. It has no clear cause or explanation and seems to be easily spread. It is typically translated as “leprosy,” which is medically inaccurate, but socially on point. The experience of the metzora parallels that of lepers until more recent history, an experience of isolation and exclusion, which is understandable given the mysterious and contagious nature of the illness, but which is also difficult to encounter as modern readers. As a community, we often teach the Torah of inclusion; the rules for dealing with the metzora seem to be oriented in the opposite direction. 

While the Torah gives us verses upon verses of descriptions of tzara’at and of its treatment, it tells us nothing about how to prevent it and leaves us wondering as to the genesis of the disease, as I noted above. Enter the midrash (Tanḥuma Metzora 1:1), which declares: Anyone who speaks lashon hara (gossip, slander, etc.) will be struck with tzara’at. How do we know this? From the verse: This shall be the rite for a metzora, תּוֹרַת הַמְּצֹרָע. Do not read it as ‘the metzora,’ הַמְּצֹרָע, but rather as ‘the one who slanders,’ הַמּוֹצִיא שֵׁם רָע. 

The midrash goes on to detail places throughout the Bible where people have been afflicted with tzara’at and similar ailments after having said things that could be construed as gossip or slander. According to the midrash, if we want to avoid tzara’at, then we must be careful about our speech. 

In giving us a tidy explanation of the cause and prevention of this devastating illness, the midrash also gives us bad theology. It is simply not true that people were afflicted with tzara’at (or are struck today with other devastating diseases) as a result of their propensity for gossip. And we also know that many people who are not careful with how they speak about others live long and healthy lives. 

Let me be clear - I believe that our words matter deeply. As a teacher of  middle schoolers, I spend a great deal of time, both through my teaching and through the relationships I build with my students, working on this skill set. I’m a fan of curbing our urge to gossip and talk about others. But I must also acknowledge that the midrashic take on the cause of tzara’at has problematic consequences.

As someone who lived through the AIDS epidemic and spent my college years volunteering for organizations that worked with homebound people living with HIV, I saw the way people who contracted the virus were ostracized by society. In the early days, it was mostly an offshoot of homophobia. As the epidemic wore on, it became more about fear of contagion. The message, however, remained consistent: If you had HIV, then it was the result of something very, very wrong that you had done. Your behavior caused your illness.

More recently, in the early days of the Covid pandemic, we saw pieces of this same phenomenon. People who contracted Covid in those first terrifying months, or who refused to wear masks, were often seen as careless, as pursuing their own comfort at the expense of the health and safety of those around them. 

The emotion behind the midrashic interpretation of the metzora, the desire to understand something so that we can prevent it, is natural. For us today, living in the wake of a global pandemic, we should aim to take a different approach, one of compassion and recognition. Rather than looking at those whose illnesses place them on the margins of our community and wondering what failure led to their suffering, we can look at them and see their humanity, finding ways to help pave a path away from the margins and back to the warm embrace of others. This is truly תּוֹרַת הַמְּצֹרָע, the rite for a metzora. 

​Shabbat shalom.