​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.

This past Monday, together with countless people around the area and the country, I looked up at the sky. While I remember the last solar eclipse, from 2017, pretty well, this was the first significant natural phenomenon I witnessed surrounded by young people. 

Being with my students for the eclipse was quite the experience. Even before we left our classroom and left the building, the exhilaration in the air was palpable. The hallways were positively vibrating with the students’ excitement and curiosity. As the afternoon wore on, students began to notice it getting darker outside, the shadows on the ground outside our windows becoming more pronounced. 

By the time we went outside, my students couldn’t wait to put on their viewing glasses and look at the sky. They had discussed how eclipses work in their science classes earlier in the day and were prepared for what they would see, but then they looked at the sky and were blown away. 

After a moment of awe-filled silence, middle school excitement took over, with students calling out updates on the moon’s transit across the sun. We soon began playing with our phones, figuring out how to hold the viewing glasses over our camera lenses and adjust exposure levels to get the best shot, and sharing our best pictures with each other. 


When I teach about tefillah - to students of all ages - I speak about the different emotions our traditional prayers express. There are the prayers that say, “Please…” And those that say, “Thanks.” There’s also, “I’m sorry.” And, “Wow!” This one was definitely a “Wow!” moment.

When we have “Wow!” moments, especially when those moments center on things we experience in the natural world, we often give voice to them through the modality of reciting berakhot, blessings. Over the past few weeks, there has been much debate and discussion in a number of rabbinically-minded groups I participate in about the proper berakhah to say upon witnessing the eclipse. 

It’s not such a simple question. Our earliest sources, similar to many other ancient cultures, saw eclipses as a potentially bad omen. They were meant to be endured, hoping that they would not be harbingers of difficult times ahead. Later sources discuss the possibility of reciting blessings for a wide variety of natural phenomena, with a number of suggestions for which blessing to say for which event, and not a tremendous amount of consensus.


I knew that I wanted to mark the moment of seeing the eclipse by saying a berakhah. For me, reciting berakhot is a regular part of my practice, a moment of mindfulness I take many times a day. So when I was outside looking up at the sky on Monday afternoon, I spent a few moments watching the eclipse as it moved toward totality, allowing my “Wow!” to build, and then I said: 
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה׳  אֱ׳לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, עוֹשֹה מַעֲשֹה בְּרֵאשִׁית.
Praised are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the universe, Author of Creation.

In that moment, as I saw the moon and the sun in close interaction (at least from my vantage point), I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Torah’s account of the fourth day of Creation: “God made the two great lights, the greater light to dominate the day and the lesser light to dominate the night…And God set them in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth…and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that this was good.” (Genesis 1:16-18) Reciting the blessing I chose helped me give voice to my sense that I was witnessing something ancient and mysterious, something that reminded me of the earliest days of the world. 

I’d love to hear from you about your eclipse experiences. What was your “Wow!” moment? What were you feeling and thinking as the moon passed in front of the sun? How did you give voice to it? Please drop me a line and let me know!

May we keep the memories of our “Wow!” close at hand as we close out our week. Shabbat shalom.

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At a recent Shabbat morning Torah Talk, we were discussing how the whole book of Vayikra takes place over a mere eight days - the days of the inauguration of the Mishkan and the service of the Kohanim. Leviticus is almost entirely laws and instructions - not much narrative to carry the story of the Israelites forward. This fact makes the tragic story of Nadav and Avihu, which we read this week in Parashat Shemini, stand out all the more. 

After Aaron successfully offers the sacrifices he had been instructed to make, after fire comes forth from God, consuming the sacrifices, after the people fall on their faces in awe at witnessing this pivotal moment, Aaron’s eldest sons, Nadav and Avihu bring their own offering. Rather than God’s fire consuming their offering, God’s fire blazes forth and consumes them. The Torah does not give us much detail explaining what went wrong, telling us simply that Aaron’s response to this great loss was to be silent.
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It’s a perplexing passage, but one that gives voice to an experience many of us have been through - the process of mourning. Classical commentators and midrashim read Aaron’s silence in this way, as an expression of his grief and his process of mourning his loss. Rabbeinu Baḥya, a 14th century Spanish commentator, explains that silence is one of the ways people express their mourning. So wracked with grief at the sudden loss of his sons was Aaron that he could not speak. Sometimes a loss is so profound that it robs us of words. 

The earliest collection of Midrash on the book of Vayikra, the Sifra, sees it differently. Aaron was distraught at the death of his sons, desperately trying to understand the reason for their death. The midrash imagines Moshe, his brother, coming to him during this difficult time and offering him words of comfort. Moshe’s presence and words gave Aaron solace, and he was finally able to be silent. In this rendering, Aaron’s silence is a sign that he is beginning to emerge from the most acute stage of his grief. 

Niḥum aveilim, comforting mourners, is a powerful mitzvah, one that our community does with great generosity and kindness. But it is also complicated. As those who have walked the path of mourning can attest, grief hits each of us differently. No one person’s experience of mourning is exactly like any other person’s. Similarly, what we might say or do to bring comfort to one person may not work for another person. As comforters, we must strive to be like Moshe, finding an approach that will bring solace to each person suffering a loss. 

For some, the fear of saying or doing the wrong thing in this situation makes us uncomfortable, or even reluctant to visit a house of mourning and be with others during the early stages of their grief, in the period of Shiva. This is a very normal thing to feel and I am grateful to the Chesed Committee and Rachel Weitzner of Gilchrist for giving us the opportunity to speak about what it is to offer comfort to those in mourning.

This coming Sunday, April 7, at 10:30 AM, please join us at the Myerberg for The Do’s and Don'ts of Making a Shiva Call. Together we’ll share a bit about the traditions of Shiva, discuss common experiences of visiting with a mourner, and learn from and with each other about how best to be a source of comfort to others during such a tender time. I hope you’ll join us.

Shabbat shalom.

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