Through the Looking Glass

Among the many mysteries of Tzaraas, the involvement of the Kohen stands out.

While no one can claim to really understand what Tumah is, the Torah always treats it as an objective reality: you catch it and you are Tamei. There is no need for a psak Beis Din or the pronouncements of a Kohen. But Tzaraas is different. Even if you are diagnosed with Tzaraas, even if your symptoms match the Torah's descriptions to a tee, you are only Tamei if and when a Kohen declares you so - and then you are Tamei from that point forward. The Kohen is not informing us of the existence of Tumah; he is literally creating the Tumah by his say so. Beyond a biblical anomaly, it is difficult to understand how Tumah could be dependent on a verbal proclamation. Simply put: Either you got it or you don't. Who needs the Kohen?

Another question: A person guilty of a crime of "Kareis" is spiritually disconnected from the nation, but he is still a fully functioning member of the community. However, a person with Tzaraas who is declared Tamei by a Kohen must leave the community and "live alone - outside the camp is his dwelling place" (Vayikra 14:36). The requirement to live alone has no parallel in all of Torah.

One more mystery, far more basic: Why, among all the hundreds of Biblical prohibitions, does a violation of Lashon HaRa cause our skin to break out? A Jew can commit crimes far worse than Lashon HaRa without any visible allergic reaction. (Tzaraas is only found in the Torah as the result of Lashon HaRa, cf. Shemos 4:1,6; Bamidbar 12:1-10. However, there are a few other sins that can cause Tzaraas, cf. Arachin 16a.)

II

Concerning anyone who tells Lashon HaRa, God says, "He and I cannot coexist in the world." (Arachin 15b)

Cannot coexist with God? Well then, if he isn't in the same world as God, where exactly is he?! There is only one possible answer. A person who speaks Lashon HaRa enters different world; a world of his own creation. A world without God.

In God's world, God is Judge. He judged it daily as He created it and his judgment was consistently positive: "And God saw that it was good..." It could be no other way. If God is good then His creation is good.

Even Man, a being clearly capable of great evil, can be judged only by God. The factors of human behavior are so complex, the plethora of genetics and hormones, upbringing and conditioning, innate drives and ways of thinking are so diverse, to be judgemental is not merely presumptuous, it infringes on the divine.

This accounting [of a person's spiritual status] depends not on the number of merits and sins but on their size. There are merits which outweigh several sins... and sins that outweigh several merits... This accounting can only be done by the mind of the God Who Knows. He is the one who knows how to measure merits against sins. (Rambam, Laws of Teshuva 3:2)

One guilty of Lashon HaRa, character assassination, is guilty of more than a crime. Seeing evil where God sees good, he debates God on the nature of His creation. And declaring his fellow man unholy, he usurps God's role as judge, taking it upon himself to judge his fellow man. To speak Lashon HaRa is thus to deny God. Indeed, the Talmud compares one who speaks Lashon HaRa to a Kofer B'Ikar, a heretic (Arachin 16b).

The nature of this person's heresy is such that it places him entirely outside of the community. He has stepped out of the world where God is judge, creating an alternate reality where man is judge. And he is doomed to live in the hell of his own creation.

In God's world, good, evil, purity and impurity are objective truths. Man's opinion on these matters is obviously irrelevant. Step through the looking glass into a world of negative images and spiritual reality is defined by human subjectivity. In the world of Lashon HaRa, a person's purity or impurity, his very spiritual state, is determined not by God but by the Kohen - a fallible religious leader! A nightmarish universe indeed!

In God's world, man's spiritual state is a private affair, knowable to God alone. But in the world of Lashon HaRa, man is judge, and man can only judge what he sees. The residents of this world must therefore have their rotten inner selves turned inside-out, and their ugly spiritual state becomes visible to all as Tzaraas.

Here perfidy is the new morality. A man completely covered by Tzaraas is perfectly fine (13:13), but healthy skin is a sign of impurity (13:10). Such is life in the evil realm fashioned by Lashon HaRa.  

It is no coincidence that Tzaraas also appears on the gossiper's clothing and home, ultimately leading to their destruction. This person judged others based on those very externals, creating a world where self-worth is defined by appearances. In the fascist world of fashion, styles change fast - and the critic is quickly devoured by the black hole of his own making.

Of course, man cannot live without God. The Tzaraas world is a thus a twilight zone of the living dead. Indeed, the Torah considers one infected with Tzaraas to be a dead man (cf. Bamidbar 12:12; Nedarim 64b). Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi's observation should not shock us: Tzaraas is actually decomposing flesh.

Ultimately, Hashem desires rehabilitation, not annihilation. The marvel of Torah is that both are achieved simultaneously. Measure for measure, the gossiper loses his house, his clothes, his good looks, and his social circle. For him this is indeed death. A favorite expression of the gossiper is apt: he literally "has no life." Stripped of every vestige of his old identity, this man is forced to forge a new one, one founded on the value of his soul, not that of his house or his designer clothes. When that happens, he will finally see through the mirage of materialism and will cease judging himself and others by the irrelevant barometers of looks, wealth and social standing.

Understanding how Tzaraas rehabilitates a person helps explain a surprising teaching quoted by Rashi. The phenomenon of Tzaraas on a house is introduced with these words: "When you come to the land of Canaan which I am giving you as an inheritance and I place a plague of Tzaraas on a house of the land of your inheritance..." (14:34). Rashi explains the emphasis on the land of Canaan: "It is informing them that Tzaraas will come because the Ammorites hid gold treasure in the walls of their homes... because of the Tzarras, the house will be demolished and [the treasure] will be found." When the Jews conquered Canaan, they took possession of the existing Canaanite homes. Unbeknownst to them, gold was hidden in the walls for safekeeping. When the house gets Tzaraas, the walls will be knocked down and the treasure will be discovered.

On the face of it, this teaching is incomprehensible. A house gets Tzaraas when those who live there speak Lashon HaRa (Rambam, Laws of Tzaraas 16:10). Why would Hashem reward gossipers with gold?! Based on what what we have learned, the answer is clear. Hashem wants to factor out the financial loss. One might be tempted to think that the destruction of his home is a mere penalty for violating the laws of Lashon HaRa. Hashem therefore gives him gold to reimburse him for his loss. It's not about the money. It's about identity.

III

One who speaks Lashon HaRa abandons God, leaves the community, and creates an ugly, alternate universe. Is atonement possible?

The academy of Rebbi Yishmael taught, "For which [sin] does the [burning of] Ketores [in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur] atone? For Lashon HaRa. Let something private come and atone for something private." (Yoma 44a)

To rectify the departure inherent in Lashon HaRa, the nation's representative, the Kohen Gadol, must enter God's inner sanctum. And there he deodorizes the rot of Loshan HaRa by perfuming God's beautiful world.

And God saw everything that He made, and behold, it was very good... (Bereishis 1:31)

Who is the man who desires life? Lover of days to see good? Guard your tongue from evil... (Psalms 34:13-14)

Who... desires life... to see good! Seeing good is God's perspective. The perspective of life. If you want to be a part of the world of the living, then guard your tongue... Otherwise, you're out through the looking glass.

I, for one, prefer God's world.

The Proper Care & Feeding of Souls

On these pages we have never been content with merely presenting a relevant message from the parsha. That would be easy – the divine timelessness of Torah is readily apparent to any serious student. Rather, we have set out to demonstrate that week after week, the parsha’s central theme sounds as if G-d composed it yesterday. This presents a bit of a challenge. The theme is invariably relevant, but identifying the theme is not always a simple matter.

Take, for example, this week’s two parshiot. The bulk of Tazria and Metzora deal with the laws of Tzara’at, a discoloration of skin, hair, clothes or even walls caused by certain sins. Tzara’at is a paranormal phenomenon occurring only in people of extraordinarily righteousness and spiritual sensitivity. Only a Jewish body or home exceedingly intolerant of sin will react with an outbreak of Tzara’at. (There has not been a known case for many centuries.)

Once diagnosed with Tzara’at, the afflicted is declared “tamei,” a mysterious state of being usually translated as ‘spiritually impure’ or ‘ritually unclean.’ A purification process, including a period of introspection outside the community and Temple offerings, will cure the Tzara’at and the impurity that it signifies. If Tzara’at was our only topic, a relevant theme would be near at hand. But no such luck; Tazriah begins with an altogether different issue. Childbirth.

When a woman conceives and gives birth to a boy, she shall be spiritually impure for seven days, just as she is impure during the time of separation when she has her period…

Vayikra 12:2

Now we’ve hit a wall. What is the unifying theme of the parsha? Not only do we have the difficult task of finding a common denominator between childbirth, the menstrual period and Tzara’at, we must also explain why this commonality would result in spiritual impurity. And then we’ll need to figure out how any of this could possibly be relevant today. No one ever said parsha study would be easy.

The road to an answer must begin with a better understanding of “Tumah.” While the Torah enumerates several different sources of spiritual impurity, the granddaddy of them all is a Jewish corpse. Nothing is more tamei and nothing transmits tumah more powerfully than a Jewish corpse. We might as well use the dead man as our guide.

Why is a dead man tamei? Why would a perfectly innocent Jew become ‘spiritually impure’ at the moment of death? Because nature abhors a vacuum.

When alive, the body is home to a holy Jewish soul. But when a person dies, the soul departs and leaves behind an empty vessel, a corpse. A body that once held a soul cannot bear to be nothing more than a used bag, so negative spiritual energy, a spirit of impurity, fills it. The same is true for a woman who gets her period or has a child. In either case a vacuum is created. A womb which previously held potential for life, or life itself, has become empty. Touched by the miracle of reproduction, the womb will not tolerate barrenness. The spiritual vacuum must be filled, so it fills with tumah.

This explains the tumah of childbirth, but what about Tzara’at? Why is Tzara’at a cause for tumah? What is Tzara’at anyway? The medieval kabbalist Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (1194-1270) provides the answer:

“And when a garment is afflicted with Tzara’at…” (Vayikra 13:47). Such a thing is entirely unnatural and would never occur, nor would walls of a home ever turn colors. However, [the explanation is this:] When the Jewish people are whole [heartedly devoted] to G-d, the Shechina is constantly upon them, maintaining their bodies, clothes and homes with a good appearance. But when one of them happens to sin, an ugly mark appears on his flesh, clothes or home, signifying that G-d’s presence has departed from this individual.

It turns out that Tzara’at is an expansion of the idea introduced at the beginning of Tazria. Just as tumah is generated by a womb that has been abandoned by its holy fruit, tumah is also generated by a human being that has been abandoned by G-d. Spiritual emptiness is an unstable state, so whether the vacuum is a corpse, a womb or a man who has sinned, tumah steps right in. This is the theme of our parsha. (I am indebted to my good friend and chavrusah, Mr. Earl Hartman of Palo Alto, for this important insight.)

Just as there are laws of physics, there are laws of metaphysics. It is a law of nature that a spiritual vacuum cannot exist in our universe. If a vacuum isn’t quickly filled with something positive, then it will fill itself with something negative. The fact that the corpses and wombs are innocent of any wrongdoing is irrelevant. They become tamei by default.

This reality is very much within human experience. As Rabbi Ahron Kotler observed, the pursuit of materialism is driven by a soul starving for spirituality. Empty of mitzvot and sanctity, the soul strives to satiate its hunger in any way it can. Attend to the proper care and feeding of your soul, for if its spiritual needs are ignored, the soul itself will push man into tumah.

But here’s the rub. When a vessel experiences paradise, its hunger intensifies. A womb that never produced an egg is happy and pure; in its adolescent ignorance it is content with the status quo. But once the womb is touched by the promise of birth, it will never be the same. With the realization of its extraordinary potential comes a loneliness and a desperation that leads to tumah. (Some women seem to experience this tumah as post-partum depression, a curse placed on Eve back in Bereishit 3:16.) Similarly, it is only the people who have developed an intimate relationship with G-d that become tamei when their sins drive G-d’s presence away. A Jew who never shed a tear in prayer, never sang zemirot at a Shabbat table or was never moved to dance by the beauty of Torah and mitzvot does not suffer the agony of emptiness. Such a soul is a spiritual adolescent; unaware of the sublime pleasures, it sleeps in a cocoon of ignorance.

The more you feed your soul, the hungrier it gets. The more mitzvot you do and the higher you go, the more Torah and mitzvot your soul will need to stay healthy and content. This design forces man to either grow or fall. Unless you’ve hit rock bottom, there is no standing still.