Shabbat Commentary - Tazria

This week's Torah Portion, Tazria, tends to evoke the response "E-w-w-w!" in students who discover that it is their Bar/Bat Mitzvah Portion. Tazria teaches God's commandments regarding human and non-human states of purity and impurity. Tazria begins with God (through Moses) describing to the children of Israel, the rituals for restoring a woman's "purity" after the "impurity" of her menstruation following childbirth. From this natural and essential human condition, Tazria moves on to focus on a common, but pathological condition, skin diseases. God speaks to Moses and Aaron and reveals the procedures which the priests are to follow in determining the purity or impurity of a person afflicted with one of a group of skin diseases referred to as "Tsaraat," which is translated into English as "leprosy." (In his Commentary on the Torah, Richard Elliott Friedman notes that the "Tsaraat" or "leprosy" referred to in the Torah is not the leprosy or Hansen's Disease familiar to us today.) God does not instruct the priests to treat "the affliction of leprosy," but rather to observe the person's symptoms over time and declare the person "impure" while the disease appears to be active according to certain criteria, and to declare the person "pure" when the disease appears to be healed according to other criteria which God details. After instructing the priests regarding human leprosy, God speaks of the rituals which the priests will follow in purifying or destroying clothing of wool, linen, or leather which has some discoloration or characteristic described as "an affliction of leprosy." (Leviticus 13:47) From this summary of Tazria and from our knowledge of the previous Portions of Leviticus, it's obvious that the Book of Leviticus doesn't offer us the human dramas which we find in the Book of B'reishit or the awesome expressions of God's power which fill the Book of Exodus. Leviticus deals with subjects which seem strange, discomforting, and a bit repulsive to us in the 21st century. Yet, if we step back and examine a Portion such as Tazria in the context of the wilderness community of the children of Israel, there is, as we might expect, great wisdom here. Although our soul and spirit are created in the image of God, our skin-covered bodies are distinctly human and vulnerable to an unsightly, unpleasant, sometimes life-threatening array of skin afflictions. Living in the wilderness, it is no surprise that the children of Israel contracted skin ailments from exposure to the sun, wind, sand, insects, and plants in their harsh environment and from their closeness to their herds of animals. The sight of a skin ailment might have aroused fear and loathing in the community had not God commanded a very specific set of steps by which the priests as religious and community leaders could "officially" acknowledge and oversee the progression of the ailment and the eventual healing process. By giving the priests a procedure for restoring the impure afflicted person to a pure state, God provided a structure for maintaining the stability and compassionate functioning of the Israelite community. Dedicated to living by God's commandments, neither the priests nor the children of Israel had the right to attack, destroy, or impulsively banish an afflicted individual from their midst. In addition, there is no suggestion in Tazria that skin afflictions are associated with Divine punishment or moral flaws. Whether in skin or in clothing, "leprous" conditions are seen as impure states which need to be purified as God commanded. Because of the commandments which God spoke in Tazria, the community of the children of Israel never suffered the tragic fate of the community of Salem, Massachusetts, for example. In the 17th century, colonial Salem descended into chaos and cruelty when the church ministers responsible for religious rituals also assumed unlimited power to condemn as witches, individuals with physical ailments such as abnormal skin conditions. The people of Salem were at the mercy of frightened, over-zealous religious leaders who saw afflicted skin as one "proof" of evil and as cause for destruction of the afflicted person. God's very detailed instructions to Moses and Aaron in Tazria give the Israelite priests a constructive and humane (for those times) way to deal with visible "afflictions" in people and even in non-human objects. Tazria reminds us not to judge or to condemn, but"...to be sensitive to the added distress, embarassment, and vulnerability that are felt by those who suffer from illnesses that affect their appearance." (From Commentary on the Torah by Richard Elliott Friedman page 353.) From "E-w-w-w!" to "Eureka!" Torah always teaches. Shabbat Shalom Rest and Renew