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Rav Haim Lifshitz
Tazria Metzora
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Tazria
Metzora
Translated from Hebrew
by S. NAthan
l'ilui nishas
Esther bas mordechai
Leprosy is the classic retribution for slander.
It is a punishment that diverges from the normal
category of retribution for moral transgression. Moses
was smitten with leprosy, and Miriam his sister was
smitten with leprosy as well. The Talmud in Tractate Yuma
(22) informs us that even King David had been smitten
with leprosy for six months, and this is learned from
the words cheikecha, "your
bosom." "Your master in your bosom." "And she will lay
in your bosom," alluding to an earlier Scripture: Just
as Moses had put his hand into his bosom "and behold
his hand had become leprous as snow," after which he
returns his hand to his bosom, "and when he removed it
from his bosom, behold it had returned to be like his
own flesh," so had King David undergone this
experience.
A connection appears to be indicated
between 'bosom' and leprosy, yet what sort of
connection would there be? King Solomon, wisest
of all men, has already remarked that "anger rests in
a fool's bosom." Chek
describes a place that is hidden and protected, an
intimate part of the body. A mother carries her infant
in her bosom. It is a place intended to protect
whatever is contained therein.
Is there anything that has not
already been said about leprosy, or about the leper's
punishment? Why, the sin of slander looses the demons
of the source of evil in man. These demons go forth to
roam the earth unrestrained, sowing their destructive
seeds. They go forth but they never return. Theirs is
an unlimited crime. How can a slanderer atone for the
immeasurable damage he has wreaked? The harm that he
perpetrates extends far beyond any other damage caused
by any moral offense. The counterweight for slander
cannot be the same as the retributionfor a moral crime
- unless we speak of murder, or a child born of
incest, those crimes referred to as "a distorted
[reality] that can never be repaired."
This stepping beyond all human
boundaries is weighed according to the relative value
of "the shamer versus the shamed." If a shamer - or a
slanderer - is well known and respected, his
despicable words are taken seriously. His high rank
lends him credibility; one word is enough. He never
has to repeat it. What punishment could be great
enough for what he has done?
If the shamer is a person of
spiritual quality, he will be given the privilege of
special treatment by the Owner, by the Master of the
universe in all His glory. Thus Moses, thus Miriam,
and thus David, the world's greatest.
The haftorah of Parshat
Metzora describes the experience of the lepers
who brought the news of the defeat of the army of
Aram, in Kings II, 7:3-20. Malbim writes: “In the haftorah of Tazria
it is related that Na'aman wanted to give a gift to
Elisha, but he did not want to take it. Afterwards it
says that Gechazi, the servant of Elisha, followed
Na'aman and told him a lie: That Elisha had sent him
to ask for a gift. So he gave him a gift. When
he returned, Elisha cursed him - that Na'aman's
leprosy should attach to him and to his children.
These were the four men (the lepers) who are written
about here, for they are Gechazi and his children."
The narrative in the haftorah
continues: The lepers were outside the gate of the
city, outside the camp, as is the leper's punishment.
The city was languishing under the famine created by
the siege laid by the military camp of Aram. The
lepers' situation appeared hopeless. "If we come to
the city, starvation is in the city, and we will die
there. If we sit here, we will die [at the enemy's
hand]. So now let us go to the camp of Aram. If they
will keep us alive, we will live. If they will put us
to death, we will die." Here is a condition of utter
post-despair.
When they enter the camp of Aram,
they find it empty of even a single soul. They have
all run away, fleeing from the sounds of shouting and
the frightening clatter that the Holy One had raised
up about them.
Now when the lepers come to tell the
good news to the inhabitants of the city, they are
rejected with disbelief. Indeed, this is the verdict
decreed upon the leper, to be rejected from every
place, even if he brings good news. The verdict
decreed upon the leper to live outside of the camp,
removes him not only from his place but also mainly
from his own self. The leper loses his own value, his
own personality. It is worse than excommunication, in
which people shun the excommunicated individual, but
at least he does not shun himself. The excommunicated
person does not lose his own unique value. At the
conclusion of the period of excommunication, he
returns to the bosom of society, without having to
undergo a process of rebirth as the leper does.
"Belonging" and "freedom" are two
dimensions of existence without which man has no
existence, even if he lives and breathes. He is
considered as dead if he has no belonging to society,
and also if he has no freedom, which means he does not
belong to himself. The belonging to oneself that is
freedom is expressed by an awareness of one's own
inner unfolding process, one's own potential for
creativity. A rich inner life constitutes a
never-failing source not only of the experience of
existence but also of the joy of creating. The more
one is a ba'al nefesh, living
his own spiritual and creative life, the more he may
rely on his own freedom and the less he needs to
belong to the outside. Jeremiah the prophet expresses
this: "Would that I could be in the desert, a remote
hostel for passersby. Then I would leave my people."
This is also the craving felt by G-d's servant: "Let
me dwell in G-d's house all the days of my life."
In contrast, the leper is detached
even from himself, and he is considered as dead. Truth
to tell, this punishment is far-fetched and
far-reaching, going well beyond all breachings of the
boundaries of moral principles. It is only just and
fair that the gates of repentance should not be locked
to this sin, as severe as it may be, for many are
those who stumble over it. Therefore the Holy One
stood forth and took control over the owner of the
tongue and over its damages, which continue even after
the owner can no longer be traced. The Holy One in all
His glory is the only One Who can retrieve the
situation and reverse the damages that appear
irreversible. This trouble that the Holy One troubles
Himself to take - it is only proper that it be called
a privilege, a sort of personalized revelation of giluy
panim "a
revelation of the Face [of God] to the tongue's owner.
For after all, the greater the stature of the tongue's
owner, the greater the damage it does. It is only
proper that this unlimited damage should be gathered
unto the bosom of the Lord of the universe to Whom all
things belong and from Whom all things come. And it is
only proper that a person who is of great stature
before G-d, and who has sinned and soiled with his
tongue, should merit an individualized punishment from
his Lord.
Therefore the Holy One places him in
His bosom, just as the leper himself had severed from
reality and invented things out of his own heart,
dwelling inside his own bosom out of an absolute
selfishness, which then turned his whole world into an
arena of conflict, ruining his entire experience of
existence. A bosom that is thus detached and severed
is still a bosom. As such, it has two faces, a good
face and an evil face. Bosom on the one hand implies
introspection, diving into the fathomless depths of
one's own self, for the better. Bosom on the other
hand implies selfish detachment: I and I alone / Who
can resemble me and who can compare to me - for the
worse.
Therefore his rectification no
longer depends upon him. Only the Creator of man can
save him, and seize him by the hair of his head and
extricate him from the slimy depths into which he has
sunk, and stand him back on his place, and return him
to His / to his own bosom. From the bosom of the Holy
One back to his own bosom.
All of this is only logical: Let the
Owner of speech come and extract what is owed Him by a
person who has taken up the tools of G-d's trade and
used it as if it were his own. After all, "with ten
utterances, the universe was created." And in the
beginning was the Word. And all of Torah is built upon
"and G-d spoke to Moshe to say over..." The Holy One
took the tool of His Own trade and made of it a
subject for covenant, for cooperative activity between
Himself and His chosen people, His allies. He gave
them the aseret hadibrot, the Ten
Commandments (lit. "the ten speakings") to parallel
the ten utterances with which He had created the
universe.
One of the allies made himself a bit
too free with speech, for after all, though he did
have a part in speech, he ignored the gravity and the
heavy weight of the role he was given, meaning the
responsibility one must bear for one's own speech: The
prohibition against cursing, the prohibition against
being foul-mouthed, and most of all, guarding one's
tongue, for it is the most serious power and carries
with it the heaviest weight of responsibility because
of its unlimited influence.
The closer one is to the Founder of
the covenant, the greater one's power as a tongue
owner - beyond good and beyond evil, beyond the
morality of interpersonal and social relations. The
tongue owner thus finds himself to have become almost
an invader, breaking into a domain not his own. This
is why the right to judge the leper's affair is taken
away from the public, as opposed to every moral sin,
in which "the claimant shall approach the judges."
With the affair of the leper, "he shall be brought to
the priest, and the priest must see the disease." Only
the cohen, whose
domain and whose occupation deals with the affairs of
heaven - only he is authorized to pass judgment upon
the leper.
Here is no material for halachic
negotiation. A halachic expert cannot determine the
fate of the leper. Only a cohen can,
including even a cohen who is
not well-versed in the laws of leprosy. The leper
punishes himself by fleeing to an area that is G-d's,
that is too small and too tight to accommodate
ordinary human discourse. Only the man of G-d who is
directly occupied with the service of G-d - he alone
is authorized to determine the fate of the leper. The
cohen's
decision transfers the leper from an existential/human
reality to the bosom of the Godly reality par
excellence, which is not superficial, and which cannot
be viewed in black and white, but rather deals solely
with the dimension of height.
Within this reality, relationships
in which black is a negation of white - disappear
entirely. The leper's reality is immersed in a
twilight zone, in which black invades the realm of
white, and vice versa. "And if the hair of the disease
has turned white, he shall be brought to the cohen a second
time." This is a reality in which the cohen alone may
open the gates that allow entry, just as the cohen alone
may open the gates that force exit. Everything must
remain in the higher domain. Linear logic - the logic
of humanness as well as practicality - has no
authority to express its opinion regarding a sin that
diverges far beyond morality's boundaries of the
permitted and the forbidden.
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