Rav Haim Lifshitz
Parashat Metsora
Essays
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Taking a Stand in Relation to Values
Translated from Hebrew by S.
NAthan
l'ilui
nishmat Esther bat mordechai
It is clear that our parasha contains allusions to
that sacred custom practiced by saintly Jewish
housewives everywhere – of furiously scrubbing,
scraping, and sanding down every corner of the house –
even the corners of the ceiling are not exempt from
their wrath – justifying it all with the excuse that,
“any chametz in the house must be destroyed,”
“it may not be seen,” and “it may not be found.”
Our parasha discusses houses
afflicted with leprosy, tsara’at habayit.
House leprosy has a pshat, a plain meaning,
and a drosh, a deeper meaning. While the plain
meaning limits itself exclusively to the dry framework
of the halacha, the drosh allows itself – as
it has been worked through by the giants of Biblical
commentary – to explore the fundamental meanings and
causes of this house leprosy. We are not referring to
the buried treasures hidden in the house walls by the
Emorim and Can’anim, because this midrash is even
brought by Rashi. We are referring to the commentaries
that attribute leprosy to an outcome of bad midot,
the negative character traits developed by human
beings.
“And I have already written a
number of times that we have been given permission to
interpret the deeper meanings of the verses in any way
we deem proper, as long as there is no contradicting
the words of our Sages of blessed memory.” (Ohr
HaChaim 14:35) See also The Precious Vessel (Kli
Yakar) for truly precious allusions about house
leprosy pertaining to the behavior of the dwellers of
the house, who were afflicted with house leprosy
because of tsarut ayin, begrudging their
fellow human beings, and because of their lack of
hospitality, refusing to allow others to benefit from
their possessions, believing anything from “my home is
my castle” to “my might and the power of my hand have
brought me all of this.”
The Jewish housewife discerns – in
her immense sanctity and in her endless devotion to
the Jewish home – that the home must rid itself of all
the internal chametz as well, that the house
must be cleaned out of everything that tends to
ferment, spoil or rot. Furthermore, the Jewish
housewife comes out openly against the view of the
home as a mere instrument. She has the wisdom to
discern that the home is a dynamic expression of the
behavior of the people in the home, rather than merely
a passive object. For this reason she labors also to
cultivate the form and appearance of the home, that it
might be pure, to faithfully reflect the purity of its
residents.
Similarly, and how much more so
with leprosy of the garment, and how much more so with
leprosy of the body, and even more so with leprosy of
the head and beard. Leprosy is here understood as a
human expression reflecting human behavior. It halts
human behavior, and compels the one afflicted to take
a stand, to re-examine his position in relation to the
values that demand relating to.
It is a classic Jewish custom that
the rabbi gives a public sermon twice a year, on
Shabat Shuva and on Shabat HaGadol. The common reason
given for this custom is the need to lecture on the
laws of the holiday, which is replete with laws and
requirements with which the public is not familiar.
Yet a need for a rabbi’s sermons may be understood
more broadly as a need to take a stand vis a` vis
problems that arise in the public space and in the
world in general. This is a need that arises at least
twice a year, before the two major seasons of the
year, on Shabat Shuva before the winter season, and on
Shabat HaGadol, before the summer season.
The stand we are taking this time
will relate to how we relate to the State of Israel:
The State of Israel is no more
than a device, a tool and an instrument for fulfilling
a specific function, which is to protect the Land of
Israel so that it shall be a Jewish state for Jews,
rather than a state for all its citizens. The
political authority of every state derives from the
power of conquest, rather than from the simple fact of
social organization and social consensus by all its
members/citizens. This is because social consensus
draws its authority from the power of the majority,
and a majority cannot coerce a minority. In contrast,
authority that comes from the power of conquest is in
force for all, and with regard to the land of the
state as well, rather than merely with regard to taxes
and services.
The Land of Israel received
additional sanctity by force of Joshua’s conquest.
However, a king of Israel must also be anointed by a
religious authority. The Cohen or the prophet who
would anoint the king by power of the supreme
imperative cannot rely on, nor suffice with the
authority of the power of conquest. Even the
instrument of government is not exempt from the
responsibility of infusing government with meaningful
content and values, for which a Jewish kingdom in the
Holy Land bears responsibility, and from which it
draws its authority.
A state is a framework of
government. The State of the Jews in the Holy Land is
responsible for two fundamental values: Protecting the
Jewish character of its citizens, and protecting the
borders of the Holy Land against conquest by
foreigners – let alone not handing over parts of it.
The purpose of the State is to protect the land for
the Jews and to protect the Jewishness of the State.
To our great sorrow, the State
does exactly the opposite. It yields up the
territories of the Holy Land to its dangerous enemies,
and fights against the values of Judaism with every
means at its disposal, through the device of the law.
It makes every effort to promote assimilation by
filling the land with non-Jews in every possible way
and manner, even taking the trouble to legislate laws
of assimilation, out of an absolute contempt for
halacha, Jewish law. The laws of conversion to Judaism
are one example. Ascribing sanctity to the political
framework as though it were an independent value
(na?vely calling the government the Kingdom of Israel)
purifies the rodent, turns it into an idol, and helps
the enemies of Judaism – who are afflicted with a
pathological self-hatred – to continue their work of
destruction.
It is irrelevant to claim that one
must at least respect the governmental aspect that
deals with the other domains of the regime, as in “be
careful to respect the government, for were it not for
fear of it, each man would devour the other alive.”
The bitter fact has been proven: such a sweeping
separation of governmental domains has no
justification, and the people of Israel are not like
other peoples.
If the State does not fulfill its
value-driven destiny, it deteriorates to a degraded
condition even with regard to the other domains of
government. It becomes just like all the other
distorted and degraded governments that were once
theoretically based on law and justice, and just like
any other degraded and corrupt, brute-force-based arm
of the law; be it police force or governmental
bureaucracy, it is at once cruel and idiotic.
If the State of the Jews does not
honor its Jewish values, all its other frameworks of
government will collapse as well. Judaism does not
preach a substantive separation between the physical
and the spiritual. “If there is no flour, there can be
no Torah; if there is no Torah, there can be no
flour.”
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