This week’s portion has some very interesting, almost clinical mitzvot.
2. When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a swelling, a scab, or bright spot, and it is on the skin of his flesh like the disease of leprosy; then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest, or to one of his sons the priests; 3. And the priest shall look on the disease in the skin of the flesh; and if the hair in the plague has turned white, and the disease looks deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a disease of leprosy; and the priest shall look on him, and pronounce him unclean.
This week we learn about leprosy, and I had planned to talk about what medically leprosy really was. Yet two things changed my mind.
The first was that I cannot get past something that happened Saturday. While discussing last week’s Torah portion, I made a statement publicly that I had written on this list before. I have read a lot into the story of the death of Nadab and Abihu and tried to find something that makes sense here. While I can see how many can have interpretations they did something wrong, there is one I tend to like the best – they died heroes. We read in Leviticus 16:12-13 that the incense in the fire pan was used as a containment field, a smoke screen so that no one saw the Glory of the Lord. Remember when Moses asked to see God’s glory, he was told “no man shall see my face and live” [Exodus 33:20] Yet no incense was used in that sacrifices se we are told everyone could see the sacrifice consumed. I believe that Nadab and Abihu realized when the glory and the fire of the Lord came down in Leviticus 9:23-24, the people were not supposed to see it. The fire would continue to expand without the containment field, yet at the time there was no holy fire to light incense pans. So they do not use holy fire but alien fire. While saving everyone else, they sacrificed themselves. When I thought of that in 2004, many of those who died on 9/11 was still on my mind, that there were people who would run into a burning collapsing building in the hope of saving someone else. Today knowing people who put their lives in danger in public health settings around the world, I still use this midrash to comemorate their courage.
There was an objection to this. Someone found my making these two into heroes very disturbing. She specified only one thing in particular that disturbed her. God had not warned anyone. Yet we read after the death of Nadab and Abihu:
Then Moses said to Aaron, This is what the Lord spoke, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come near to me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace [Leviticus 10:3]
The key phrase is, This is what the Lord spoke - it is in the past tense.
While that thought was with me for much of the weekend, and into Monday, I was deeply involved in far too many things not to listen to the news until Tuesday. The events at Virginia Tech of course were the second thing that changed my mind about what I was going to write.
Tzarat, often called Leprosy, is some form of skin disease or possibly a variety of skin diseases. While some of the rather detailed symptoms do describe the effects of Mycobacterium leprae, the organism which causes the disease leprosy, it does not completely describe such a disease. Jewish thinking often does not look to a physical cause but rather a behavioral one. Given the cases found in the biblical text there are several versions of what causes leprosy:
(i) Haughty eyes, (ii) A Iying tongue, and (iii) Hands that shed innocent blood; (iv) A heart that divises wicked thoughts, (v) Feet that are swift in running to evil; (vi) A false witness that breathes out lies, and (vii) He that sows discord among brethren. R. Johanan said: All these are punished by leprosy. [Leviticus Rabbah XVI: 1]
For ten things [i.e. sins] does leprosy come upon the world: (i) idol-worship, (ii) gross unchastity, (iii) bloodshed, (iv) the profanation of the Divine Name, (v) blasphemy of the Divine Name, (vi) robbing the public, (vii) usurping [a dignity] to which one has no right, (viii) overweening pride, (ix) evil speech, and (x) an evil eye. [Leviticus Rabbah XVII: 3]
The one who contracts tzarat is a sociopath. He is a danger not to just himself but to everybody around him. But it is one particular sin, lashon hara, evil speech, which is mentioned most often in reference to tzarat. As we read in several place in Talmud, Lashon Hara is equivalent to bloodshed. It is of course related to Miriam’s slander of Moses in Numbers 10. Yet even Miriam’s case ended after seven day quarantine. Tzarat is often not a permanent thing in the text, only King Uzziah and Elisha’s assistant Gehazi gets a permanent case. Given that, the rabbis make a startling claim:
So also when [leprous] plagues come upon man. First they come upon [the fabric of] his house. If he repents, it requires the pulling out [of affected stones]; if not, it requires pulling down [the house]. Then they [i.e. the plagues] come upon one's clothes. If he repents, they require washing; if not, they require burning. Then they [i.e. the plagues] come upon his body. If he repents, he undergoes purification; if not, HE SHALL DWELL ALONE (XIII, 46). [Leviticus Rabbah XVII: 3]
In the case of Nadab and Abihu, there was a warning. It was told to Moses before the incident. Moses was told something by God, and said and did nothing. In the context of tzarat, we see the same thing that has bothered me this week: warnings. Tzarat isn’t the end punishment, but instead the warning that something worse will await you if you continue to do sociopatic things to others. One must turn away from that path, and quarantine is not about the biological hazard as much as the behavioral and giving the person time to calm down and change. Yet, a loss of pigmentation in skin and hair is also a rather obvious visual signal to others as well. Others will stay away from a case of tzarat even if such a person was not quarantined. All are warnings to change before something terrible happens.
With all that is coming out about the events in Blacksburg at the early part of the week, once again I have much to wonder about warnings, and what I could have said to the person who objected to my calling Nadab and Abihu heroes. My only answer upsets me even more. What is more disturbing than not having a warning is to have the warning and not heed it. Not only was last monday a tragic event, but once again it is a set of warnings. It is a warning that guns kill, and there are people that guns should not be sold to. Like Columbine and 9/11 before it, obsessive mass media coverage of the event will once again will transmit the disease to others. Some will take such coverage, along with the less controllable media of internet communications, as approval for such an act, and such viral Lashon Hara will infect and breed a string of copycats.
Hind sight is 20/20. Yet, one does not need hindsight when the event happens not just once but multiple times. Midrash Rabbah’s view of Tzarat, in reverse order of the biblical text, is of an increasingly personal disease. Its effects get more severe each episode reminding us we do know a lot more than we think, and that we must act. A man certified as insane owned hand guns. While a suspected terrorist might not be able to board a plane, that same suspected terrorist can still buy any weapon in the U.S. and open fire in a shopping mall or school. No one can prevent him until he does.
As I wrote this, I look onto the cover of newspapers and see the leprosy in the video-game posed cover photo of this madman. I heard the sickness in an interview with an early suspect in the case, a guy who happed to be a gun collector and graduate of Virgina tech. He told CNN that had students been permitted concealed weapons the tragedy would have been adverted. If this is not Tzarat I have no idea what is. Who gives a portable weapon to the demographic most likely to be drunk?
So I have to ask, when is the Tzarat of society too personal? When is it too severe that we actually take action to prevent the problem? In the words of the great Sage Hillel: If not now, When?
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