Parashat Tazria

This Shabbat and with Pesach on the horizon, we will read Parashat Tazria, which is more frequently read as part of a Tazria-Metzora double parashah, made unnecessary by this year’s second month of Adar. Either way, one of the topics we will encounter this week and continue reading about next week is tzaraat, a disfiguring skin condition that can also infect houses and clothing, and which renders the victim ritually impure or unclean. Tzaraat is conventionally translated as leprosy, which is likely an inaccurate translation, but whatever tzaraat was, it wasn’t pleasant.

According to Rashi, though, tzaraat isn’t a typical physical malady with medically treatable underlying causes. Instead, for Rashi, the skin affliction of tzaraat is a punishment for lashon hara, gossip and speaking ill of one’s neighbors. Rashi takes the bacterial contagiousness and physicality of tzaraat and turns it into something more spiritual, based on our actions. 

When Pesach comes in a little over a week, we will echo Rashi’s redefinition of tzaraat with how we approach chametz. From a literal reading of the Torah, chametz is created when wheat, barley, rye, oats, or spelt come in contact with water for at least 18 minutes and experience even a small amount of rising and fermentation. It is a highly scientific definition, but many of our more mystically and chasidically inclined rabbis understand chametz differently. Yes, we have to rid our houses of physical chametz, but it is merely to remind us of the work we must do on the much more important chametz of our souls — the haughtiness, jealousy, and other forms of negativity we have accumulated internally.

 

For many years, I didn’t appreciate Rashi’s redefinition of tzaraat, because it felt to me so at odds with the Torah’s clear description of the disease and how it was to be treated. Fortunately, we have the right to read and understand, and reunderstand, Torah on an annual (if not infinite) basis. I have come to appreciate Rashi’s use of tzaraat as a vehicle to push us to work on ourselves, which is very much in line with the more spiritual understanding of chametz. The truth is, I have never met anyone who suffers from Hansen’s Disease, the modern illness associated with leprosy, and I am confident that our modern lifestyles have made cleaning for Pesach and avoiding literal chametz much, much easier for us than it was for our ancestors. But I can use and benefit from all of the reminders I can get that ultimately the Torah wants me, and all of us, to work on being our best selves, and perhaps that is the even more important message of both tzaraat and chametz.

Shabbat Shalom and an early Chag Kasher v’Sameach.