Parashat Tazri`a – Metzora/ Yom Ha-Atzma’ut
Leviticus 12:1 – 15:33
Our Torah portion is mostly taken up with dealing with the affliction called tzara`at, a phenomenon affecting surfaces of people (their skin), clothing and houses. As has been often clarified, this is not a medical condition. It is some sort of condition that, unlike diseases of any kind, renders a person (and/or his clothes, and/or her house) ritually impure. No medical experts can make the diagnosis of tzara`at. Only the ritual expert – the priest – is authorized to do so. If the priest determines that the person suffers from tzara`at, or if there is merely a serious possibility that such is the case, “he shall dwell alone, outside of his camp of dwelling.” (Lev. 13:46)
Although the verse could have been read to mean that the person afflicted – the tzaru`a – must not dwell in his own home, the tradition broadened this concept to include the entire encampment of Israel. The tzaru`a had to go out of the entire encampment. The encampment is described in the book of Numbers. It had the Tabernacle at its center, and then constituted a large rectangle, with the twelve tribes residing three on each of the four sides. The encampment was a “planned community.” And the exclusion of the tzaru`a was meant to be a gesture that preserved the integrity of the camp as an interconnected community devoted to purity.
Why was the tzaru`a expelled from dwelling in the camp? The tradition understood this affliction to only affect persons who were maliciously and surreptitiously trying to undermine the community. Therefore their punishment seemed appropriate. But, if they were not to dwell inside the encampment, where were they expected to dwell? There must have been some identifiable place where they could stay. After all, they were not being abandoned to die in the wilderness. The Torah expects them to return to the camp after their affliction dissipated and they become pure once more. (Lev. 14:8)
One is persuaded, therefore, to imagine two corresponding settlements. One was meticulously designed and was meant to be a camp centered on the Divine Presence. This is the camp that is extensively described by the Torah. It is the camp of purity, order and stability. But there was another camp on the periphery, a camp never explicitly described by the Torah, a camp of the impure and of the detritus hauled out of the camp, a camp of the unregulated and the haphazard, the camp of messy reality ( – perhaps this is why it did not have to be described!). Other groups, such as those fellow travellers who did not belong to one of the twelve tribes, also lived in these “suburbs,” these outlying regions. Here there was no order and no requirement for ritual purity, although purity might abide in some places there, as well. (See Lev. 6:4)
In our own day it seems that the relation of these two camps has become reversed. The central and ongoing reality of our lived world is the camp of chaotic and rampant varieties of energies, without any privileged position given to purity or holiness. It requires great effort to extricate one’s self from that reality, for it is rich and multifarious. It is almost as if one must be afflicted with some mysterious malady in order to wish to go outside that encampment and seek the clarity and orderliness of the sacred.
Yet, the orderliness of the camp of purity is a fantasy of oversimplification. The impurity of tzara`at did not arise from an outside infection. It was a direct product of the all-too-human community of purity, itself. Indeed, the “camp” required an “outside-the-camp” for its own continued functioning. Each camp needed – and needs – the other. If we – whether as individuals or as a collective, whether spiritually or geo-politically – forget this connection and seek to impose exclusive control in the name of one camp or the other, we risk killing the life-giving mutuality that sustains them both.
Shabbat Shalom v’Hag Same`ah,
Rabbi David Greenstein
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