Anyone who has read the Torah can't be blamed if he or she considered the fourth and fifth par'shiot in the book of Leviticus, Tazri'ah and M'tzora, to be the most difficult to understand - perhaps the most arcane - in the entire cycle of the Five Books. From beginning to end they deal with the subject of Spiritual Impurity, which in itself is alien to our current way of thinking. It deals primarily with the laws of "leprosy" which are extremely complicated and, to top things off, whatever "disease" is described in the Bible, it definitely isn't leprosy: it's more like some form of psoriasis.
Like it or not, it turns out that the whole issue of Spiritual Purity and Impurity is a huge topic in the area of Jewish Religious Law. An entire order of the Mishnah - and there are six orders in total - is titled Toharot, which means Purities. Besides, the subject comes up in the other five orders as well!
So, what are we talking about when it comes to the subject of Spiritual Impurity?
One way to begin to understand this is to ask yourself, "What do we really mean when we say that something is dirty?"
The best illustration from my own, personal experience comes out of the situation where someone objects to the practice of shoveling earth on the casket at a Jewish funeral. They'll say to me, "I can't stand the thought of throwing dirt on the person I loved!" One time, I shared this sensitivity with an agronomist in discussing his wife's funeral arrangements. His response: "It isn't dirt; it's earth!" (Ask yourself how an agronomist views "earth!")
Essentially "dirt" is one of those words, just like "weed," which describes our own attitude about a thing and not so much the thing itself! If you think about it, there really isn't any plant that's a "weed"! A "weed" is a plant, which according to human opinion and taste, has no business being in that particular place under that particular circumstance.
Likewise, "dirty" is a particular way we have of describing a condition where we feel something is disturbing the desirable state of something else.
Sometimes that "desirable state" may be the original condition of the object; for example, the "desirable state" may have to do with keeping anything else from blending or interfering with or otherwise altering that original state.
According to the book of Genesis, Chapter 2, verse 17: before human beings ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were immortal. That is what God meant when he said to Adam, "for on the day you eat of it, you shall surely die." God meant that Adam (and Eve) would become mortal! So, in this case the original condition of human beings was that they were immortal. "Impurity," in this case, would be anything involved affecting that original condition in a negative way... and that is precisely what the issue of "Spiritual Purity and Impurity" is all about! It has to do with situations that affect immortality in some way or another.
That's why our parsha starts off talking about childbirth: once Adam and Eve became mortal, procreation became necessary to ensure human survival. The term "knowledge of Good and Evil" is actually a technical term for "sexual consciousness." Since sexual consciousness is at the very heart of procreation, it becomes a huge subject of Spiritual Purity and Impurity.
Our rabbis understood the Hebrew term metzorah as an abbreviation for the phrase "motz'i shem ra'"(מוציא שם רע) - quite literally: "One who attributes an evil reputation (literally: name) to someone else!" When a person does this to someone else, it's a way of destroying (i.e. "killing") them in the community: in extreme cases they can become "social lepers!" People affected in this way have practically no way of defending themselves from this kind of abuse. For this reason, according to the rabbis, God would have a need to afflict the perpetrator with צרעת tzara-at (Biblical leprosy). The reason it would occur on a person's skin was so that they would have no way of hiding their condition and the need to correct their negative behavior.
We can look at the subject of Spiritual Impurity as being naïve or irrelevant; or we can look at the degree to which the various issues it addresses are still very much a part of human experience. (Just how much do we engage in gratuitous "negative character analysis" on a daily basis? To what extent do we still struggle with issues of mortality and sexuality?) It's quite possible that Tazri'a and M'tzor'a deserve our profound consideration! |
