Tazria-Metsora
Leviticus 12:1-15:33
Numbers 28:9-15
Isaiah 66:1–24
When you find yourself irritated by someone else’s flaw, look inward to see whether that same flaw lives in you. Sound like new-age psychobabble? Actually, this is a teaching of the founder of Chassidism, the Ba’al Shem Tov, on this week’s parashah.
Parashat Tazria-Metsora contains very difficult material — technical and even offensive to the contemporary reader. Perhaps most difficult is the case of the metsora, usually translated “leper” (though most scholars acknowledge that this is not the leprosy known today as Hansen’s disease).
While the elaborate purification procedures described in the parashah may be understood to be healing rituals, their form is foreign to us. More seriously, the notion that the leper must be isolated outside the camp seems punitive and uncaring. Surely, contagion must have been a concern. Still, for the community to exclude the ill person from the support of the community, even temporarily, seems harsh, harmful, and dare I say, un-Jewish.
I suspect that it may have been for these reasons that rabbinic tradition came to associate the tsara’at-leprosy described in the Torah with the practice of slander. The rabbis had many reasons to make this connection: The classical biblical text on leprosy (the punishment of Miriam for her gossip about Moses in Numbers 12) is clearly a response to slander, and the word tsara’at gives rise to the pun motsi ra, literally, one who brings out another’s evil.
Perhaps the rabbis wanted to broaden the Torah’s teaching about leprosy to an ailment that besets us all. And so we find a wealth of commentary seeking to understand the genesis of the need to slander others, the appropriate punishment for this ubiquitous sin and the purification process that might be needed to heal from this ever-present malady.
In this context, consider the Ba’al Shem Tov’s stunning teaching. “In this way may we understand the Mishnah, “Who is the wise person? The one who can learn from everyone” (Avot 4:1).
From everyone, even from an evil person, for one can see a sinful thing in him or her, and learn from it. For it is in the nature of the unity of all things that we have a hint of this flaw in us as well, and we must heal ourselves of this flaw.
In so doing, we can bring about a purification for the other person as well. And this is the meaning of Leviticus 14:2 as explained in Sefer Ba’al Shem Tov: “This is the ritual for one who brings evil out of another’s evil at the time of his-her purification.”
With a stunning exegetical sleight of hand, the Ba’al Shem Tov immeasurably broadens the scope of the Torah’s teaching on tsara’at and deepens the Mishnah’s well-known dictum that the wise person is one who can learn from everyone.
The path of wisdom, says the Ba’al Shem Tov, is to learn from everyone, even from those whom we consider to be the most evil. He assumes that we all are part of the same whole, all part of God’s creation. As such, we all contain a microcosm of all of creation. We all embody sparks of the divine, and we all have within us kernels of raw evil. Thus, when we perceive evil in another, our task is to learn about the way in which that bit of evil may live in us as well.
This is so hard to do. We may have very good reason to rail at the other’s failings. In some cases, we may see no option but to place certain “lepers” outside the circle of our concern. We would certainly rather focus on the other than examine our own mistakes. But to live this way, in the Ba’al Shem Tov’s metaphor, is to violate the unity of all things.
To put it differently, our rage at another’s wickedness can only contribute to the brokenness of the world, not to its healing. Wisdom, learning, a compassionate heart and a recognition of our connectedness are the paths to the repair of the world, one relationship at a time.
May we take the Ba’al Shem Tov’s teaching to heart, and commit ourselves to learning from everyone. The world depends on it.