WHEN YOU COME TO THE LAND OF CANAAN, WHICH I AM GIVING YOU AS A POSSESSION, AND I PLACE A LESION OF TZARA'AT UPON A HOUSE IN THE LAND OF YOUR POSSESSION, AND THE ONE TO WHOM THE HOUSE BELONGS COMES AND TELLS THE PRIEST, SAYING, "SOMETHING LIKE A LESION HAS APPEARED TO ME IN THE HOUSE."

(Vayikra 14:34-35)

 

What is the procedure in the inspection of a house? And the one to whom the house belongs comes and tells the priest, saying, "Something like a lesion has appeared to me in the house." Even if he is a learned sage and knows that it is definitely a lesion, he may not speak with certainty saying, "A lesion sign has appeared to me in the house," but only, "Something like a lesion has appeared to me in the house."

(Mishnah Nega'im 12:5, based in Soncino translation)

 

"Has appeared to me" and not "has appeared to me by my light." Based on this, they said: The windows of a dark house should not be opened in order to inspect its lesions. In the house - even if it is painted, In the house - this includes the attic; In the house - from inside it makes it [the house] unclean but not from behind it.

(Sifra Metzora 5)

 

and I place a lesion of tzara'at upon a house in the land of your possession, etc., alludes to the Temple, as it is said, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will defile My sanctuary, the pride of your power, the desire of your eyes, and the longing of your soul (Ezekiel 24:21). and the one to whom the house belongs comes (34: 35) alludes to the Holy One, blessed be He, as it is said, Because of My house that lies waste (Haggai 1: 9). and tells the priest alludes to Jeremiah, of whom it is said, One of the priests that were in Anatot (Jeremiah 1:1). Something like a lesion has appeared to me in the house alludes to the filth of idolatry.

(Vayikra Rabbah 17:7)

 

Our Rabbis teach us: How many reasons are there for lesions afflicting people?...

Because of the evil eye - Rabbi Yitzhak says: Since a person's eye is ill-disposed to lend his things, one goes and asks him, "Lend me your sickle, lend me your axe, or any other needed tool," and he answers: "Cursed be anyone who has a sickle or an axe." What does the Holy One blessed be He do? He strikes him with tzora'at, then he will come to the priest and say, Something like a lesion has appeared to me in the house. And he will be ordered to destroy the house, and everyone sees his tools when they are dragged outside, and the tools he owns are made public, and everyone says, "Didn't he say that he didn't have a sickle and that he didn't have an axe? Look! He has this and that tool which he did not want to lend out, for his eye was ill-disposed to lend things.

(Tanhuma [Warsaw edition] Metzora 4)

 

Passages

Ephraim Shoham-Steiner

The passage which speaks of the purification of the metzora ["leper"] in the first half our parasha contains linguistic echoes of two other Scriptural passages. The first is alluded to in the verse: Then the priest shall order, and the person to be cleansed shall take two live, clean birds, a cedar stick, a strip of crimson [wool], and hyssop (14:4). In his commentary, R. Avraham Ibn Ezra mentions a possible connection between our parasha and the story of the Exodus from Egypt. He writes: "The cedar and the hyssop are the largest and smallest among species of plants. The wisdom of Solomon's words testifies to this: And he spoke of the trees, from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop coming out of the wall (I Kings 5:13). There is no need to research the identity of the hyssop, because it is known through tradition. See - the metzora and the infected house and the uncleanness associated with a dead body are similar in nature, and see, they are like the Passover [offering] in Egypt."

Ibn Ezra ties the metzora passage, the tzora'at of houses, and the purification of the uncleanness associated with a corpse, which are all mentioned in our parasha, with the Passover in Egypt. He does this by pointing to the fact that the hyssop was used in all these rituals. In our parasha, the hyssop (together with the other ingredients needed to cleanse the metzora) is dipped in the blood of the slaughtered bird, and the blood shaken off it onto the metzora in order to purify him. In the story of the Exodus, the bundle of hyssop is used to spread the paschal blood on the lintel and the two doorposts in order to mark the homes of the Israelites, who were eating the Passover sacrifice in the night of their redemption from Egypt.

The other passage that bears a linguistic resemblance to the rituals described in our parasha is not found in a different book of the Bible, but rather in Torat Kohanim [Vayikra] itself; I am referring to the priests' dedication ceremony in parashat Tzav. The linguistic similarity is just an indication of the actual similarity between the dedication ceremony of the priests and the metzora's purification ritual. In connection with the priests, we read: And he brought Aaron's sons forward, and Moses placed some of the blood on the cartilage of their right ears, on the thumbs of their right hands, and on the big toes of their right feet (Vayikra 8:24). In the purification ceremony we read: The priest shall take some of the blood of the guilt offering, and the priest shall place it above the cartilage of the right ear of the person being cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot…And some of the remainder of the oil that is in his palm, the priest shall place on the cartilage of the right ear of the person being cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot, on [top of] the blood of the guilt offering (Vayikra 14:15-18).

It appears that this similarity is not accidental, just as the similarity pointed out by Ibn Ezra of the metzora's ceremony to the Passover in Egypt is not accidental. In order to understand the connection between them, we must first briefly analyze the significance of these rituals. All three rituals (the spreading of the paschal blood on the lintel and door posts, the metzora's purification ceremony and the priests' dedication ceremony) all involve the participant's passage from one status to another. All three take place by an entrance: one at the entrance to a house, the others by the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. In each ritual the participants are about to cross through the entrance and they are destined to undergo an essential change. In Egypt the Israelites who used the hyssop to spread blood on their doorways made the passage from being slaves to being freemen, from being an enslaved people to being a redeemed people, from being people whose every action was controlled by their masters to being people who will stand by Mount Sinai and choose to take upon themselves the yoke of Torah and the commandments, acting together as one person with one heart, in the manner alluded to by the expression, "We shall obey and we shall hear." The ceremony in Parashat Tzav involved the passage of Aaron and his sons from the status of redeemed Israelites to that of priests who wear ephods and who have gained the high station of performing the holy service. Their ears must be attentive to hear God's word, their hands will soon be busy with holy deeds, and their feet must carry them along the sanctuary's paths and avoid leaving it. This is not just a purification ritual that ends their state of impurity; it is a ceremony that raises them to a new and higher status - it turns pure Israelites into priests who will serve in the Tabernacle. The ritual for purifying the metzora also involves a passage. Actually, by the time the metzora participates in the ceremony he has already undergone several stages of purification. In contrast to the ceremonial quarantine during which he is banished from all the three camps, now the metzora stands by the entrance to the Tent of Meeting while the priest performs the purification ceremony (and, according to Rashi, he would stand by the Nicanor Gate when the Temple was in existence). That means that the metzora was already permitted to enter the Israelite camp and now he wants to rise higher in holiness and become purified so that he will be able to enter the Temple's gates and offer a sacrifice like any other Israelite. This means that the ceremony is not concerned solely with purification, rather it returns the metzora to the status he enjoyed before becoming infected - he returns to the status of an Israelite who, when pure, is allowed to enter the Temple. This seems to be the basis of the similarity between the two rituals. But why are these matters linked to the act of spreading blood and oil on the ear, hand, and foot? Rituals in which certain liquids come into contact with parts of the body in order to mark an essential change in the participant are found both in Judaism and in other cultures. People use these ceremonies to symbolize a change of essence or status by means of contact between certain liquids and parts of the body. It is sufficient to recall in this context the anointing of kings and priests, ceremonies which make kings and priests essentially different from other people. Here as well, the Torah uses the spreading of blood and oil on the left earlobe, the left thumb and left big toe to symbolize the change undergone by the priest on the one hand and the metzora on the other. The former will enter a life of sanctity in the Temple, while the other will return to his role after being ostracized for being unclean. The spreading of blood with the hyssop upon the two doorposts and the lintel (again we see three elements, just as there were three parts of the human body involved in the other ritual - the earlobe, the thumb, and the left big toe) transforms the house's essence. It becomes a Hebrew house where the paschal sacrifice is performed for a set group of people; the participants will become free the next day.

Ephraim Steiner is a member of the Baka Egalitarian Minyan. He teaches Jewish History at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev and in Jerusalem's Himmelfarb High School.

 

Now there were four men, stricken with zara'at, [at] the entrance of the gate. And they said to each other, "Why are we sitting here until we die?"

(II Kings 2:7 - the haftarah for Parashat Metzora)

 

Always let the left hand thrust away and the right hand draw near

Our Rabbis taught: Elisha was afflicted with three illnesses: one because he stirred up the bears against the children, one because he thrust away Gehazi with both his hands, and one of which he died; as it is said, Now Elisha was fallen sick of his sickness whereof he died (II Kings 8:14)

Our Rabbis have taught: Always let the left hand thrust away and the right hand draw near. Not like Elisha who thrust Gehazi away with both his hands and not like R. Yehoshua ben Perahiya who thrust one of his disciples [Jesus of Nazareth in some manuscripts] away with both his hands. How is it with Elisha? As it is written, And Naaman said, "Be content, take two talents" (II Kings 5), and it is written, And he said to him, "Went not my heart with you when the man turned again from his chariot to meet you? Is it a time to receive money, and to receive garments, and olive yards, and sheep ad oxen, and menservants and maidservants?" But had he received all these things? Silver and garments were what he had received! R. Yitzhak said: At the time Elisha was engaged [in the study of the law concerning] the eight kinds of [unclean] creeping things; so he said to [Gehazi], "You wicked person, the time has arrived for you to receive the reward for [studying the law of] the eight creeping things." The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave to you and to your seed for ever. Now there were four leprous men (II Kings 7:3) - R. Yohanan said: This refers to Gehazi and his three sons.

(Sotah 47a, following the Soncino translation)

 

If a man loses the hair on [the back of] his head, he is bald. He is clean.

And if he loses his hair on the side toward his face, he is bald at the front. He is clean.

If there is a reddish white lesion on the back or front bald area, it is a spreading tzara'at in his back or front bald area.

So the priest shall look at it. And, behold! there is a reddish white se'eit lesion on his back or front bald area, like the appearance of tzara'at on the skin of the flesh,

He is a man afflicted with tzara'at; he is unclean. The priest shall surely pronounce him unclean; his lesion is on his head.

(Vayikra 13: 40-44)

 

The principle of "measure for measure" is in operation. Afflictions of the house come because of stinginess and tsarut ayin (Jastrow defines tsarut ayin as narrow-mindedness, selfishness, envy), etc. If the affliction is upon the head, it most certainly must house faulty intelligence and alien information. Therefore the tzaraat affects his bald spot, the place when thought and intelligence reside. If his sin has to do with the qualities and powers of the soul or with actions, - as they said (Arakhin 16a), "There are seven reasons why afflictions appear" - then the sin is not distinctive from the aspect of the powers of intelligence, which make man unique. Such is not the case if one sins with his powers of intelligence; then the affliction is upon his head. He sins with that faculty which is unique to man alone, which is not found in any other living creature, therefore Scripture twice emphasizes, a man.

(Meshekh Hokhma, Vayikra 13:40-44)

 

Afflictions of the House Result from Acquisitiveness and Aggression

What makes most sense for me to say about this is that the principal reason [for afflictions of the house] is miserliness, as the Sages said (in Arakhin 16) based on the verse and he who owns the house shall come - he kept the house all to himself and does not allow others to enjoy it; for this is why God gave him for a possession a house full of all good things, in order to test him to see whether he will benefit others with his house, for mine is the silver and the gold - says the Lord (Haggai 2:8), and everything that a man gives to others he does not give of his own, for he will be repaid from the table on High. That is why it says When you come to the land of Canaan which I give to you as a possession, since they did not inherit the land by sword, neither did their fore-arm save them (Psalms 44:2). Rather, the Lord's right hand is raised up to give them a portion of the nations, and there is no room for the miserly to say my strength and my hand's power won this wealth for me. After all, He grants you strength and property, it is only right that you should give of yours to the impoverished of His nation. If you do not listen to His words and you belong to those misers who credit their property to their own efforts, then: I shall inflict an affliction of leprosy of houses in the land you possess. This means to say: In places where you attribute your property to yourselves, as if you hold it through the strength of your hands. That is why it immediately says, and he who owns the house shall come - he who kept the house all to himself, saying that his strength and his hand's power built it his house, or one who says your property - one who keeps his house for himself and does not allow others to enjoy it.

(Keli Yakar on Vayikra 14:34)

 

The Purification of the Metzora

The priest is to command that they take for the one to be purified two birds, live, pure, and wood of cedar and scarlet of the worm and hyssop.

(Vayikra 14:4).

 

Wood of cedar: Because afflictions appear because of arrogance. scarlet of the worm and hyssop: What is the cure? He must lower himself from his haughtiness as [to the level of] the worm and the hyssop.

(Rashi, Vayikra 14:4)

 

The character of the most unsociable being as represented by the tzippor dror - [literally, a free bird. Commonly translated as 'sparrow'], which refuses to accept authority, is presented here in contrast to what is demanded for re-entrance into the social life of the community. This is the contrast of the animals of the "field" to the humans of the "city". The demand which is made as the condition for the re-entry into the social life of the community, and he shall slaughter the bird, is energetic subjection of the wild untrammeled animal life under the sharp control of the morally strong human will.

(From Rabbi S. R. Hirsch's commentary on Vayikra, quoted by Prof. Nehama Leibowitz z'l in her Iyyunim Hadashim beSefer Vayikra, p. 162)

 

Readers respond

Debbie Weisman wrote in the Purim issue (541) about how some of her friends are troubled by the reading of the Meggilah because it is a "story which is violent, anti-feminist, and full of vengeance against gentiles." I have come to quiet their qualms. In an article I published in Mo'ed (14:5764) I demonstrated that, in contrast to all accepted opinion, that the Book of Esther is not a story of "revenge" and promotion of genocide. Rather, it is the complete opposite: it comes to blunt revenge and prevent genocide. I showed this using the method of the "mirror story," which was developed by Yair Zakovitz, following the Sages' lead. As I demonstrate there in detail, the story of Haman and Mordechai is the "mirror" (opposite) of the story of Amalek and Saul (I Samuel 15), and the Book of Esther is a late moral tikkun ["repair"] of Amalek: it rejects pillaging and the murder of innocents. It certainly rejects the slaughter of women and children. The Meggilah tells us that sometimes there is no need to wage total war against our enemies, but that rather a highly localized war should be fought, and then as an act of self-defense. Sometimes, even when the conditions of international politics allow and even justify a war of "annihilation" (such as the biblical herem) against the enemy, it should not be carried out and the war must remain limited. The mirror-story also teaches us that Mordechai, who was responsible for this deliberate refusal to fulfill the royal decree calling for a massacre, ended up rising to a higher status. From this we see that one of the "turn-arounds" in the story of the Meggilah is a revolution in moral thinking (this is one of the deep meanings of the phrase venahafokh hu - but it was the opposite case).

If Prof. E. A. Simon z"l had read my article, perhaps he would have decided to actually make the (charming but apocryphal) story about him into a reality: he indeed would have taken the trouble to travel between Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv - but not in order to avoid the reading of the Meggilah (which transforms the story of Amalek's annihilation from being a negative story into a positive, repairing story), but rather the opposite: he would travel in order to read it twice, and in order to lend honor to the commandment.

Those interested in reading my article can write to me and I will send it to them by email: amnonsh@tiratzvi.org.il .

With blessings,

Amnon Shapira, Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi

 

 

Professor Gerald Cromer - He who does what is right and speaks truth in his heart.

Shortly before this issue went to press, our dear member, Gerald Cromer, passed away following a brief but difficult struggle against a cruel illness.

All those who knew Gerald learned to appreciate his wonderful combination of vision and action. In many ways he always stood at the vanguard. It is difficult to think of any important project that did not claim Gerald as one of its founders and initiators. Even before he made aliyah, he initiated the creation of the London circle, which eventually served as the founding core of Kehillat Yedidya in Jerusalem.

When, in time, he felt the need for a religious-halakhic community characterized by spiritual searching, greater participation by women in the synagogue, and social engagement, he was among the founders of Kehillat Yedidya.

When his children reached school age, he, together with a group of "fanatics" set in motion the creation of the Efrata School, where children would be educated to love Torah, humanity, and the Land of Israel in an atmosphere of respect and tolerance.

During the period of the first war in Lebanon and the uncovering of the Jewish underground, he felt, together with other friends, the need for a religious movement promoting the value of peace, and thus he became a founder of Netivot Shalom and served as one of its leading activists for many years. As leader of the movement he initiated the publication of Shabbat Shalom a little before Rosh Hashanah 6758, asking me to serve as editor.

Space here is insufficient to the task of recounting all of the activities he undertook in order to help create a worthy Israeli society that would be fairer and more tolerant. Even when he became ill he continued to think about what else could be done for the improvement of society.

Jerusalem has lost one of her best sons. Fighters for peace and social justice have lost one of their best champions, and I, together with many others, mourn the untimely loss of a dear and beloved friend.

We offer our condolences to Chana, to the children, and to their families.

May his memory be a blessing.

Pinchas Leiser - editor

Miriam Fine - coordinator

The Editorial Board of Shabbat Shalom

Oz Ve'Shalom - Netivot Shalom

 

 

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