Rabbi Benjamin David
This week’s Torah portion is Tazria-Metzora: Leviticus 12:1 — 15:33
The double-portion of Tazria-Metzora comes along with all its gore and troubling detail, reminding us that the Torah — like life — is not always fairytales and rainbows. In truth, this section of Leviticus is harsh and profoundly challenging, especially to our modern sensibilities. Tazria teaches us about how we are to handle those with skin disease, with the priest acting like a doctor-counselor, declaring the afflicted ready to return to the community or needing to spend more time in isolation. The partner portion of Metzora deals less with the individual and more with the home. What are we to do with a home that has been touched by a seemingly invasive diseases like mold or fungus?
The commentators will dizzy themselves attempting to connect these essays on treatment to our own evolved lives and lifestyles today. They will also struggle to explain why someone might have come down with such pernicious afflictions to their body or place of residence. To them, nothing was outside of God’s realm. There must have been a reason.
Were you not faithful enough? Were you not scrupulous enough in following the mitzvot? I will tell you that I struggle with such a view of religion. Sometimes people get sick.
Sometimes bad things happen. Not everything is some divine judgment or castigation from God above. We humans are mortal. Our lives are finite and fragile. This is just part of the deal of being a living, breathing person. To claim that a cancer diagnosis, or an accident, or a painful loss comes because God willed it is highly dangerous theology. To claim that it happened because I was not good enough or trying enough is only a pathway to guilt and regret and further pain.
Some will note that such maladies are a result of gossip specifically, that speaking ill of others can affect very well-being. To live in perpetual judgment of others has us bear the burden of relentless comparison. It becomes like a sickness to be in constant assessment of others. To make my happiness, my contentment, my own sense of self dependent on how I am seen or how I see others, feels trite and exasperating. The Ten Commandments remind us not to covet what is not ours. The commentators note that we can live with greater spiritual health and create a home environment predicated on greater health when we come to see ourselves as enough, each of us sacred in our own right.
Although we live a great distance from the time and place of these portions, there is a way that they feel relevant. These, after all, are portions that are interested in healing. More poignantly, they are interested in how we can care for those among us who are in pain. These days especially, so many are in pain. Some are lost. Some have lost. Many of us live with a chronic condition. Some of us are desperately lonely. Some feel the impossible weight of the political realities all about us: the attack on democratic norms, the unending corruption, the assault on honesty itself, the sheer stress brought on by gross antisemitism and prejudice.
What can we do? We can be present for each other. We can extend a hand in compassion to the most pained among us, not casting out or turning away, but leaning in with a phone call, a text, a meal, some companionship. We can choose to be gentle at a time that feels coarse and abrasive. We can be, each of us, a source of healing. Amen.
Benjamin David is the senior rabbi of Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park. His wife Lisa is the executive director of URJ Camp Harlam. They have three children: Noa, Elijah and Samuel.