Parashat Metzora, Shabbat Hagadol
April 9, 2022 | 8 Nisan 5782
Torah: Leviticus 14:1-15:33; Triennial 14:33-15:33
Haftarah: Malachi 3:4-24
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In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Parashah by Ilana Kurshan called "One Mouth Per Person", Vered Hollander-Goldfarb poses questions titled "When Walls Speak" and Bex Stern Rosenblatt writes a dvar haftara called "The Zealous Duo".
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One Mouth Per Person
Ilana Kurshan
Often when I’m in synagogue, I hand my toddler his favorite book, One Hundred First Words, in the hope that he will amuse himself by looking at the pictures while I’m absorbed in prayer. But usually it doesn’t work that way. Instead he points excitedly at each of the images – tractor, train, dog, banana – and looks at me eagerly, waiting for me to identify each object. In between every line of the prayerbook I find myself inserting a quick “yes, that’s a bathtub,” or “yes, that’s a bottle,” frustrated by my inability to get through a single blessing uninterrupted.
In such moments, I’m reminded of a Talmudic story about Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who declared, “If I had been on Mount Sinai when the Torah was given to Israel, I would have asked God for two mouths, one to speak words of Torah, and one to use for all other needs.” But then on second thought, he reconsidered and said, “The world can barely continue to exist on account of the slander that comes out of one mouth. How much worse would it be if everyone had two mouths!” (Y. Berakhot 1:2 [3b]). Sometimes I wish I had two mouths, one for praying and one for acknowledging my eager toddler. Then I am reminded of all the words I speak and then regret, and like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, I reconsider and resolve that one mouth is enough.
The Talmudic sages connect the dangers of speaking inappropriately to our parashah, which details the laws concerning the metzora, the person stricken with a skin disease commonly translated as leprosy. The sages (Erchin 15b) understood metzora as an acronym for “motzi shem ra,” one who “draws out a bad name,” that is, someone who tarnishes another person’s reputation—a sin referred to by the rabbis as lashon hara. They declare that anyone who speaks ill of another person will be stricken with leprous marks, as if to suggest that the distress caused to another person by slander is tantamount to the distress of a scaly skin affliction. The sages, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai among them, developed an extensive theology conflating the leper and the slanderer, offering us insight into the power and peril of the words we speak.
The Torah associates leprosy with death; both the leper and the individual who come into contact with a dead body are declared impure and cast out of the camp. In the rabbinic imagination, this association with death applies to the slanderer as well. The rabbis quote a verse from Proverbs, “Death and life are in the hands of the tongue” (18:21), explaining that just as a hand can kill, so too a tongue can kill. However, they add that unlike a hand, which can kill only those within arm’s distance, a tongue is like an arrow that is fired from a bow and can kill from a great distance, as per a verse from Jeremiah, “Their tongue is a sharpened arrow” (9:7). Evil speech can harm even those who are not in the immediate vicinity, because gossip travels quickly. Likewise evil speech also carries with it an element of death’s irreversibility, because words, once spoken, can never be fully retracted.
The Talmud teaches that if a person speaks ill of another, God declares, “He [the slanderer] and I cannot dwell together in this world.” God cannot bear to live in the world with a person who speaks inappropriately, and thus such a person must be cast out. This is a fitting response given that slander so often leads to the ostracism of the person slandered. The leper, too, is cast out of the camp and forced to dwell apart from the rest of the nation on the outskirts of society. He may return only after the priest examines the leper, cleanses him, and declares him pure. At that point he must bring two birds, one of which is set free and one of which is slaughtered, its blood mixed with cedar wood and hyssop and sprinkled over the leper. The rabbis explain that since this individual committed a sin by chattering too much, his purification involves bringing two birds who chirp and chatter incessantly.
The rabbis caution that evil speech is so dangerous that one should not even speak well of another person in the presence of others, because in speaking about his goodness, one might come to speak of that person in a derogatory manner. They illustrate this point by means of a story about Rav Dimi, who once fell ill (Erchin 16a). His brother Rav Safra went to visit him, and when he arrived, Rav Dimi boasted to all those present, “I have merit coming to me, for I have fulfilled everything the sages said!” Rav Safra asked him, “But have you fulfilled the command not even to speak of the goodness of a person in the presence of others, because doing so may lead others to speak of him derogatorily?” Rav Dimi had to admit that no, he did not fulfill this dictum. In this story, which presumably was meant to be not just ironic but also humorous, Rav Dimi speaks well of himself, which leads to him having to admit to his own failings. Even when we offer words of praise about someone, we run the risk of speaking ill of them because we open them up to critique. Better not to talk about other people at all.
And yet it is clear that according to the rabbinic understanding, the antidote to evil speech is not silence. The rabbis tell the story of Rabbi Yannai, who once met a peddler hawking an elixir of life (Leviticus Rabbah 16:2). Rabbi Yannai was eager for a sample. But the peddler was quick to assure him that he didn’t need his wares, because he was already in possession of them. He showed Rabbi Yannai a verse from Psalms: “Who is the man who desires life?... Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from lies. Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” (Psalms 34:12-14). The term used in this story for peddler, rochel, comes from the same root as the word used in the Torah for slander, rechilut, and indeed, as Rav Nachman’s wife Yalta explicitly declares, “Gossip comes from peddlers” (Berakhot 51b). But in this story it is the peddler who reminds Rabbi Yannai that the key to living a long life is to avoid speaking ill and to perform good deeds. If Rabbi Yannai heeds the message of the verse from Psalms—and presumably other words of Torah as well—he will not speak ill of others and will thus merit long life.
“Oh how I love your Torah,” declares the Psalmist, “It is what I speak all day long” (Psalms 119:97). When confronted with pauses in a conversation or awkward silences, we should fill the quiet not with gossip, but with words of Torah. The Talmud (Ketubot 77b) tells a story about Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, who was the only sage who was unafraid of drawing close to the lepers living on the outskirts of his town. All the other sages would keep their distance, but Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi would sit among them and study Torah, insisting that “If Torah graces those who study it, will it not also protect me?” He was convinced that studying Torah would safeguard him from contagion, just as speaking words of Torah can safeguard us against speaking ill of others. Evil speech, like leprosy, is a matter of life and death. We are granted only one life to live, and only one mouth with which to speak.
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When Walls Speak
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Text: Vayikra 14:34-36
34“When you come into the land of Canaan, which I give you as a possession, and I put tzaraat (leprosy) in a house in the land of your possession, 35and he who owns the house comes and tells the kohen, saying, ‘It seems to me that there is some plague in the house,’ 36then the kohen shall command that they empty the house before the kohen comes into it to examine the plague, that all that is in the house may not be made unclean; and afterward the kohen shall go in to examine the house.
- This law applies only to the land, not to the desert where they dwelled in tents or huts. What is it about permanent houses that might cause the arrival of an infliction associated with social ills?
Midrash Vayikra Rabbah 17
When a person says to their neighbor, "could you lend me a measure of wheat?" And they reply, "I don't have any."… What does the Holy One… do? The plague erupts within that house, and while the person is bringing out their possessions, people see, and say, "Didn't they say they didn't have anything at all?! Look at how much wheat there is!”
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The roots of tzaraat are understood to be spiritual and social. What deficiency does the tzaraat of the home indirectly help a person work on?
- How might a person be made aware of such a deficiency today, in a discreet manner?
Commentary: Ibn Ezra Vayikra 14:34
When you come into the land of Canaan- Scripture reads thus for this law applies only in the Land of Israel because of the great status of the land; for the Mikdash (temple) was among them, and the Glory was in the Mikdash.
And I put- The event is contingent on God's putting.
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This aspect of tzaraat is limited to the land of Israel. How do you think that the presence of the Mikdash affects people’s homes?
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What other aspects of living in the land might contribute to the existence of “tzaraat of the house”?
Commentary: Seforno Vayikra 14:36
Empty the house before the kohen comes – And he shall not come before that, and so, there will be time for the owner to do teshuva and pray, and the kohen has time for prayer as well. With this, the kohen will announce the period of isolation.
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Both Seforno and Ibn Ezra point out that the tzaraat is God-inflicted rather than an infectious situation. How does Seforno prove this?
- Why do you think that the owner should be praying and doing teshuva before the kohen arrives? Why is the kohen praying? Where does Seforno detect the window of opportunity in the situation
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The Zealous Duo
Bex Stern Rosenblat
Pesach is powerful in its use of narrative. We tell a story of our past in order to prepare for our future. We relive what has happened so that it might not happen again. This final Shabbat before Pesach, Shabbat HaGadol, our haftarah positions us exactly in the use of the past to prepare for the future by juxtaposing Moses with the future coming of Elijah. This portion is the final chapter of the final book of the trei asar (the twelve minor prophets) as well as the ending of the entire second section of the Tanakh, the prophets. The Torah, the first section of the Tanakh, ended with the memory of Moses. Here in the second section, we recall Moses while looking forward to Elijah.
The final verses of the haftarah, as translated by Robert Alter, read:
“Recall the teaching of Moses My servant that I charged him on Horeb, for all Israel, statutes and laws. Look, I am about to send to you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the day of the LORD, great and fearsome. And he shall bring fathers’ hearts back to sons and the sons’ hearts to their fathers— lest I come and strike the land with utter destruction.”
We are instructed to remember the Torah of Moses. While elsewhere the Tanakh often refers to the Torah of Moses, it is always to shomer it, to observe or keep it. Here, we are being charged with the act of remembering, of telling the story. As the narrative of the Tanakh concludes, we are being called to start the story over again.
Malachi then jumps to Elijah. We have met Elijah before, back in the book of Kings. He was a pious prophet who was taken up to the heavens in a fiery whirlwind. Because we are told of his disappearance but not his death, Malachi begins to develop a theology of Eliah appearing before the coming of the day of the Lord. It is a theology that continues to grow in post-biblical texts such that we now make room for Elijah at our Pesach seder.
Elijah and Moses are similar. In fact, Elijah seems to style himself after Moses - encountering God on Mount Horeb, controlling the nation’s access to water, crossing over rivers or seas. By posing Elijah as someone who still can come, the haftarah gives us access to the Moses who used to be. The call to remember Moses is justified and explained. We are not only retelling the story, we will also be forced to relive it unless we are able to make peace between the generations. This final line of the haftarah is subject to endless interpretations. If we read it as a reconciliation of Moses with Elijah, of the forefathers with us today, we allow ourselves to learn from what was and bring about a better future. Elijah, having once failed to live up to Moses, is allowed to return and try again. And we the people, having failed to listen to Moses and to Elijah the first time, can learn from the telling of the story and the threat of destruction, rather than from destruction itself.
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