We come now to the strange matter of tsara’at, a condition most translations call, leprosy.
But it’s not leprosy. The symptoms/cures of both are very different. Yet, since both have similarities, especially as to exhibiting spreading, eruptive conditions on the skin, they’ve been called leprosy. Since they’re mostly different, however, this misleads us and takes us down wrong paths – physically, religiously, ethically, and spiritually.
The midrashim help us get to the truth and its meaning. So, let’s turn our attention there.
First, just to be sure we’re aware, our text cites ten differences between leprosy and tsara’at, as noted by Rav Hirsch. It’s worth a look if you’re interested.
Before we carry on, I think it’d also be helpful to look back in the Bible to consider a particular encounter between God and Cain.
You may recall it in Genesis 4. When God didn’t accept Cain’s offering, God noticed that Cain was angry – his face, falling and downcast.
God challenged Cain to explore why this was so, for it would not go well with him if it weren’t addressed. “Sin was crouching” at his door, lying in wait for him, desiring to possess him. If, instead, he did right and “rule over it,” all would be fine.
I’m not saying Cain had tsara’at, or that God saw tsara’at in him. But I am saying that whatever God saw functioned very much as if it were tsara’at. It was an indicator of a proclivity to sin, a weakness that shows on us and reveals an openness to sin.
The midrashim list ten sins or faults, the commission or near-commission of which may be revealed by the appearance of tsara’at. These include serving idols, immorality, murder, desecration in the Name of Heaven, blaspheming the Almighty, robbing the public, one’s acting in a capacity not permitted one, conceit, evil speech, acting in miserly or begrudging ways, and taking false oaths.
Our text builds this list from stories in the Bible where characters develop and contend with tsara’at.
Note that tsara’at’s cure is NOT applied by a doctor or medical expert, but rather by a priest. This provides further proof its cause was mostly spiritual or ethical, and not so much physical.
Often the cure began with quarantine, which the rabbis concluded meant the need for introspection and “spiritual improvement.” Furthermore, they saw the requirement of quarantine as suggestive of the disease’s involving some risk of spreading, perhaps as an ethical malady.
The hope was that, with the guidance of a spiritual teacher/leader and proper “time away,” the victim would commit to teshuva, to turning back from sin and evil ways. “If he did teshuva, the signs of tum’a would disappear; if he persisted in his sinful ways the definite tum’a symptoms would become noticeable,” and he had to be isolated.
Adding further dimension, God would sometimes give prior warning by infecting the walls of the sinner’s house or the sinner’s garments with a form of tsara’at. “If he showed remorse for his sins, the tsara’at ended there, but if not, the disease finally appeared on his body.”
I’m sure all this seems as mysterious to you as it did to me when I first studied tsara’at.
But I invite you to think of one thing, as suggested by the story of Cain and God: isn’t it often true that when we either contemplate or commit a sin, something in us physically changes?
In our face? In our way of being? Or in our look?
Think of the character, Raskolnikov, in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The novel is full of remarkable accounts of a sort of “tsara’at” that covers his behavior and his soul from beginning to end.
All the characters (and indeed we readers) see these features appear, develop, and evolve along the way.
Even in the Epilogue, we see these lessons play out.
Raskolnikov is imprisoned, largely separated from society, and punished. There, he has a dream that a virus is sweeping the country. This virus causes people to go mad, thinking they’re sole possessors of the truth who end up tearing each other apart.
Then, awake and beginning to experience redemption beyond mere confession, Raskolnikov comes to love Sonya, begins to study the copy of the Bible she gave him, and begins to experience a renewal Dostoevsky leaves us to imagine.
Whether Dostoevsky had any understanding of tsara’at or not, we don’t know. We do know that he was very religious, had a strong Christian faith, and ended up in much the same place the laws of tsara’at carry us.
“The laws of tsara’at inspire us with trust in Heaven.”
“The ultimate recognition is a person’s true evaluation of the fleeting nature of this world with all its occupations and the awareness of the next world which will last forever…”
Now that we’ve come to understand the place and purpose of sacred space, it’s essential we also understand the sort of conduct and the way of being that are incompatible with being inside it. This is why we study tsara’at.
Sandy Kress 