Tazria-Metzora
5780, Minyan Dorshei Derekh
Maria
Pulzetti
I’m sorry I’m not in the service with you today. I miss sharing Shabbat services with all of
you, but I’ve chosen, for now, not to use screens or electronics on Shabbat per
my longtime practice. Thank you so much
to Tamara for offering to deliver this d’var, which I had agreed to do a couple
of months ago, before I realized I would not be able to do so in person.
Here we are in late April 2020, reading this week’s double
parsha, Tazria-Metzora, where the Torah sets forth the rules for certain
situations – some extremely common, some less so – when a person has to limit
contact with others. The Torah calls
this a state of tamei, which we can translate (inadequately) as ritual
impurity. In this state a person can’t
touch other people or sanctified objects or porous food containers; clothing,
bedding or furniture may require washing if they come into contact with that
person; the person can’t go to the Mishkan, the place for communal worship; the
person must wash with water; and in the most severe version, the affected
person has to live apart from the community.
It all sounds so familiar.
For all these circumstances, the Torah also sets forth
procedures for returning people and objects to a regular, tahor, state. I want to focus our discussion today on what
it means to have a prescribed, routine means of transitioning from a state of
limited contact to a state of reintegration, and on the particular
reintegration ritual for a person separated from the community due to serious disease.
The ways that a person becomes tamei include childbirth, a
skin affliction we’ll call leprosy, menstruation, seminal emission, sex, and
irregular male or female discharge. These
are not obscure circumstances! Menstruating
women, couples who’d had sex the prior night, anyone who’d given birth in the
past several weeks -- the restrictions on contact were not for a tiny group of
the disfavored or most vulnerable people.
On some level the restrictions would fall upon almost every adult at
some point, and presumably a pretty high percentage of the population on any
given day.
As I mentioned earlier, the Torah sets forth a reintegration
ritual for each situation. There is
always a way to end the state of tamei and return to a state of tahor (ritual access,
or the absence of social distancing). In
fact the text is more preoccupied with the return ritual than with the state of
tamei itself. For all of the conditions
except leprosy, the Torah specifies an amount of time when the tamei state ends
and the ritual may be performed. For
many of the conditions except childbirth, the period is 7 days. Some of the rituals are private (for
instance, bathing in water, washing one’s clothes), and some have a public
component requiring sacrifices to be brought to the Mishkan. The separation from regular contact is thus
time-limited and predictable. Being in a
state of tamei is common, short, and fixable.
Reading the text this year, I was drawn to the description
of treatment of people with the skin affliction we’ll call leprosy. The sick person, whose condition is diagnosed
by the kohen, has to live outside the camp until the kohen declares that the person
has recovered. Unlike the other
conditions, this state of tamei does not have a fixed end date. The open-ended timeline, the separation from
community and from family, the potentially life-threatening illness, and the
reliance on a powerful community leader to lift restrictions on mobility evoke
so many of the circumstances and feelings we face in the coronavirus
pandemic. Some people will not heal and
will not be granted permission to return, and they will die outside their
family and community. For others, the
kohen will declare them recovered, and they will reintegrate.
The reintegration ritual is striking. First the priest prepares a liquid of bird
blood and red dye and sprinkles it on the person; the person then bathes,
washes clothes, and shaves. At this
point the person may reenter the camp, but must remain outside their tent for
seven days. On the eighth day, the
person goes to the Mishkan to offer sacrifices.
(The text provides a less costly sacrifice option, birds, for people who
are poor.) The kohen must sprinkle blood
from the sacrifice and dab it on the person’s right ear, right thumb, and right
big toe. The kohen also dabs part of the
oil on the right ear, thumb, and toe, and pours the rest of the oil over the
person’s head. (Lev. 14:14-18). The
person is now tahor.
This ritual with dabbing sacrificial blood and oil on the ear,
thumb and toe occurs only one other time in the Torah: for the ordination of
Aaron and his sons, the high priests. Before
that ritual, too, the priests were separated for 7 days. The ordination ritual, conducted by Moses,
included dabbing blood of a sacrificed ram on Aaron’s and his sons’ right ears,
thumbs and big toes. (Lev.
8:23-24). It also included sprinkling
the oil used in the Mishkan on Aaron and his sons. This process sanctifies the priests. (Lev. 8:30).
Why is the ritual for reintegrating the person recovered
from leprosy so similar to the ritual for ordaining the high priests?
Biblical scholar and Rabbi Tamara Eskenazi writes, “Leviticus
concentrates on reconnecting the persons who have been isolated and on bringing
them back to the center. The more
marginalized the ill persons have been, the greater the effort to bring them
back into the fold. . . . Leviticus 14 illustrates the tremendous investment in
the social and religious reconnection and rehabilitation of persons formerly
stigmatized and excluded by virtue of the disease. The most marginalized, isolated person is
reintegrated with an elaborate ritual, comparable only to that of the
ordination of the High Priest.” So the
Torah is teaching us here that a drastic, stigmatizing isolation requires an
elaborate reintegration.
The ancient rabbis associate the leprosy diagnosis with
death, not only because the disease was serious, but also because the text
states that the sick person rends their clothing, an act associated with mourning.
(Lev. 13:45). Because the recovered
leper had been in a state so closely associated with death, ritual is necessary
to reenter community. This helps us
connect the leprosy condition to the birth- and reproduction-related states of
tamei. Childbirth and acts associated
with potential or foregone reproduction also bring humans close to the liminal
stages of life, where the boundaries between human action and Divine presence
blur. When people approach those boundaries,
too, a period of limited contact followed by reintegration was required.
·
For states of tamei that involved fewer
restrictions than leprosy, the reintegration rituals were simpler. What practices do we have in our community
for concluding periods of separation?
What reintegration practices might we envision for emerging from the
current period of separation?
·
What can we learn from the teaching that
life-threatening illness, isolation and stigma require affirmative and
elaborate reintegration rituals?
·
The ancient rabbis and later commentaries blame
the sick person for contracting leprosy as a result of sin, in particular
lashon ha-ra. In that framework, the
isolation from community is a punishment as well as a means to prevent
contagion. Despite advances in our
knowledge of medicine, the association of illness with fault or moral failure
continues today. In what ways do we
blame and isolate people with chronic disease [e.g. substance use disorder,
severe mental illness, type 2 diabetes, obesity] that some in our society blame
on moral failing? How might we as a
Jewish community frame an approach to chronic disease that promotes prevention
and healthy behaviors but does not fault those who are sick?
Conclusion:
Although the reintegration ritual for leprosy was unusual,
one aspect of it is more common, an act that we associate with joy, abundance
and G-d’s comfort: pouring oil over the head.
In the Psalm for Shabbat and in Psalm 23, the psalmists praise G-d for
pouring oil over their heads. In Psalm
23, this line is “You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” May we find ways to ensure that all
recovering from serious illness, and all reintegrating after a period of
prolonged separation, experience Divine comfort and a cup that overflows.
