1
BOOK OF EXODUS – RADICAL METZORA - © 2014 J. Hershy Worch -
[email protected]
Human Rites
For the most part the previous Sidra, Tazria, spoke of Leprosy in its various forms. Not to be confused with Hansen's-Disease, a chronic infection caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and M. lepromatosis, leprosy in the Torah more closely resembles Vitiligo. The METZORA – Leper has the same TUMA status as a corpse (Radical Chukath), and cannot live at home as normal people do. This week's Sidra deals with the TAHARA - Cleansing and Purification rituals of the leper after his or her leprosy disappears.
The Talmud blames leprosy on the sin of gossip and slander, in a clear case of measure-for-measure: 'He caused a separation between a man and his wife, between a man and his neighbor, let him live alone outside the camp.' We see this happening in Sidra BeHaalotcha where Moses' sister Miriam is stricken with leprosy after talking improperly about him.
This week's Sidra opens thus: 'This shall be the Torah of the leper, on the day of his TAHARA: he shall be brought to the priest.' (Lev. 14:2)
The Hebrew word for 'This' is ZOT, and ZOT always hints at the Shechina – Dwelling Presence of God.
The word ZOT first appears in Genesis, when it is also the first spoken word in the Torah. 'ZOT - This time,' said Adam, 'it is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.' (Gen. 2:23)
Human beings speak because God breathed His breath into Adam's nostrils, and so into all of us. The way to read that metaphor is that God bestowed the power of speech on us by breathing into us, by kissing us. When you kiss someone and breathe into them, some essence of you enters them; there is 'a connection of spirit and spirit'. When people kiss, their two breaths - which carry something essential of them - also intermingle and become a single breath comprised of both their essences. As we read in the Zohar:
O, would he kiss me kisses of his mouth! (Cant. 1:2) The Assembly of Israel (Shechina) calls out, 'O, would he kiss me kisses of his mouth!' But why ask for kisses instead of asking for love, why doesn't she say 'O, would he love me!'? Why 'kiss me'?
This is what we were taught: What are kisses? They are the cleaving of breath unto breath (spirit to spirit). This is why kissing is done with the mouth, because Mouth is the source and channel for Breath (spirit). So kissing on the mouth is an act of profound devotion, attaching breath to breath so they become inseparable. This is why when someone's soul expires with 'The Kiss' and they connect to that other Breath, to the breath from which they will never be separated, it is called 'The Kiss'. This is why the Assembly of Israel cries, 'O, would he kiss me kisses of his mouth!', that they become inseparable from one another. (Zohar Vol.II 124b)
It's important to internalize the message of this teaching. The Creation of Man is not a mechanical process. The Heimlich Maneuver is a purely mechanical process. Someone cannot breathe, so you embrace them from behind and pull them towards you with your fists pushing up under their diaphragm. After it is over you may have saved their life, but there is nothing of you inside them. When you give someone mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, however, something of you is inside them and remains with them. Genesis narrates how God breathed life into Adam's nostrils in order to convey to us that God has bestowed something special on us, something which was previously inside God, so to speak: God's spirit.
The first time Adam spoke a word, he expressed the breath that God had breathed into him, so the very first word contained that divine breath. ZOT was that very first word, so ZOT will always be associated with the Shechina – Divine Presence, which is that part of God that is, so to speak, outside Himself.
The phrasing of the verse teaches us that ZOT shall always be the rite of the leper. Everywhere else in the Torah the text says, 'This is the rite of such and such'. Here we are told 'This shall be the rite.' By emphasizing the phrase 'shall be', the Torah tells us that this will always remain the cleansing rite of the leper, we will never be done with it. It was not a law pertaining to people living thousands of years ago. It remains in force today.
Speaking or listening to gossip is thrilling and satisfying because it reinforces distinctions and differences. It says: You and I are not the same as the person we are gossiping about. He/she doesn't belong to our group, we are on the inside and they are out. The purpose and dynamic of gossip is a very ancient and primal one; it's not a modern invention. Genesis narrates the Serpent's most lethal and seditious gossip in the following exchange:
The Serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that God had made - saying to the woman – 'Did God really say you may not eat from the any of the trees of the garden?'
The woman replied to the Serpent, 'We may eat from the fruit of the trees in the garden, but the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, "Do not eat of it and do not touch it, or else you will die."'
'You will certainly not die,' replied the Serpent to the woman. 'Really, God knows that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.' (Gen. 3:1-4)
The Serpent's tactic is to persuade Eve to believe that God only forbade eating of the Tree of Knowledge because He wanted to keep all the godding to Himself. Knowing that eating of the Tree would confer godly powers on Adam and Eve, God naturally decreed it forbidden for jealous and petty reasons, and the threat of death was no more than a lie designed to frighten them off. The Serpent was cunning, but Eve was complicit in the Lashon Hara – Slander; she listened to it, considered it and then acted on it. Listening, considering and acting on a slander you hear - even when you don't accept its veracity - resonates and echoes with the contemptible lies of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. It is a primal evil to this day.
If God breathed Himself into me in an act of most intimate Oneness, how dare I pervert that gift to destroy Oneness and foment discord?
The Mei Hashiloach opens this week's commentary by referencing a quote from Jeremiah. The prophet, as was commonly the case, was having a bad day. He laments being born to become a prophet whose prophecies are so bleak and pitiless, laments being a cursed man for bringing such bad news to the people and the city. 'Why is my pain never-ending, and my wounds incurable, that will not heal? Why are You a mirage, a lie, a promise of water that will always fail?' (Jer. 15:18)
It is a classic slander to call God a lie, a tease and a disappointment, even if Jeremiah was in dire emotional straits, for a man of Jeremiah's stature to speak so was a sin.
At the outset of his career as a prophet, he had been promised: 'I, the LORD, hereby promise to make you as strong as a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall. You will be able to stand up against all who live in the land, including the kings of Judah, its officials, its priests and all the people of the land.' (Ibid. 1:18) But things had not turned out well for Jeremiah, he became a prophet of doom. People did not repent as he imagined they would, though enemies were at the gate and the nation on a fast track to disaster. When the Jerusalem fell and barbarians overran the country, when kings died at the hands of friends and prophets were stoned on the streets Jeremiah grew so sad he lost his prophecy altogether. Not even his prophecy was reliable. He went into crisis, blaming God for disappointing him, for making him an unsuccessful, unhappy prophet, and an unheeded cry.
The Izbicy quotes the following verse from Jeremiah as an introduction to Sidra Metzora: 'Therefore, so says God, "If you return, then will I bring you back, and you will stand before Me: and if you separate the precious from the vile, then you will be as My mouth." (Ibid. 15:19) Because the verse suggests the only true fixing for Lashon Hara – Evil Speech.
We are all the Breath of God, but imagine what it is to be the Mouth of God, to have the energy and power to breathe spirit and life into the whole world!
If we view gossip as a purely mechanistic and evolutionary tool, whose purpose is to keep people in line and reinforce some important societal norms, then we're trapped because gossip is a primal behavior. How do we heal from such an ancient habit? It seems impossible to change without radically altering the way we talk and interact with others.
In the above verse God gives Jeremiah the formula for change without necessitating radical excision or intervention. God doesn't advise Jeremiah to simply shut his mouth in order to avoid Lashon Hara, but tells him to 'separate the precious from the vile', and it will be enough to overturn a lifetime of bad speech habits.
Instead of tackling his problem speech from the standpoint of its causes and effects, God invites Jeremiah to get in touch with his Torah. As we have discussed elsewhere, each of us expresses a completely different Torah (Radical Bo, Yithro, Nitzavim). But we are all trapped in the Evolutionary Paradigm wherein gossip is merely 'unsanctioned evaluative talk about people who aren't present' until we get in touch with our Torah, at which moment our speech completely changes.
To begin learning my own Torah is to discover the Divine in me. There is one sentence, thought or word or perhaps just a single urge that God put into me - when He breathed His spirit into Adam's nostrils - that made me this essentially divine creature capable of addressing Him face to Face. And when I elevate what is precious from the dross, when I start expressing the essential Torah animating me, my speech breaks out of that evolutionary paradigm. I am separated from the mundane entirely and become the Mouth of God. The words I speak will all be Torah no matter what I talk about and whom I address, because I will be incapable of saying anything that splits people from one another or destroys them. I will be living in the true awareness of my Godliness, and the Shechina – Divine Presence will be talking out of my mouth.
This, says the Izbicy, is the meaning of the opening verse, ZOT-This shall be the Torah of the leper, on the day of his TAHARA: he shall be brought to the priest. When I start living my ZOT Torah, i.e. the words God originally breathed into me, I will begin the cleansing healing process. And the best, the only way of doing it, is not by going silent and avoiding speech, but by being brought to the priest. The priest is always and only God Himself.
I need to be brought to the priest.
Arachin 16b
Rekanati – Bereishith, The Kabbalist Haggadah p.p. 59
Talmud – Menachot 5a
[A]s our human ancestors began to live in larger groups … This gave rise to the evolution of linguistic practices, in particular gossip, as a means for sharing reputational information about the past behavior of group members. Linguistic practices like gossip allowed group members to track one another's reputation as trustworthy interaction partners, even if they could not personally observe others' behavior themselves. With reputational concerns almost always present, group members were forced to keep selfish motives in check or risk ostracism. (Dunbar, R. (1996) Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. Harvard University Press) Hershy's note: I think Dunbar is a quack and his thesis nothing but the sort of rubbish-passing-for-scholarship that brings all science down to the level of the insufferable mid-20th century German cultural-relativism theories infesting academia like Ebola today. But until I break out of my own paradigm I am stuck in Dunbar's world.
Zohar Vol.III 49b
