Parshah Commentary

Parshat Metzora

Following last week’s discussion of leprosy, this week’s parshah, Metzora, begins by detailing the ritual response to this affliction before turning to a related but more puzzling phenomenon: leprous houses. G-d tells Moses and Aaron that when the Israelites enter the land of Canaan, G-d will “place an eruptive plague” upon their houses (Vayikra 14:34). While most of us can imagine scaly or discolored eruptions on the skin, it is harder to envision what leprosy looks like on the walls of a home, or understand how it might occur. The rabbis were also perplexed by the language G-d employs to introduce the phenomenon: “Venatati,” the verb meaning “I will place,” is commonly used when referring to the bestowing of divine blessings. But the Torah states that a house afflicted incurably with leprosy must be dismantled; how, then, could such a state be construed as something positive? And how does this relate to the common rabbinic understanding of leprosy as a punishment for sin?

Some midrashim and commentators nevertheless understand the phenomenon as unambiguously good, arguing, for example, that G-d created it in order for people to find treasure buried in the walls of their homes upon tearing them down. Other commentaries, however, take a more ambivalent approach, casting the leprous house as a warning. For instance, Midrash Tanchuma argues that G-d created leprous houses to give the Jewish people greater opportunity to repent. These manifestations, the text claims, are indeed the result of sin. But rather than immediately afflict a sinner’s body as punishment, G-d benevolently begins by afflicting their home. The hope, according to the midrash, is that these alarming splotches on the wall will prompt an offending individual to reflect, realize the harm they’ve done, and repent. If this doesn’t work, the disease moves closer, to the sinner’s clothes; if a person still does not do teshuvah, the impurity clings to their very skin.

However, this understanding of the leprous house make it unclear why the Talmudic tractate of Sanhedrin mentions the affliction along with the biblical legal categories of a “rebellious child” (whom the Torah states must be stoned) and an “idolatrous city” (which must be put to the sword and razed) as phenomena that have never occurred, and indeed “never will.” This claim reflects the fact that the rabbis had so thoroughly restricted the legal definition of these phenomena that no instance could ever meet their stringent requirements. In the case of the rebellious child and the idolatrous city, this declaration has often been interpreted as arising from a moral judgment about the categories themselves: Because they necessitate the death penalty, the Talmud implicitly states that these cases never should exist. The rabbis could not bear to enact the requisite punishments for these categories, so they legislated them out of existence. But that explanation seemingly falters when it comes to the leprous house. If this is a tangible warning of our transgressions—an opportunity to assess our deeds and repair the harm we have caused—shouldn’t we want to receive it? Isn’t this a moral good?

The medieval commentator Sforno offers an alternative way of understanding the idea that the leprous house has and will never occur: These warning signs do not appear when the Jewish people are in a state of such spiritual numbness that they would not even recognize them as such. Taking the Talmud in Sanhedrin and Sforno together leads to a darkly comical reading of the Midrash Tanchuma—G-d’s great love for the Jewish people would have been manifest in multiplying our opportunities for repentance, but we are so shut off from an awareness of culpability that this gift has never been bestowed. According to this view, the rabbis’ statement in Sanhedrin that there “never will be” a leprous house is a not a moral rejection of the phenomenon but a bleak prediction based on a pessimistic view of their own community; they could not envision a world in which we would heed G-d’s warnings, and therefore merit them.

While this reading may be grim, it is helpful in articulating both the magnitude of the task we face and the urgent initial steps that must be taken. Those of us committed to building a liberated world must begin by striving to enable our communities—and ourselves—to see the rot all around us. To inspire both an individual and collective reckoning, we must first be able to materially and viscerally recognize the illness, and feel the desperate need for repair.

Lexie Botzum is a Torah learner, teacher, and anti-occupation activist based in Jerusalem.