Purge the House

Tazria- Metzorah

Lev. 12:1-15:33

 

Précis: Tazria begins with laws concerning the need for ritual purification of women following the birth of children, and the laws of what is usually referred to as “leprosy” of the skin and on garments (although this translation is most certainly erroneous; it appears to refer to an affliction which renders the person, garment, or home ritually impure).

            Metzorah discusses laws for the purification of “lepers” with sacrifice and water. It also discusses growths on walls of a house which cause ritual impurity. The parasha concludes with a discussion of bodily secretions which are another source of ritual impurity

 

Lev.14:34-35 “When you enter the land of Canaan which I gave you as a possession, and I inflict an eruptive plague upon a house in the land you possess, the owner of the house shall come out and tell the priest, saying ‘There is something like a plague which has appeared on my house.’”

 

            Rabbi Fred Reiner, my former colleague and teacher at Temple Sinai in Washington, D.C. wrote in (MyJewishLearning.com, 4/21/15) offered an interesting take on this subject, noting that the Sages state in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 71a) that “The house affected by the plague never existed and is not destined to exist. It was stated for the purpose of edification.”    

            The question remains, of course, as to why it appears at all in our text if the Sages are correct. Nahama Leibowitz, noting a traditional explanation that the Hebrew word for mold is similar to the Hebrew for gossip, suggests that our “edification” is that like mold, gossip or other forms of impure speech must be nipped in the bud, before they become a threat to the larger society.

            Seen in this light, a home afflicted by plague represents the breakdown of the social values that kept a family safe and united.

            There is relevance, obviously today, to the hate speech uttered by anti-Semites and white nationalists. As Rashi explains, we must be cautious because words carry great weight.

            “House” can also refer to the community, as in “House of Israel.” Our “house” is afflicted with institutional racism, a lack of mutual respect for those with differing opinions, poverty, homelessness, economic disparities of historic proportions, and of course the pandemic of Covid-19.

            As Rabbi Reiner concludes, “Our responsibility as Jews requires us to purge our own homes of the plagues that might affect them, to assume responsibility for the guilt we may carry into our houses, and to repair and restore all the dwelling places in our own communities.”