Bring Back Tzara'at!

How do you translate the word צרעת (tzara’at)?

If you’re like most people – including, surprisingly, my 3^rd grade students, you probably are thinking leprosy.  (I would NOT have expected a 3^rd grader to have heard of leprosy.  It may have been the one with a dermatologist as a parent.)

Well, tzara’at is not leprosy.  (Although my Chumash with the English translation of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch’s German translation and commentary does translate the word as leprosy.  Maybe something was lost in translation)

What is it?

Tzara’at is a spiritual or religious indicator that the person is not speaking properly.  The Torah teaches about a person who finds this strange patch of skin.  S/he shows it to the Kohein.  If it is, indeed, tzara’at, the individual goes into seclusion, a religious “time out,” to contemplate his/her actions.  If the individual successfully addresses the root cause of his/her transgression, the tzara’at will disappear, and it is back to everyday life – after an appropriate sacrificial atonement.

(The Torah actually never states explicitly that speaking lashon ha-ra (negative speech) leads to tzara’at.  It is implied in the story of Miriam speaking ill about Moshe’s wife and then be afflicted with tzara’at.  Tradition puts one and one together, and tzara’at and lashon ha-ra are forever linked at the hip.)

So, we have a spiritual affliction whose goal is to remind people of the need to speak civilly.

We need to bring tzara’at back.

Everywhere we turn we hear outrageous statements being made.  From Israel to the presidential campaign, it seems like civil discourse has gone out the window. 

Maybe if those who spoke in such a way came down with a little tzara’at, they would think twice before saying some of the things they say.  (I am sure that they would be more careful if they got leprosy from their statements.

Take the following examples from within the Jewish community shared in a memo about the need for civility by Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) CEO Jerry Silverman (thank you UJA-Federation SYNERGY Executive Director Adina Frydman for sharing):

The language is painful to hear, particularly coming from fellow Jews.

Knesset Member Moshe Gafni called Reform Jews "a bunch of clowns who stick a knife in the holy Torah."

MK Yisrael Eichler criticized an Israeli Supreme Court decision allowing non-Orthodox Jews to use public mikvaot, likening it to permitting a “mentally ill person” to “come to the operating room and decide the rules of medicine and force the hospital to have an operation by whatever way works."

Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin called Reform Jews “a dying world” that would assimilate and disappear in another two or three generations.

We’ve seen women who were holding liberal prayer services at the Kotel pelted with rocks and debris, and the police who tried to protect them called “Nazis.”

Sadly, we saw similar, sometimes even harsher, vitriol during the debate over the Iranian nuclear agreement, with some Jews not even wanting to go to their local Shabbat services lest they get into an uncomfortable debate on the accord.

Also in Israel, there has been a lot of press coverage of the IDF soldier who shot and killed a terrorist who had been stopped and was lying on the ground.  The case is under investigation, and the rule of law must and will prevail.  Yet the issue has brought out the worst in some people with some turning against the Defense Minister for supporting the investigation.

I understand people have different views.  There is right and left; Democrat and Republican.  But the decibel level and the tone are getting ugly.

There needs to be a better way to speak to each other than to shout and delegitimize. I understand some of it is politics or for the cameras, but we need to find a way to think before speaking and try to only say what we really mean.

I think the threat of tzara’at might help, but I am not sure we can count on it.

The Midrash Lekach Tov (Tazria 35b) quotes Rabbi Yochanan saying that we won’t find tzara’at today because we no longer have capable judges. 

Now, the Midrash doesn’t put it this way, but I see it as teaching that, already over a thousand years ago, there was a problem of not having the right people to stop the scourge of incivility.

Listening to what is said out there, the problem just gets worse.  At the very least, we must call out those who make false, radical and dangerous statements.

In a time when there is no tzara’at, the people must speak up.