A Thought On Parshios Tazria-Metzora

A Thought On Parshios Tazria-Metzora "...el keli cheres..." "...into a clay pot..." (14:5) "...v'hizartem es Benei Yisroel mi'tumosam..." "...and you must warn the Jews about their impurities..."(15:31) Our Torah portions are focused on the laws of staying pure and how to deal with ritual and physical impurities, whether involving contact with corpses, internal discharges and blights, or spiritually-based maladies. In discussing one of the cleansing processes, the Torah instructs us to follow a procedure involving a number of natural or organic entities including specific flora and fauna, plant, animal and avian species. A mixture of some of those items is placed in an earthenware container along with spring water. Our sages relate that the particular form of impurity - tzaraas - which requires that cleansing procedure, was associated with forms of interpersonal misconduct. In our times, we know of some physical ailments and infections which are related to careless human interactions. Tzaraas apparently could stem from a less tangible form of behavior, namely, from a social orientation of intense spite, vengefulness and disregard for other's sensitivities. In particular our sages traced that ancient condition to those who slandered other maliciously. They would contract a visible skin-manifest eruption which was serious and required quarantine and monitored care. Part of the cure involved the procedure summarized above. Our sages find symbolic meanings in the use of each plant-form and animal type, all of which reflected something about the person's ego, misconduct and the humbling of self which was needed to rehabilitate him or her in order to be readmitted into the community. However, I can find little interpretation as to the meaning of putting the concoction in a clay pot. What are we meant to learn from the instruction to utilize that utensil? The Bechor Shor offers a lesson (and I do not find this or other interpretations in the other commentaries, so this is a unique chidush!). He writes that, when all is said and done and the recovering penitent has made amends with those whom he defamed, he still needs to take a precaution: the lesson of putting everything into that clay vessel is to warn him or her that they are probably like that object. Namely, their resolve can be easily broken, like a clay pot, and once broken, it is not really repairable. The lesson of the clay pot is a metaphor for those who stray and express ill will towards others. Once a person gets in to the rut of gossip and slander, even if they regret it, they can so easily get drawn back into that vile mistreatment of others. And once you do it again, especially after having gone through a penance process yet failed to take it seriously, you are quite likely to revert over and again to disrespecting others. In that sense, each of us is a fragile clay pot, and we need to see that there are some bad habits - cracks in our character - that are so hard to correct. Moving to the second verse above, the difficult word is "hizartem" which I have translated as "you must warn." This follows the interpretation cited (but rejected) by Ibn Ezra, which sees in the word the root "zaher" which means to warn or take caution. The Aryeh Kaplan translation uses this approach. Rashi, however, sees in the word the root "nazir" and thus interprets the word meaning as "stay distant, or separate, from." This translation is used by Artscroll. However, the Bechor Shor argues that the more obvious root here is the simple two letter zar which means alien or bizarre (notice how zar and bizarre are cognates?). The Bechor Shor suggests that the verse means that we need to learn to view the impure as alien and objectionable. Rashi's view is behavioral, that we need to avoid contact with all that is impure. The approach of the Bechor Shor, however, is more attitudinal - we need to develop a sensitivity about what is not right and what is unclean, and to reject it, not just avoid it. It may be that the difference between those who preserve a fragile balance and those who continuously crack and flaw themselves is in the variance between these two approaches. If we truly seek to avoid something, we need to feel that it is indeed objectionable. Good Shabbos. D Fox