A Thought on Parshas Metzora

"...ki tavo'u el ha'aretz..." "...when you will enter the land..." (14:34) The Torah educates us about the forms of tzaras - a type of blight which revealed one's spiritual deficiencies despite otherwise robust physical health. These conditions could erupt on a person's body, on the stones of a residence, or on garments. Our sages have revealed to us some of the lessons and messages which we were meant to derive in the event of contracting tzaras. For example, when a person suffered a blight of this form on his or her body, it was to encourage them to examine their interpersonal conduct. At the root of most interpersonal problems is arrogance and self-importance. Tzaras on one's body was an indicator of how one needed to overcome those issues, and the course of recovery therein involved social isolation and identifying oneself as needing to be kept away from others. In turn, the negaiim, those blights which were found on residences, were apparently unique to the houses abandoned by the heathen nations who had once occupied the Promised Land. Our sages reveal that the appearance of such signs on a dwelling, while an inconvenience for the new residents, was actually intended as a blessing. Upon implementing the remedy, which involved removing the stones of the house, we would discover some of the riches left behind by earlier dwellers. This may have taught people that although the process of entering Israel involved some initial hardships, the ultimate purpose of those ordeals bore great bracha, which is a wholesome lesson indeed. The puzzle, however, is what one was to derive in the event of those signs appearing on a garment. What we wear is not us, but merely an object or property. Moreover, those clothes which were sullied by a negaa needed to be destroyed. There is no bracha in that! The Panae'ach Raza offers a thought, based on clear halachic premises. He notes that many of the mobilia, the portable acquisitions which our forefathers brought with them through the desert, consisted of bizas Mitzrayaim and bizas HaYam - the bounty which we were given by the Egyptians as they urged us to leave their decadent land, and the spoils which washed ashore following the downfall of their pursuing army. We took those ornaments and garments and fabrics along with us as we trekked through the desert en route to Israel. We are told that these objects never wore out or frayed during the forty year exodus. It would seem that these items were still intact as we entered the Holy Land. Now, that is fine as long as those garments are unencumbered by any prohibition. However, we know that the people of Mitzrayim were pagans engaged in idolatry. That would mean that if any of those ornaments or garments were actually vestments which had been used in the pagan worship, they were forbidden to use and even forbidden to keep. It now makes sense, says the Panae'ach Raza, why certain garments would contract negaiim: those which were actually forbidden because of pagan affiliation would have to be destroyed. The unwitting owner of an avoda zara fabric would have no way of identifying or knowing its status, nor that he had a responsibility to utterly destroy it. This is why some of those items contracted a negaa. Garments with negaiim had to be burned, according to the Torah. Those which were burned were actually, he reasons, forbidden items which had been used in Egyptian rituals. In this roundabout yet Divinely calculated manner, the Jews who entered Israel were able to fulfill the commandment of destroying avoda zara, which would have been a real challenge had they just been commanded to remove the clothes which they may have favored for so long and then been told to incinerate them. It was far easier to rid oneself of an item already rendered repulsive through its discolored and toxic outbreak. So at a spiritual level, the appearance of negaaim on garments was actually a blessing too. It enabled the Jewish owners to fulfill a mitzvah which many people never encounter. Good Shabbos. D Fox