A Look at Tzara'at

One with tzara'at who must leave the camp to become purified must call out upon his exit, "Impure, Impure." Tame, Tame Yikra. I am impure, I am impure.

We are society that never tries to spotlight other's weaknesses or handicaps, and at least here in Israel, where a good number of soldiers have lost limbs in battle, we obviously try to avert our eyes, and not stare at what for them represents a very dear loss.

With that in mind, we all know the feeling when we're caught looking, at someone else's malady, or infirmity – or perhaps, more often, handicap.

And so, why is it that here, in a case that is inimitable – really, without comparison, we ask the person to not only call attention to his deformity but insist that it be part of his purification process?

It would seem, as our Sages teach us, that the person with this malady NEEDS to leave the camp to become whole again. As such, part of the process requires a certain recognition, and even dependency on others for that renewed wholeness.

When the person with tzara'at calls out, he's calling attention to himself, and perhaps accomplishing a dual task, firstly warning others not to get close to him (but frankly, people don't usually unwittingly bump into others, especially when they are unseemly and physically unwholesome) but more importantly, not to act in his manner which would bring them to the same plight – and perhaps, to add an additional layer of meaning, he's making a plea: "Pray for me." I'm in desperate straits, and I need your help to get back on track. Have me in mind, use this difficult situation for me as a springboard to seek my purification and atonement. As we know, the process wasn't always the smoothest, and sometimes the Kohen needed to check a metzorah multiple times: "Pray that it will be smooth, that I won't be ostracized for too long, that I should come back to the fold because I'm part of you and I need you as much as you need me."

When looking at the incidences of tzara'at in the Tanakh that seems to be the deeper message; one with the affliction always needed to reach a greater level of understanding and getting the physical illness always precipitated a change in one's orientation or grasp of reality. Moshe, learning to believe more in the Jewish people, Miriam, understanding that Moshe may have rightfully separated from his wife, and later in the Tanakh, Na'aman who needed to see the veracity and genuine truth of the Jewish religion, and Gehazi, who failed in seeking venal pursuits (unlike Na'aman) instead of a true glorification of Hashem's name. Each of them needed an external stimulus or encounter to right their ways, honing the message that sometimes to understand ourselves better, we need another to help shed light on ourselves, something sociology calls "symbolic interactionism," but which we in Judaism might trumpet as aravut ha'dadit or interdependency. "Every Jew is responsible for his brothers and his sisters."