This
week we continue with the Levitical theme begun last week of ritual pollution
and purification. Last week’s parasha ended with laws regarding what we are
allowed to eat. This week we have laws regarding the discharge of blood from a
woman’s body after childbirth as well as laws regarding a disease called “tzara-at”
which could affect a person’s skin, as well as cloth, leather and the walls of
houses.
Everett
Fox puts these laws in a larger frame as he introduces this section of
Leviticus:
. . . Leviticus is largely about how to
keep God’s earthly realm, and hence his relationship with the people of Israel,
viable and “pure” (cf. Greenstein 1985a). Once the book of Exodus ends, with
the erection of the Tabernacle – a symbolic reflection of the cosmos in which
God “takes up dwelling” among the Israelites – we are left with a structure
that must be carefully guarded and its ritual purity maintained. To this end,
Leviticus now turns to the issue of pollutants, largely of the body, that arise
from what we might call territorial problems: the border of what goes into the
body, expressed through animals permitted and forbidden for food; the border
between life and death, as expressed through sexual functions and discharges;
and the border of outer surfaces, as expressed through skin disease (tzaraat),
mildew on clothing, and mold on houses.
As
we discussed last week, the Torah assumes that all humans cycle through period
of tum’ah (impurity) and taharah (purity). The teachings in their original
context in the Torah do not associate purity with dirtiness or immorality. Isolation
due to menstruation, childbirth or skin disease is generally not meant to be
seen as a punishment. Rather, this is the prescribed ritual process one must go
through in order to return to a state of purity.
Rabbinic
commentary, however, does see tzaraat as punishment – specifically for slander
and gossip. And the rabbis find support in the Torah where there is at least
one instance of a person being stricken with tzaraat as punishment, in the case
of Miriam speaking ill of Moses’ wife. In my opinion, the rabbis are looking
for a way to make this section of the Torah relevant to their lives, especially
after the destruction of the 2nd Temple, when the rituals are no
longer in force.
As
we study this text together, we can look at it on more than one level. First,
it is interesting and important to understand these laws in their ancient
context - to get into the minds of our ancestors and understand what purity and
impurity meant to them about their relationship with God and their ability to
have God’s Presence dwell among them. But we should also try to find meaning
for ourselves in this text, as the rabbis did before us.
While
it may be anathema to us to imagine that disease is a punishment from God, we
can still ask what this text teaches about the connection between body and
spirit. For instance, we can ask how the idea of isolating the one with tzaraat
may make sense to us when we are sick, or when we are in a state of having just
come into contact with that potent boundary between life and death: after childbirth,
or after we or a loved one has had a
close brush with mortality. Does the isolation have a spiritual function in
addition to containing a contagion? We might ask how our religious lives, or
our religious leaders, have a role to play when we or our loved ones are ill or
are facing death. It just so happens that tomorrow afternoon, we will have a
healing service in our sanctuary at 4pm. What does your body have to do with synagogue?
What kind of healing do we find there?
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