Wounding and Healing

This week’s Torah portion is Metzora, which refers to one who has the skin disease Tzaraat, which is like leprosy. It is a continuation of last week’s portion, also about skin diseases, other conditions which render a person ritually impure, and that person’s purification. This portion describes discharges, sexual emissions, and fungus in houses. The person who was ill was declared healed by the Kohen, the priest, and that person brought two birds: one to be killed, and one to be sprinkled with spring water mixed with the blood of the first bird and, and then set free. Three objects were also part of the ritual: cedar wood, hyssop, which is a shrub with spongy leaves, and red wool. The person to be purified was to shave, bathe, and undergo an additional period of quarantine, and then be admitted back into society and the family dwelling.
The Talmud points out that Metzora can also be a contraction of the words, motzi-ra, one who brings forth evil. The Rabbis of the Midrash, Leviticus Rabba, assumed a mind – body connection. They identified ten offenses for which a person might contract a skin disease including: (i) idol-worship, (ii) gross unchastity, (iii) bloodshed, (iv) the profanation of the Divine Name, (v) blasphemy of the Divine Name, (vi) robbing the public, (vii) usurping [a dignity] to which one has no right, (viii) overweening pride, (ix) evil speech, and (x) an evil eye. Other commentators such as Rashi quoting Tanchuma, insisted that haughtiness led to unkind speech, which led to illness, specifically skin diseases. At last Saturday’s Torah discussion we talked about the importance of not blaming the victim and not assuming that a person who is ill has committed sins. As I said last Friday, God is the judge of others: we are the judge only of ourselves.
The S’fat Emet quotes another part of Leviticus Rabba, which refers to a line in Deuteronomy, “I have wounded, and I heal” (Deut. 32: 39) He says that, “ The ways of God are not like the ways of humans. R. Berekiah said in the name of R. Levi, ‘We cut with a knife and heal our wounds with a bandage, but the Holy One, blessed be God, heals with the very thing with which God wounds,’ as the S’fat Emet writes,” the wound itself is the healing.”
This puts our misfortunes, or what we interpret as our misfortunes, in a new light. The Midrash seems to be saying that everything that happens to us occurs ultimately to bring us closer to God: the proverbial carrot and the stick applied alternately to nudge us along the path of greater awareness, greater understanding, and greater harmony with the Divine Energy. We are thus healed alternately with nearness and distance. The nearness gives us a taste of joy: the joy of unselfish giving and of swimming in the love of God and our fellow human beings. The distance makes us long again for that lost love and allows us to be alone with our thoughts and feelings, gathering up new energies, repenting for past mistakes, making new resolutions about our choices and our conduct. It is as if we are prevented from standing still for very long on our spiritual paths. Just as we become comfortable with our surroundings, we are thrust forward, and find ourselves in uncharted territory which demands from us, a new response.
Dr. Ruth Westheimer has written, in her book about sexuality in the Jewish tradition, “One of the biggest hurdles in therapy is for the patient to learn how to confront a shattered or tarnished past, the sins of yesterday. This is not to suggest that anything goes, but, as the Book of Ruth teaches, that everything passes, becomes transformed. Dust turns to diamonds, water to wine – this is a tradition as concerned with the forgiven as with the forbidden.” That we are continually forgiven allows us to move forward. By our wounds, by our picking ourselves up from our falls, we are climbing higher. Sometimes I think that we are hanging onto a rope of life and someone is pulling us along, faster than we expect, faster than it is comfortable for us to travel.
Verse 15:31 from Metzora reads, You shall separate the children of Israel from their impurity. This is the meaning of the positive and negative episodes in our lives. This is what the Divine Presence demands that we do: to purify ourselves so that we can bring greater purity and harmony into the world. One of the Chassidic rabbis pointed out that the Hebrew world for separate, in the passage I mentioned, zayrut, comes from the world, zarah, or foreign. The separation from God and each other we sometimes feel, is foreign to us, because we are from God, and attached to God, simply by our existence. The harmony we yearn for we are truly approaching, dialectically, as in a spiral, alternating both Divine wounding and Divine healing. It is our human way to learn from our mistakes, and it is God’s Divine way to inexorably and ultimately bring us closer. May each of us come to see this pattern more clearly, so that we can learn that which is being taught to us, and grow toward God.