Dear TBZ Community:
This Shabbat our Torah portion, Parshat Tazria, includes God’s description of the role of the kohen (“priest”) to Moses and Aaron, a role perhaps best described as a healer. Here we learn the procedures for the kohen to identify and respond to those infected with tzara’at, which is often translated as leprosy: afflicted people go to the kohen to show him their skin and their home and to receive some kind of treatment and healing ritual.
The role of the kohen, as described in Leviticus chapter 13, can teach us something important about how we see each other, how we encounter and observe the world around us. We learn that the priest has to pay attention to an impressive and somewhat overwhelming number of details. When a person comes to the priest with some kind of skin lesion, the priest needs to check: is it swollen, is it hairy, is it scaly, is it decolorated? Is the priest a ritual-maker, a doctor, a healer?
In his weekly Torah commentary, Rabbi Art Green explains and translates Leviticus 13:3 in a very powerful way:
רָאָה הַכֹּהֵן אֶת־הַנֶּגַע בְּעוֹר־הַבָּשָׂר וְשֵׂעָר בַּנֶּגַע הָפַךְ לָבָן וּמַרְאֵה הַנֶּגַע עָמֹק מֵעוֹר בְּשָׂרוֹ נֶגַע צָרַעַת הוּא וְרָאָהוּ הַכֹּהֵן וְטִמֵּא אֹתוֹ
“The kohen (read: “healer”) shall look at the affliction in the skin of the flesh. Has its hair turned white? Does it appear deeper than a flesh-wound? If so, it is tsara’at, (= ‘et tsar, ‘a time of woe).’ Look at the person and declare it defiling (13:3).”
Rabbi Green writes:
Dealing with a person in pain requires two sorts of perception, specific and global. Look at the wound itself. Try to see how deep it is. Is it transformative in the person’s life? Is it turning her/his hair white (literally or metaphorically)? Does it go deep? Can you be of help in lessening the depth of its effect? This question is one for the counselor, lover, or friend, as it is for the oncologist. Can I help to keep it from spreading?
But then the verb ra’ah, seeing or looking, is repeated at the end of the verse. Look again “See him/her” – this time at the whole person. That is the one you are seeking to heal.
Now ask yourself that same set of questions about your own wound and your own process of healing. How deep does it go? How can I keep it from spreading, from taking over all of me as a person? Can I heal it, or must I learn to live with it? Perhaps that too is a form of healing.
There is so much hurt and pain around us, individually in our own lives, in our families, and collectively in our world. Rabbi Art Green reminds us in this teaching that each and every one of us has the potential to face the world with the sensitivities of a kohen, of a priest. As a kohen we can find ways to approach healing, to seek healing for others, and to find healing for our own selves.
There’s other sources that encourage us to embrace the ideals of the healing kohanim (“priests”). In Exodus, just before the receiving of the ten commandments, we are called as a people, מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִים, a “kingdom of priests.” Exodus 19:6 reads:
וְאַתֶּם תִּהְיוּ־לִי מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִים וְגוֹי קָדוֹשׁ
but you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation
Being part of a tradition of priests, is being an “observer.” An observer of other people’s wounds and an observer of our own wounds. An observer of joys and sorrows and an observer of people’s needs.
Reb Moshe often teaches that to be an “observant Jew” is to be an “observer,” someone that pays attention. This juxtaposes with our typical understanding of Jewish observance – keeping lots of laws, often mindlessly. Can we aspire to be kohanim by seeing deeply the good, the bad, that which is hard to look at and help heal others? Ourselves? And the world?
As we read this Torah portion in the approach to Passover, we are reminded that our tradition calls us to believe that redemption and healing is at hand, even when it doesn’t feel that way, even when we find ourselves confused by the terrible realities that surround us. Perhaps Parshat Tazria is an invitation not to look away, but rather to see the wounds, to see the pain and the suffering, to see the injustice, to be an “observant” Jew. Perhaps Parshat Tazria can remind us that there are ways for each of us to help, although we might not fully stop the ills of the world, at least when we open our eyes to them we can begin to heal them. And perhaps that is what believing in the possibility of redemption means: believing that each and everyone of us is a kohen at heart, a priest who can look into our wounds and the wounds of others, of our communities, of our world, and each do our part to offer some healing.
May this Shabbat bring blessings and consolation to all of you and your loved ones. May we find strength, courage, and patience, and open our hearts with generosity. May all those who are ill find healing.
And may the hostages soon be returned to their families and friends; may the Israeli and Palestinian peace workers in the land continue their sacred work and not be deterred or turn away from the vision of peace and dignity for all.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rav Claudia