What We (Don’t) See
This week’s double portion, Tazria-Metzora, is nobody’s favorite part of the Torah. It deals with skin afflictions and the priestly rituals that must be performed to purify those infected with them. Tzaraat is commonly translated as leprosy—metzora as leper, but most modern commentators agree that this is inaccurate—tzaraat was more a general term used for afflictions like eczema or psoriasis. Given the impossibility of truly translating the term, my teacher, Burt Visotzky, who was our scholar in residence several years ago, insisted that we either leave the term tzaraat untranslated in our work, or refer to it as “cooties.”
In my years of learning and teaching this parsha, I have encountered various approaches to exploring it.
One could make the claim that The Torah is compassionate. Skin afflictions were seen as contagious, and perhaps they were. The prescribed treatment involved separation from the community, an ancient form of quarantine, because the Torah did not want to see the larger community affected. After a person had been deemed healed, they were permitted to rejoin the community.
But in the modern world, most people find this parsha entirely problematic. To separate a person from his family during an illness is detrimental to the healing process. Furthermore, it makes the assumption that these afflictions are “punishments,” thus blaming the victim for a condition that, in our day and age, we know to be beyond their control.
We argue that the laws and rituals surrounding tzaraat are antiquated, and often suggest that they were, perhaps, the best wisdom of the time. In looking back upon Biblical times we can excuse our ancestors because of the limited information at their place in history and revel in the fact that we have progressed substantially. We, living in the 21st century, might think we know better than to stigmatize an illness…but… despite the fact that we are thousands of years and countless medical discoveries later, we still encounter these problems. There are illnesses that remain judged, and those that remain unseen.
Most adults are old enough to remember the taboo associated with the AIDS epidemic in its early years. We didn’t understand it. It was more powerful than us. It largely affected those who society had already designated as “other.” And while the social issues around AIDS have largely dissipated in this country and it is more understood and controllable, we are not talking about ancient history. Our society designated those with HIV or AIDS lepers in the 1980’s. I have no doubt that we could again do something of this sort that we would look back upon with shame.
In fact, I’d argue that, it has already happened, in the field of mental health.
The field of mental health is plagued with a lack of understanding. Just as the ancients didn’t understand the concept of germs and the spread of disease, we don’t fully understand the cause and ramifications of many of the experiences that qualify as psychological conditions. This problem is complicated by insurance companies who insist on immediate diagnoses and provide only limited access to and coverage for services. Furthermore, even within the field of mental health experts do not agree on the specifics of illnesses or diagnostic criteria, leaving a patient further in the dark regarding his condition. The Diagnostic and Statistic Manual on Mental disorders, the psychiatric bible, requires interpretation as much as the Hebrew bible does! In this area of health, we are often confronting illnesses that cannot be seen.
Before I go on, let me make clear that despite the stigmas that exist in society as a whole, we, at Beth Israel are aware of the realness of these challenges, and we are here for you. We cannot and do not replace clinicians, but our doors and our minds are open.
It is not only a lack of understanding that our generation shares with our ancient ancestors. We are also deeply affected by that which we can see. The power of sight allows us to recognize the beauty in God’s earth and helps us make important distinctions throughout our lives. But it can also lead us astray, urging us to give our attention to that which is seen, at the cost of ignoring that which cannot be seen. The priests saw the lepers wounds, but did not see his humanity.
The years of the exodus were fraught with frustration, rebellion and confusion, none of which the priests could solve. But they could address tzaraat. In a sense, dealing with this was dealing with low hanging fruit. The priests gave their attention to an ailment which could be seen and whose improvement could be measured.
We find ourselves in a similar situation in modern times. We encounter stigma and lack of sympathy or empathy in one set of issues as opposed to another. That is to say, a broken leg garners automatic sympathy, a chemical imbalance does not. There is a famous teaching in the Torah—you should not put a stumbling block in front of the blind. We know that this statement is not to be taken literally, and so, to twist it for our purposes, you should not allow sight to become a stumbling block. The priests responded to physical symptoms. They were blinded by what they could see.
The immense power of sight in affecting human response is highlighted in our story of the Golden Calf. Upon learning of the Israelite’s decision to erect and worship an idol, God was livid, and it fell to Moses to dissuade God from destroying the people. It seems that Moses, while angry and disappointed, is able to cope with this situation. That is, until he descends from the mountain and sees with his own eyes. At that moment, in anger, he throws down the tablets of the Ten Commandments and they are shattered.
We are taught that the broken tablets were carried in the ark alongside the tablets that were rewritten and whole. Their shared status in the holy ark symbolizes the reality that we all experience both brokenness and wholeness, and neither experience is given preferential treatment—both merit a place in our history and our present. Everybody needs to be seen.
Shabbat Shalom