Parashat Metzora, Leviticus 14:1-15:33
Parashat Metzora is very similar to last week’s parasha. Indeed, often the two sections comprise a double Torah portion. Together, these chapters from the legal codes of Leviticus describe skin diseases that required our ancient ancestors to live temporarily outside the camp. Only after going through a rigorous cleaning process that was administered not by a healer but by the priest, could the person return to the community.
Few people enjoy reading these sections of Torah. They range from boring to disquieting. Even the traditional midrashic commentators were bothered by these texts, so they attempted to imbue the “medical” details with spiritual and moral lessons. In the process, they taught that the afflicted person caused the illness him or herself either by speaking lashon harah (gossip) or by exhibiting arrogance and narcissism: "Why is the 'leper' to be purified through the tallest of trees and the lowliest of plants? He was stricken because he exalted himself like the cedar; but when he abases himself like the hyssop, he will be healed." (Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, "Parah)
These are the easiest and most comfortable ways to interpret these texts. By moving both disease and cure into the symbolic realm, it is possible to “blame the victim.” The afflicted person isn’t really sick, after all, but merely forced to live temporarily outside the camp because of his or her own behavior: a spiritual “time out.”
There is only one problem with this interpretation. Today, we still have people who are ill through no fault of their own. They are forced to dwell “outside the camp,” or on the fringes of the community. Their disease, like the tazria of old, causes them to be shunned by the community—and, sadly, this is not temporary. These people have become the quintessential Other. They are people who live with AIDS or HIV.
Perhaps this is why our text tells us that it is the priests, and not the healers, are responsible for bringing the afflicted back into the camp. As Rabbi Yoel Kahn so eloquently teaches in a drash on this portion, the Torah makes very clear that we are to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” In other words, in order to live up to the holiness that the Torah offers us, each one of us is responsible for behaving in a priestly way. When our communities have people who are required to dwell outside the camp, such as those with HIV/AIDS, the Torah clearly instruct us—every single member of the "priestly nation," to go out to the fringes of the community and bring our brothers and sisters back in.
Thanks to Rabbi Yoel Kahn for inspiration.
