Leviticus Cycle Four Metzorah 14:1 to 15:33

Metzorah

In Metzorah we learn how to heal the metzorah and to purify the tummah house (once we are in Canaan).

The objective here is to raise ourselves to a place of holy action. In Talmud, when one rabbi visits one who is ill, he raises him (San. 5b). Here, we need to raise the whole parasha. This is hard to do. But in so doing we raise each other. And heal each other as well. In so doing we see Torah in a new light. The sages say that Torah was written so that it would speak to us not from a finished past but in the present. In my own words, the tongue of Torah adapts to new languages from generation to generation and it is our job to open ourselves and welcome her by adapting to her swift flow as she (concurrently) merges the ancient with the present/ future, and fits the earthly into heightened.

In short, this healing of ourselves and each other is done through the gift of Torah-symbolism.

Therefore there is plenty in Metzorah. Rabbi Hirsh (ArtScroll) reminds us that (in Talmud) the degraded status of the metzorah (or leper) is not a result of physical but of spiritual circumstances. Both the Sfas Emet and the Ramban point out that by their very nature, such (leprous) afflictions (on the walls of houses) are miraculous. There was an aura of holiness about the Israelites that was so powerful that the light and beauty could flow from their bodies into the walls of their dwellings. Likewise, so could their deepest fears and doubts. Only in the Holy Land could spiritual flaws have such tangible effects. What we learn here is this: Both tummah person and house (as a receiving agent) are involved in a flow of darkness that has not yet been stopped or healed, has manifested on the physical walls and the skin and has surged out of the physical in the form of human behavior. We also learn that the happening itself attests to the motion and flow of holiness already in place. A wrench has been thrown into the system. It isn’t a bad wrench. The fact that it’s even there at all proves our holiness and our ability to heal.

What we are dealing with therefore goes way beyond our day to day experience in this world and yet is it on a higher level if we choose to see. On a personal level, the intensity of our love will certainly reflect the intensity of our anger or doubt. On a spiritual level if we choose to dare faster and faster vibrations of radiance during meditation, we certainly need to be on guard for earthly attributes like arrogance and jealousy that might get caught up once we return. Behaviors caused by anger, doubt, jealousy and arrogance (along with idolatry and lashan harah)…if these don’t make us sick, I don’t know what will.

And just like the disease is symbolic so is the healing. As the Sfas Emet says, the wound itself is the healing. In other words, our inner tools are accessible because of the wound. In Torah we are told to use the hyssop plant, two birds, a piece of cedar wood and crimson (wool) (14:4) . The hyssop plant represents humility. It is the same brush like plant that we use to place the lamb’s blood on the door in Egypt (Exodus 20:12). In other words, this is the tool to create a threshold within our very beings, one lined in crimson blood, that we stare at all night, smell in the dark caves of our soul. It is our important inner work to take part in the creating of this threshold, bringing the flow and healing of the blood to the boundary that marks our transformation. Once we can do this (again and again) we can step through our pain and move beyond it once and for all. Then we are free from all symbolic disease. Then, we can integrate it and let it go like we do with the two birds. This way, we accept our past distance from God with love. And enter the Promised Land.