Leviticus Metzorah 2016

Metzorah

How Do We Really Want to Be Seen?

(edited one more time)

The amount of segregation, purification and marginalization in Metzorah (and in Tazriah its bed partner) beats any humiliation we see today on the world stage. 

The question we need to ask therefore (as responsible Jews) is what do we do about this?  This question is in two parts.

 First, it needs to revolve around how we merge the sacred document with present conscious and pragmatic behavior. This is a world (after all) with enough sterilizing lotions to purify any germ in any corner of any country. On a p’shat level therefore while disease is possible of course, we have made leaps and bounds with modern medicine and technology, not to mention modern health care practices. Needless to say, there are still problems in our world but we don't need to look at either parshah as news worthy medical advice.  The question passes Go therefore and takes us straight to mystical/metaphorical interpretations. I will get there soon.

The second part of the question though, and one which should be a concern, revolves around how we want to be seen by our neighbors and friends.

Here’s  a quick summary. Metzorah is where we get more instructions that revolve around unhealthy marks on or oozing from the male or female genitals, from the walls of a home, on our clothing or on the skin. The main instruction is to find it, segregate it, try to heal it, watch over it and if it isn’t healed, segregate it for good or (if not a human) destroy it. If the person or place is healed, then there must be a sacrifice or two to honor the cleanliness.

Now,  as discussed, while some in the hypothetical in-club  know to place much of this aside as impossible instructions for a modern age,  not everyone is in the in-club. Many may think that Jews really believe in marginalization and segregation simply because it's there clean as daylight in our beloved Torah, even if leprosy is clearly passé.

Of course,  the Talmudic rabbis align the parshah with lashan harah…any evil said to hurt another being. It makes sense, too. What we say (especially today) can spread like wildfire.

As the Talmudic rabbis exemplify, chapters such as these in our Torah give great reason for metaphorical and therefore mystical interpretation. Rabbi Arthur Green describes mysticism as a way of interpretation that (for a goal) brings us closer to the God-head.  To expand on this, since God (according to the attributes) is merciful and compassionate, then mysticism would mean finding a symbolic interpretation that would emphasize such a way-of-being. 

This just takes a bit of imagination. We can see the  skin rashes as bad energy, inner poison, negativity, doubt and hate within our own personal consciousness (for example). In that case, both parshahs become instructions for holistic healing. We can see the oozing as our own lack of self restraint, etc. We can see both parshahs as situations in which we blindly allow the take-over of Gevurah, the sefirah that represents power and (in many cases) Evil.

In short, there are a million ways we can go. We can reach to Job for further explanation, or Lamentations or Rashi. 

The problem though is that we expect everyone to know the Jewish process. We expect everyone to know that many of us  are not fundamentalist. We expect everyone to take for granted that we don't cling to these chapters by the letter religiously.  How can we expect that of the Other though? How can we expect  everyone to read our minds? How can we expect everyone to know the importance of rabbinic and metaphoric commentary in the analysis of our scriptures and in the behavior of our culture? In fact, given the complicated history of Israel, Zionism, and Socialism, how can we expect every well-meaning young Jewish anti-Zionist to understand the historical healthy and happy marriage of  Zionism with Socialism? If Hannah Arendt is correct and Evil hides in the crevices of mundane reality, how can we leave such wide open crevices between who we are and how we are seen, even by new generations? 

 It’s even a bigger problem when we have the first Jewish contender for President representing himself as notoriously luke-warm on Israel and letting himself be introduced by a renown anti-Semite. He oozes a sort of  luke-warm mysticism without grasping his identity with full force or dealing outright with his cultural reality.

Some of us understand.  We know where Bernie Sanders comes from. In fact, he’s part of the check list of certain types of Jews and how they handle the Israel situation. In fact, he’s right on the money. Whether I agree with him or not on Israel, and whether he likes to talk about it or not,  he's a part of the whole picture of  Jewish identity.  He's  cookie-cutter right there with J-Street and his shame. It’s a post-Holocaust personality type among Next-Generation Jews.  Yes, I see the marks (the dangerous with the useful) and know that I don’t need to worry.

 This is what worries me: I do worry about how we as Jews can finally…please…take some responsibility as to how we are seen by our friends and neighbors.  Fly by night so-called mystical or  politically correct pseudo compassionate statements out on the political stage only serve to be the germ in the bricks of our seemingly stable home-sweet-home. 

What does this all have to do with Metzorah or Tazria? First,  it would be easy to align Metzorah with Zionism. It would be easy to use misguided information to connect both through the idea of marginalization. It's not that simple though. And when it's treated that way (knowingly or unknowingly) there's ignorance and where there's ignorance there's poor decision making, loss, humiliation, and violence.

The  political situation might be amusing for now. The yearly parshah that supports marginalization might feel like the same old challenge. We think that if we know how to handle this…everything from Metzorah (oh yes here we are again) to the Jewish internet personality/candidate who is somewhat tight lipped on Zionism (oh yes here we are again) then we  can shrug our shoulders, hope to be understood and move on.  We've been doing it this way for a long time and managing to survive. This is the fact though:  Jewish insularity has not really worked that well  in the past hundred years and it's certainly not going to work in the future. We are less and less alone.  We live in a global community. It's time to fill those gaps mentioned above with something agressively positive rather then letting them soak-in the same old gangrenous misconceptions.

Who is responsible? We all are. Who can do something now? We all must. We must step out of our comfort zone and speak to the matter. We must act and  make huge advances  with basic human rights for the Palestinians as well as for the under-class in our questionable American system. We must face our stuff head-on. We must behaviorally and vocally transmit not only how we see the scripture of the week or the person of the week (and we do this well in our newspapers as a conversation among ourselves) but step forward to initiate a discussion as to how it is all seen by  (repeat) a global community and a younger generation who looks on… and without full information and understanding... does rightfully judge.