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Drash for Shabbat Tazria/Metzora By Marci Hilliker & Addie Dibert - April 20, 2007 Parshat Tazria and the following parsha Metzora deal with issues of ritual purity and impurity. Ritual impurity, or tumah, has nothing to do with being "unclean" physically, but was a spiritual state that prevented one from entering into holy areas. The priests were to examine certain kinds of skin blemishes and make a declaration that someone was either ritually pure or impure, in which case that person had various kinds of rituals to perform, depending on the severity of the impurity. It’s important to remember that all these rules, which seem so arcane and barbaric to us, were part of our ancestor’s religious system. They were not merely the medical knowledge of the day. "The kohen (priest) shall look at the affliction on the skin of his flesh…and declare him ritually impure" (Leviticus 12:3). What strikes me about this verse is that only the priests were to declare someone ritually impure – this was not a matter for just anybody to decide. All too often, we think we know what’s going on with another person: they eat too much, they drink too much, they’re too lazy, they’re workaholics, they’re too permissive/too strict with their children, they should do this, they should do that… The list goes on and on. Quite often, however, we simply can’t, and mustn’t, judge the spiritual, physical, or moral condition of another person, but we might be seeing only the outside appearance of things. We usually don’t have all the facts. For one reason or another, or perhaps several, we may be unable to be objective. Viewing these skin conditions as the physical manifestation of a spiritual condition can suggest to us that there is a lesson to be learned from the fact that the Torah states that only the priests should make a judgment of impurity: Sometimes it pays to leave the exact diagnosis of a mental, spiritual or physical condition to those who can be both objective and helpful. We, as compassionate and loving people, can see that people who need help get the help they need, without presuming that we ourselves have all the answers. Shabbat Shalom.
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