Arrogance and the Metzora Leper In Quarantine

This is the essence of my first zoom lesson on the weekly Torah reading which I will deliver on Sunday evening at 7 pm via this link Zoom link: ChabadHouse.org.au/Zoom

A Muslim friend wrote to me in advance of the lesson: “...Please kindly explain the theological reason why Allah SWT did or did not prevent the virus mutating out of a wild animal in Wuhan into a human and able to spread worldwide, affecting already 500,000 and collapsing the world economy? ... The facts in front of us are COVID has affected all levels of Muslim counties, Iran, Indonesia, etc. Christian centres like Spain and Rome, and the superpowers - USA and China”.

It must be said that anyone who thinks they can read the mind of God is both arrogant and mistaken. Jewish scholars have rejected this kind of speculation. (1) Instead of definitive answers I will simply explore some sacred texts and see what light is shed. 

While it is wrong to assume one knows why others suffer, it is appropriate when we suffer to examine our deeds to see if there might be some sin we are being punished for, or perhaps a lesson here for improvement (2). However, an alternative explanation, if we could call it that, is that sometimes God causes us to suffer out of love rather than punishment. (3) 

In this quest for some meaning in the current human tragedy of coronavirus and the hardship challenge of isolation and in light of the Torah reading about the Metzora-Leper it is appropriate to explore this ancient process. The Torah requires a person who shows some symptoms involving his skin being discoloured (among others) to be tested/inspected (4) and quarantined for seven days at home (5). If the symptoms increase in severity a more intensive response was required in which “his clothes shall be torn, his head shall be left bare, and he shall cover over his upper lip; and he shall call out, “Unclean! Unclean!”…Being unclean, he shall dwell apart; his dwelling shall be outside the camp”. (6)

The most common way of explaining this is that the Torah is discussing a miraculous condition rather than a medical one. (7) However, a minority view in our tradition explains this as a contagious disease, in which those doing the inspecting were exposed to real danger. (8) We also know of one sage, Reish Lakish,  who was so insistent on social distancing that he threw stones at a Metzora-Leper who stepped out of his isolation. (9)

There is also a very strong tradition that this condition is a consequence of gossip or slander. (10) The basis of this is the story about Miriam, the sister of Moses, who is struck with this condition immediately after speaking critically about her brother Moses. (11) 

I would like to focus on a second case study about a very proud Aramean general named Naaman. We are told that he “was important to his lord and treated as one highly regarded… a great warrior, who was a leper”.   When he sought treatment from the prophet Elisha he came with his entourage, “his horses and chariots”. He stalked off in a rage when the prophet did not come out and pay homage to him, but instead sent a message to him to bathe in the Jordan river. (12) 

A more subtle and spiritual interpretation is that the condition of becoming a Metzora is the result of a deficiency of the process of wisdom - Chochma, [which in mystical terms means the capacity to receive new ideas in a general undefined and very open way] which fails to balance the faculty of analytical understanding. This imbalance is a subtle form of arrogance. When we intellectually analyse ideas we can be quite egotistical and self-conscious. In contrast to this process is the process of wisdom which is linked to humility. (13) 

The ritual at the end of isolation included a part of a cedar tree and a hyssop and letting a bird free (14). The cedar and hyssop represented the journey from arrogance, symbolised by the tall cedar to humility represented by the hyssop. The releasing of the bird, symbolised the reintegration of the leper into the community and the hope that this condition will not return (15). 

I will reiterate my point that we dare not assume that Covid19 is a punishment but we can use it as a stimulus for reflection. As we are forcibly isolated and disoriented during this time, let those of us who are privileged to have homes and our basic needs met at this time, dedicate some thought to cultivating humility and openness to wisdom and guidance to imagine a better way of being and living - not only when this is over, but also right now. To my Muslim questioner, with whom this post began and for all Muslims Ramadan Mubarak, may this special time assist in your own spiritual growth.  

Notes and Sources

1) Pirkey Avot/Ethics of the Fathers 4:15 Rabbi Yannai said: it is not in our hands [to explain the reason] either of the security of the wicked, or even of the afflictions of the righteous./ talk by the Lubavitcher Rebbe 1991  Sicha, Tenth of Teves 5751

2) Lamentations 3:40

3) Talmud, Brachos 5a, and in the second explanation drawing on Proverbs 3:12  

4) Leviticus 13:2-4

5) Rashi

6) Leviticus 13:45-6

7) Maimonides Yad Hachazakah Laws Tumaat Tzaraat 16:10

8) Bechor Shor on Leviticus 13:46 and Meshech Chochma on Leviticus 13:2

9) Yalkut Shimoni Metzora, 557

10) The Talmud Arachin  16a & b. Midrash Tanchuma Metzora 3

11) Numbers 12:1-10

12) Kings 2 5:1-4, 9-12 Australians would recognise a  self- important man struggling to accept being cut down to size. 

13) Likutei Torah by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi Beginning of Metzora  

סיבת הנגעים הוא מחמת הסתלקות החכמה …ע"י התבוננות (בינה) נולד האהבה והשמחה ורשפי אש והוא בחינת הרצוא …[אבל ע"י החכמה] נמשך הביטול [למעלה מ] בחינת יש מי שאוהב

14) Leviticus 14:2-7

15) Midrash Tanchuma- Metzora 3

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Resurrected Nihilist Graffiti Artists - Neither Expectation Nor Despair

I just spent Passover together with my family at home, including three adult-children who normally live overseas, sharing many formal abundant meals, playing board games, and walking in the local forest (still allowed in Australia) as expected. Actually, not quite as expected. I played fewer board games with my kids, slept later and had more naps than I had expected. On reflection, Passover with my family was both draining and joyful. I think having unrealistic expectations might have something to do with it. 

In messages from my Christian colleagues at Together For Humanity I heard about how their families have been celebrating Easter, with sweet-filled coloured eggs and “Easter trees” as usual, but challenged by the absence of physically participating in the normal church services. 

With both of these special times just behind us, I think it is a good time to think about how we deal with unmet expectations. On one hand, it is useful to recognise that many of our expectations can become like an undefined implicit ‘contract’ between us and family members, life or God. The trouble is that neither our family members nor God have ever agreed to deliver everything that we think “should happen”. When this reality sinks in, at whatever level of loss, there is a temptation to swing to the opposite extreme and fall into despair and declare “our bones are dried out, and our hope is lost...” (1).

That last sentence is part of one of my favourite Passover texts: the prophet Ezekiel’s account of the resurrection of a valley of dry bones (2). As a teenager, I first engaged with this story at a talk by the late Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Rebbe spoke movingly about our responsibility for each other’s spiritual life. He referred to the part of the story where the prophet was instructed to speak “the word of God” to the dry bones and in response to the word the bones came to life. 

The Rebbe passionately implored his followers to reach out to Jews whose relationship to Judaism was dead and had completely dried up (3), to inspire them with the word of God (4). A few days later I remember looking at a High School basketball court and thinking about how some of the players, estranged from their Judaism, might be those 'dry bones' and my responsibility for my fellow Jews to speak the word of God to them. My sense of responsibility has evolved since then, but it continues to be fired with a belief in the great human capacity for change, despite the evidence that people often choose not to change much at all.     

There is some debate whether the dry bones story is just a metaphor, and if it was non-fiction, who were the people whose bones were in the valley? (5). I am particularly interested in the opinion that the dead had been a group of people who desecrated the holy temple walls with drawings of insects. Their implicit, very dark message was that human life was meaningless. Human life, their grafiti argued, was as transient as that of short lived insects, who have no bones and thus leave no trace after their death (6). One feature of despair is that one can never be disappointed again, because one expects the worst. Of course, despair also means abdicating all responsibility to do anything that could alleviate suffering and improve things. 

The resurrection of these very same individuals was a repudiation of their nihilism and an affirmation of hope. Human life can be meaningful and beautiful. Ezekiel's words still inspire me and others millenia later, as does Abraham Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg (7). Lincoln asserted in that brief talk in 1863 that “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here”, yet his powerful words about sacrifice and “government of the people, by the people, for the people”  still moves people today.     

At a time when humans are confronted by our mortality, and how that highlights the animal-like struggle for survival, it is important that we not lose sight of our capacity to be sublime. Some will not rise to the occasion, and this is to be expected, but others will. Contrary to the defeatist views of the insect themed graffiti artists, the human spirit can soar to high places, even in difficult times. Hope is not a denial of the reality of death and disappointment, it is the deliberate decision to forge on despite pain, because a better future, although not certain, is possible.  

Notes

1.     Ezekiel 37:11
2.     .Ezekiel 37:1-14.
3.  Talmud, Sanhedrin 92b
4. Schneerson, Rabbi M. M., - the Lubavitcher Rebbe (1986), https://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/2511571/jewish/Dry-Bones-Before-and-After-A-Call-to-Shluchim.htm
5.  Sanhedrin, ibid.
6. Maharsha commentary to Sanhedrin 92b.
7. This amazing 271 word speech is so short I will include it here in my notes:“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm