Drash for Parashat Tazria-Metzorah

A woman suffering from nodular leprosy.  'Leper' is commonly
understood to be the meaning of 'metzorah,' from this week's
Torah portion

Stop Judging by Appearances

All around the Jewish world this morning, rabbis and other Jewish darshanim or ‘preachers’ will open their weekly sermons by telling their congregations that this week’s Torah portion is a problematic one.  The dual portion Tazria-Metzorah is, after all, about skin disease and emission of bodily fluids.  In the ancient world, few things provoked popular loathing as much as skin disease.  Such maladies were seen as manifestations of character flaws, of evil living within a person.  This morning, thousands of learned leaders will stand in their pulpits and try to draw some lesson that their congregation can use, from today’s reading.  Especially in Reform and Progressive congregations, where few of our religious leaders are ‘tied’ to a traditional understanding of the text.  This is one of the more difficult portions for a progressive preacher in particular.  It will make many of my colleagues go to extreme lengths to try to make sense of it.  We rabbis will, collectively, earn our pay this morning.

            Underlying the discomfort with this portion is the sense that the Torah is, at times, seen as a commentary on life.  As I like to say, it is not a history or geology text.  It is also not a Physician’s Desk Reference on illness and disease.  It is a textbook on morality, in the guise of a grand narrative about a people’s experience.  And since we tend to see the latter today as being rather subjective, that means that the Torah’s authority is much-diminished.  This, even if we see it as offering keen insights into the human condition.

To see how this ‘commentary on life’ works, look at the third chapter of Genesis as an example.  Eve has been duped by the serpent to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  She has influenced Adam to eat as well.  God proclaims, among other things:  “I will increase your pain in pregnancy.  It will be with pain that you give birth to children.  Your passion will be to your husband, and he will dominate you.”  (Gen. 3.16)  Now, a biblical literalist might read this and conclude that women are inherently evil.  They might think that the unique suffering that women go through, is their payback for Eve’s sin.  And we know that there are such attitudes extant in our world.  We call it misogyny.  Although most of us do not subscribe to this, you can see that vestiges of it survive in popular culture.  And, when I was in the Persian Gulf and saw that traditional Arab dress is white for men and black for women, I thought of this.  Especially since the women were also all covered up, as if they were evil and needed to be hidden from view.

But the advocate of the Torah as being a ‘commentary on life’ sees the above verse of Genesis coming to us as a commentary on an observable phenomenon of life.  As an attempt to explain an existential reality.  The ancient man observed that women are subjected to certain suffering, and more.  In the ancient world many women died in childbirth.  That condition exists even today, especially in societies whose medical practices are not up-to-date.  And we acknowledge the danger of pregnancy and childbirth when we say prayers of thanks for the deliverance from danger of a woman who has recently given birth.  Perhaps the sentiments expressed in Genesis 3.16 were an ancient attempt to perform eisogesis – to read in to the text.

So we read this week’s portion and we can similarly see it, if we so choose, as a commentary on the phenomenon of people manifesting skin conditions.

If you read the weekly drash on the Torah portion featured on the UPJ website (upj.org.au/parashat-hashavua) – and I recommend that you do weekly – then you probably read my colleague Stanton Zamek’s take on the phenomenon discussed in Metzorah.  Using an ancient commentator’s read of the portion, he gives a wonderful drash on the danger of evil speak.  As you know if you follow my own pulpit speaking over time, wagging tongues are a pet peeve of mine.  I therefore certainly recommend the remarks of my colleague, who serves our congregation in Hong Kong and was my classmate.

But I’d like to go – perhaps it could be said – beyond my colleague’s read of Metzorah as being a commentary on the danger of gossip.  He points out that the sage Resh Lachish sees the skin infection metzorah as a ‘penalty’ for evil speak.  What I would like to comment on is our obsession with physical appearance and our deep-seated belief that ‘flaws’ in our appearance are automatically attributable to character flaws, or at least to unsavoury behaviour.

Having seen me in person, you need no explanation as to why this is a concern of mine.  (If you’re reading this online and we’ve never met, know that I have deep scarring on my face from a case of cystic acne as an adolescent and young adult.)  Because I am used to being judged negatively based on the way I look, I am particularly sensitive to this all-too-human tendency.  Anybody who does not meet whatever are the current criteria as to how one should look, has probably felt the sting of this judgement.  People who are overweight, or underweight for that matter, or who are ‘too’ short or ‘too’ tall.  People with skin conditions.  Unattractive hair.  Whatever.  Watch even a small amount of television, or a few movies, and you’ll see how the media typecasts such people as the ‘bad guy.’  The ‘good guy’ is most of the time attractive according to whatever measure is currently in vogue.  But the usual criteria are tall if a man, blonde, blue-eyed, athletic, with a glowing complexion.  It’s interesting that we criticise the racial preferences of Germany in the Nazi era – but tend to emulate them.

So the truth is that, our contemporary world is not that different from the ancient world in this respect.

My challenge to you this morning then, is to try to transcend this prejudice concerning outward appearance, whatever the precise operative criteria.  Most of us prejudge in this way to some extent, even if we intellectually reject such prejudice.  Even those of us who have felt its sting in our own lives, are not immune from the pitfall of applying it ourselves.  The social cues supporting the practice, are just too powerful – and too subtle – to escape completely.  We therefore must, each one of us, work hard to ignore physicality when judging the content of a person’s character.  Some would say that the entire enterprise of judging character is uncalled for.  I would not agree with that sentiment at all, but that’s another sermon for another day.  Most of us remember the sage words of the Reverend, Dr Martin Luther King, Junior.  He expressed hope that someday, man will judge his fellow man not by the other’s outward appearance but by the ‘content of his character.’

To go beyond the ‘problematic’ element of this week’s reading by seeing it as a commentary on evil speak, is helpful.  But perhaps more helpful – certainly to our social condition – is to read it and decry the tendency to judge according to appearance in its entirety. To understand that the text reflects this ancient tendency.  And to understand that we, some four thousand years later have yet to transcend it.  But it’s not too late.  We, as individuals, can work to go beyond this prejudice.  We can teach our children a better way.  We can reject the cues from popular culture, subtle or not, that bombard us daily.   Let’s make up our minds to do so.  Amen, ken yehi ratson.