Am I Choosing Life or Death?
This double parashah speaks of tahor טָהוֹר – pure or clean or pure and tamei – טָמֵא, impure or unclean, which, in my opinion, are poor translations. The reason is that we simply don’t understand the Torah’s message. The word tazria תַזְרִ֔יעַ is related to tzaraat צָּרַעַת, which, although it is translated in the Septuagint as leprosy, has nothing to do with today’s Hansen’s disease. It has more to do with the afflicted person’s ability to present themselves to the Ochel Moed, the place God had appointed for the people to come and serve Him. The question is, how do we apply this to our lives today? Our sages offer many opinions, but sadly, they add so much to what is written that all clarity is lost.
I like to keep things simple, even in the most difficult areas. The basic idea is that tahor represents life and living, and tamei represents death. Our God is the God of the living. When we, as living beings, want to approach Him, we need to be clean and presentable. If we are invited to a wedding, how do we go? First, we shower and put on our finest clothes to look our best. Tahor and tamei hold this same idea. With tahor, we are presentable and tamei; with tahor, we are unpresentable. When something in our lives prevents us from presenting ourselves to Him, we need to spend time preparing ourselves.
To better understand tzaraat today, we might think of something that destroys us from within yet is not always easily detected. With the advances of science, doctors and psychologists today are discovering that most diseases have to do with the body and mind, the psyche-soma or psychosomatic connection. When we are emotionally weak or empty, it opens us up to attack on the physical level. Many people today are suffering from depression, which influences the physical body. Doctors have discovered that when this occurs, the immune system is weakened, making us more susceptible to illness. They tell us that we all have cancer cells in our bodies, but these only become active when we are weak due to elevated stress levels.
In Deut. 30:15, the Creator tells us 15 ‘Look, today I am offering you, life and prosperity, death and disaster.” He continues in verse 19 Choose life…”
Tahor and tamei represent life and death. Several verses in this parashah speak of bodily emissions that contain life-giving elements, which die once released from the body. Every month, a woman ovulates. If the ovule has not been impregnated, it is discharged by the blood during her menstrual cycle. What could have brought life now dies as it leaves her body. That is what we regard as contamination. The same thing happens with men. When they discharge seminal fluids from their bodies, which do not do their job, they also die. The separation is about life and death. The Creator is demonstrating to us that He has given us life and that we are to live it by doing what is right.
What can destroy us rather than give us life? The main element involved in this is “the tongue”. It is a very small part of the body, but it can cause more damage than the atomic bomb –it can make or destroy us.
Ladies, please don’t get upset at me, but when men fight, it is in the moment; when women fight, because they are more verbal, they have the capacity to use their tongue to cut you into little pieces. This human problem is called “lashon hara, the evil tongue.” Our sages say metzora is a contraction of “motzei shem ra” – מוציא שם רע – to give a person a bad name, i.e. to gossip. The diseased person, called metzora, has become ill from using their tongue for evil. Have you ever spoken ill of anyone behind their back to someone else? The truth is that if we are human and we have a tongue, it is extremely difficult to dominate it. It is a constant struggle, and the ongoing process of going from tamei to tahor, from death to life, is called teshuva. The formula is: we acknowledge it, we confess it with the same tongue that spoke evil, then we need to make reparation before being able to draw near or approach the Creator.
Why should this only apply to the Beit Hamikdash, the Tabernacle? At that time, it was the only place we could have presented ourselves to the Creator. Today, we don’t have a Tabernacle or Temple, and we act as if we no longer have that problem. We think that we can attend our houses of prayer and worship without dealing with the impurities in our lives. We have become very good fakes. The Creator is telling us to be honest with ourselves and with others… before we come clean to Him. I am not saying this is easy or that we should set expectations for ourselves that we can never achieve. The Creator didn’t make us perfect. Other religions teach us that we can reach perfection, but that is wishful thinking. When we accept the reality that we are imperfect beings, we can approach the Creator. When we realize our limitations, all we can do is ask Him and each other for help in continuing to improve. Our life is a process from birth to death. Some of us grow in the right way, while others grow a little twisted. When you plant a tree, and it grows crooked, it is almost impossible to straighten it unless you cut it down and replant it straight. How many of us need to be broken before we can return to walk in God’s direction, to be tahor and get rid of the tamei?
Lashon Hara is more than simply speaking badly about someone else. It is spreading lies, criticizing others without speaking to them face to face, perhaps simply because we don’t like the way they are. It creates an environment of Sinat Chinam – spreading hatred without cause. Many of us are sick and don’t know why. Perhaps it is because we have done just that. When we are spiritually sick, sooner or later, it affects our physical body. That’s when we need to be brutally honest with ourselves, but we usually don’t take this very seriously.
When we are sick, we can feel separated from the Creator, as if in quarantine. I went through a very difficult period with my health when I almost died. During that process, I learned a lot about myself. When we are sick, it feels as if we are in quarantine and can’t approach the Creator. First, we need to deal with ourselves. Healing won’t come until we look within and ask ourselves: “What is holding me back from having a ‘clean’ (tahor) relationship with Him?” What have I done or thought? We will remain trapped until we make things right with ourselves and others.
People have come to me asking me how to do that. I tell them, “When we sin publicly, we are obliged to make it right publicly; when we sin privately, we need to make it right privately.” We can’t hide from our Creator; He knows exactly what we are doing – He has night vision. He sees into the depths of our souls. Ask yourself, “What is holding me back from being free to be myself, to live?”
Do you know the difference between life and death? When we are dead, our bodies decompose and are destroyed. When we are alive, we grow, and everything flourishes around us. Do you know that our attitudes can bring life and death, tahor and tamei? Do we see a glass of water half-full or half-empty? If we see the glass half empty, we become very self-destructive, negative, and inflexible, which leads to death. If we see the bad and wrong in everything and are so critical, our inner being is damaged. It’s not long until things go wrong in our lives, to the point of physical illness. Can we instead look for something positive in everything? When something negative happens, can we consider a possible solution that could turn the outcome positive? If not, that’s when God can step in, and things happen that we might never have imagined!
There is no separation between the spiritual and physical aspects of our being. They are connected. We “sometimes” become sick, I am not saying “all” the time, because the Creator is slowing us down, placing us in quarantine so that we can deal with the issues that we have swept under the rug. He wants us to make things right. You have often heard me quote Psalms 139: 23-24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart, test me, and know my thoughts; and show me if there be any way in me that is grievous, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
The Creator has given us a choice between life and death and tells us to choose life. Have we chosen life, or are we happy choosing death? Our life speaks for itself. It doesn’t mean that just because something goes wrong in our lives, we are necessarily doing something wrong. Maybe we need to find a better perspective. Those who can’t change will have more problems than others. Those who have placed themselves in a box, insisting “this is the way I am and this is the way I’m going to stay”, are the ones who suffer the most.
Let us learn to be flexible, to allow ourselves to grow, to seek life, not death. The first step is to acknowledge what we do. Then, to forgive ourselves, that is one of our greatest difficulties. We would be surprised at how many of us have problems admitting when we do something wrong and saying we’re sorry. Those who have problems admitting that they do wrong will not grow. If we can’t learn from our mistakes or others’ mistakes, we won’t grow.
In these two parashot, the Torah tells us that we need to present ourselves before the cohanim, who will decide whether we have tzaraat, since it is a spiritual, not a medical, problem. Today, we can begin searching within ourselves to see whether we are tahor or tamei, whether we choose life or death. May our Creator guide our paths and help us make the right choice.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Netanel ben Yochanan Z” l