Tazria-Metzora: Watching Your Words
Rabbi Lizz is with IfNotNow DC
In Parashat Tazria-Metzora, the Torah deals with the rules of ritual purity and impurity, including the impurity of skin blemishes. Tza’arat, often translated as “leprosy,” is described in detail, telling us of the various signs and symptoms the priests would look for to determine when a Metzora (someone with tza’arat) would be clean enough again to re-enter the Israelite camp (after a repurification ritual, of course). It’s all pretty gross.
While the Torah presents this information like an early WebMD entry, simply the symptoms of a physical illness and its home remedies, the rabbis of the Midrash Rabbah felt these blemishes were surely punishments for sin. Why else would our Holy Torah share such repellent details unless to repel us from wrongdoing? So they connect these descriptions and explanations about tza’arat to another portion (Parashat Beha’alot’cha) in which Miriam comes down with a case of it after speaking ill of Moses’s wife. So, they conclude, tza’arat is the punishment for lashon hara, or “Evil Speech” (most often understood as gossip).
You’re all probably at least somewhat familiar with the sin of lashon hara. There’s that famous legend about the person who spread a rumor and felt guilty afterward, so they asked their rabbi what they should do to make it up to the person who was the subject of the rumor. The rabbi tells the person to go buy some feather pillows and stand on the hill above the village and cut open the pillows, letting the feathers fly. The gossiper does so and goes back to the rabbi the next day and asks what happens next, how this helps make teshuvah to the person they’ve hurt. The rabbi tells the gossiper to go collect the feathers and refill the pillow sacks. Of course, this is impossible and the gossiper learns that much like the released feathers can never be gathered back up, so too words can never really be taken back and only true teshuva directly to the person hurt in the act of gossip can make amends. I often teach this lesson to students by playing a game of telephone to illustrate that not only can we not take back our words once they leave our mouths, we also lose control of how they’re used. The words in a game of telephone morph and change, lose their meaning and get silly. Sometimes they become inappropriate and often the word or phrase that the group ends up with is not quite what the initial speaker said. As rumors make their way around a school, the story that eventually sticks may not be what the initial gossiper meant to go around. That does not excuse the initial gossiper for starting the rumor. The tz’arat afflicts one who spreads falsehoods about others regardless of their intentions.
There has been a lot of arguing across the political spectrum, especially within politically diverse Jewish communities, about whether or not Donald Trump is antisemitic. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter if he himself hates Jews or not. His word communicate xenophobia and have fanned the flames of white supremacy throughout the country. Like the gossiper who didn’t mean for the rumor to get so out of hand, who now wants to take it back, those words cannot be forgotten without active and honest teshuva. No empty promises to address rising antisemitism or speeches at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum can take back President Trump’s anti-immigrant, racist policies, his antisemitic dogwhistles and all the other words and actions he has used and has encouraged in others that impact our communities and the communities of our friends and neighbors. He would have to make sincere teshuva and actively discourage the antisemitic white supremacists his previous rhetoric has brought back out into the mainstream of American discourse.
IfNotNow is all about standing up for ourselves and others. As a group, we have been very outspoken against the evil speech that President Trump has used and encouraged. The Talmud says that lashon hara kills three people: the one who speaks it, the one who it is spoken to, and the one who it is spoken of. We are worried for all those the evil speech of the current administration affects, and are acutely aware that if Americans do not speak back against that lashon hara, these words become deeds that could very well equal death for some people. We will not allow the gross punishment of tza’arat — or worse — to fall upon our nation for the verbal misdeeds of the president and his administration. So we suggest that Mr. Trump and his ilk watch their words. Because we sure are.
