ParashatTazria Crying Out in Pain Torah Portion: Leviticus 12:1-13:59 Haftarah Portion: II Kings 4:42-5:19
Shalom!
We arrive this week at the first of two consecutive, notoriously difficult Torah portions in the Book of Leviticus: Parashat Tazria and Parashat M’tzora.
This week’s portion, Tazria, specifically describes the purification rituals for a postpartum woman, as well as for someone exhibiting skin discoloration. The verses about the skin disease, or tzara’at, in particular, are quite graphic and not for the queasy of stomach. It can be challenging in the modern era to map the Biblical confluence of these states of ritual impurity on to our scientific knowledge of pregnancy and dermatitis as common medical conditions.
Indeed, the Levitical prescription of isolation for both situations can seem unfeeling, even sexist or ableist. And it doesn’t get much better with the specific instructions for someone with the skin discoloration on their head: “Their clothes shall be rent, their head shall be left bare, and their upper lip shall be covered over; and they shall call out, ‘Impure! Impure!’ They shall be impure as long as the disease is present. Being impure, they shall dwell apart—in a dwelling outside the camp” (Leviticus 13:45-6). The typical segregation for ritual impurity exists here, but also this striking script: the requirement that the sufferer make their condition known aloud.
The medieval French commentator Rashi offers an explanation for the directive: The one afflicted “must proclaim aloud that they are unclean, so that people may keep away from them.”[i] The point of the proclamation, then, is to ensure isolation from others, in Rashi’s understanding.
It’s not hard to read into this explanation a hint of humiliation: The person is required to change their appearance, in several ways, and to give voice to their condition for the purpose of alerting the community to their sequestration, of warning friends and family to keep a distance.
The Torah Temimah, a 20th-century commentary, posits a different interpretation of the verse. This more modern text extends some sympathy for those grappling with the destabilizing effects of new parenthood, or of a newly-visible disability. The text claims that the verse “teaches that they are supposed to announce their ailment to everyone, and everyone seeks compassion for them … so that they are healed from their ailment.”[ii]
In this analysis, the calling out of “Impure, impure!” is an invitation for support and comfort from others, toward the ultimate aim of healing.
The Torah Temimah then brings in a discussion in the Talmud about a phrase from the book of Lamentations, “she cries at night” (Lamentations 1:2), referring to the anthropomorphized city of Jerusalem, bereaved by the exile of its inhabitants and the destruction of its buildings. The Talmud asks why the city is crying “at night,” specifically, and offers several answers. “[W]ith regard to anyone who cries at night, their voice is heard due to the ambient silence… Alternatively … in the case of anyone who cries at night, one who hears their voice is touched by their suffering and cries with them.”[iii] So, too, the text is saying, for the sufferer of the skin condition in our parashah.
In these texts, our tradition offers hope for anyone crying out in pain: When we cry out, others hear us, have compassion on us, and cry out with us. This Shabbat, may we act with the assurance of both hearing others’ pain and being heard in our pain. May we never let such cries go ignored, and may we cultivate communities that are empathetic and compassionate.
Shabbat shalom! Rabbi Salem Pearce ISJL Director of Spirituality
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