Finding the Right Words
A Poetics of The Metzora
Rabbi Yoḥanan says in the name of Rabbi Yosei ben Zimra: Anyone who speaks malicious speech is considered as though he denied the fundamental belief in God. As it is stated: “Who have said: We will make our tongue mighty; our lips are with us: Who is lord over us” (Psalms 12:5). (Arachin 15b)
When a person has on the skin of the body a swelling, a rash, or a discoloration, and it develops into a scaly affection on the skin of the body, it shall be reported to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons, the priests. The priest shall examine the affection on the skin of the body: if hair in the affected patch has turned white and the affection appears to be deeper than the skin of the body, it is a leprous affection; when the priest sees it, he shall pronounce the person impure. (Leviticus 13:2-3)
According to a commonly known rabbinic tradition, Tzara’at is a punishment for gossip or slander. If you read the Torah plainly, however, no formal cause is explicitly offered for this skin affliction; aggregate rabbinic sources and you’ll find a multiplicity of factors that may account for tzara’at, including poor hygiene. Symptoms are not enough to tell us their causes. And it’s not the priest’s job to figure out why tzara’at appears, only to name it as such.
Given what we know about the ubiquity and banality of lashon hara, toxic speech, it seems oddly impractical to give every trash-talker a skin affliction requiring the presence of a priest. If you had to ostracize every idle chattering person in the camp, the whole camp would be outside the camp in no time. How would you mass exile troves of people for engaging an a type of speech that is endemic to social life itself?
I believe the Midrashic tradition that links tzara’at to lashon hara is better understood through a more focused lens on a specific type of wayward speech. The skin-afflicted outcast is not simply a person who bad-mouths, but one who questions language itself. Ironically, it is not the affliction of one who abuses speech, but one who challenges our right to speak; and in particular, our right to speak on behalf of God.
Moses questions his fitness as divine spokesman—”I am not a man of words” (Exodus 4:10)—and his hand turns “encrusted with snowy scales” (Exodus 4:6). The Talmud (Shabbat 97a) calls this tzara’at, and links it to his transgression at the waters of Meribah; Moses’s disbelief in the people expressed there is part and parcel of his own disbelief in himself, and in his own ability to speak. Indeed, it is at those bitter waters, where Moses fails to speak and strikes the rock instead. Lashon hara, broadly defined, was not simply found in the transcript of Moses’s words, accusing the people of disbelief (a case of counter-transference), but in his inability to speak. The purest form of evil speech may be silence. This is not the silence we discussed last week, in Shemini, the sacred silence of vayidom Aharon, but it’s dialectically related.
Miriam and Aaron question Moses’s authority, specifically to speak—“They said, “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has [God] not spoken through us as well?” (Numbers 12:2). 10 verses later we learn:
“As the cloud withdrew from the Tent, there was Miriam stricken with snow-white scales! When Aaron turned toward Miriam, he saw that she was stricken with scales.” (Numbers 12:12).
While their critique of Moses positions it as clearing space for their own leadership, the frame is zero-sum and rivalrous.
Legally speaking, tzara’at doesn't exist until named. “When the priest examines him, he shall pronounce him unclean” (Leviticus 13:3). Your skin condition means nothing until authorized speech brings it into being. Those who challenge our ability to speak for God or channel a divine perspective require divinely inspired speech to help them cope with the ambiguity of the improbable and indefinable.
Lacan illuminates the power of naming. “The symbol manifests itself first as the murder of the thing,” he writes. One’s skin condition exists in what he calls the Real—raw experience without meaning. It becomes tzara’at only when brought into the Symbolic order through the priest’s words. The gap between having a condition and being diagnosed reveals a fundamental gap in language itself. But while an ascetic monastic might say we must never speak, the priest is summoned to give words to the unspeakable.
Last week we witnessed Aaron’s lucid silence—”וַיִּדֹּם אַהֲרֹן” (Leviticus 10:3)—creating what the Zohar calls a “chalal panui,” a space where meaning emerges without words. Now we encounter its counterpart: speech that creates boundaries and enables order in the Symbolic realm. Together they form our response to language’s inadequacy before overwhelming reality. Aaron is pulled out of his own silence into the obligation to name.
The metzora’s transgression isn’t gossip but a repression of language. “Anyone who speaks lashon hara,” says the Talmud (Arachin 15b), “denies the fundamental principle of faith.” Conversely hakarat hatov, speaking and recognizing well, ultimately express gratitude to the Source of all things.
Shemini and Tazria form a pair: for those inclined to idle chatter, silence is golden; for those those inclined to over-censor and insist on purism, they must contend for the need for naming. Wittgenstein argues that there is no private language; although the metzora dwells outside the camp in solitude, he is bound to the camp by language; the priests words of exile and invitation form a horizon of belonging.
The placement of kashrut at the end of last week’s parasha serves as a hinge to this week’s. Just as we distinguish between fitting and unfitting food, we must distinguish meaningful speech from detrimental speech. Aaron’s silence is necessary for a time, just as the skin conditions that elude our diagnostics must remind us of the superiority of the Real over the Symbolic; but we cannot live in the Real. The priest’s words help us touch the Real, while inviting us back into the world of representation.
Our task is to seek the right words for the right moment, even as we accept our own inadequacy.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins