Home: Body
The Gift of Responsibility in Metzora
When you enter the land of Canaan that I give you as a possession, and I inflict an eruptive plague upon a house in the land you possess, the owner of the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, “Something like a plague has appeared upon my house.” (Leviticus 14: 34-35)
“When you enter the land of Canaan…”—the Torah did not write: “when you enter” in connection with the legislation governing the plague of Tzara’at, in general. The reason is that the rules about Tzara’at already applied when the Israelites were still wandering in the desert. When speaking about Tzara’at afflicting houses it did write these words of introduction, as that plague only occurs in the land of Israel. A different explanation: the reason why when a plague breaks out on a house it must be destroyed, is that the earth of the land of Israel is holy, and its earth does not gladly suffer ritual contamination. (Chizkuni)
Last week, in parashat Tazria, we read about the affliction, tzara’at, that visits the flesh; this week, in parashat Metzorah, we read about the same affliction, tzara’at, only now on surface of the home. While a skin disease or marvel is hardly rare, the appearance of a home ablaze with discoloration is more surreal. A person can rationalize a discoloration of the skin, can medicalize it, naturalize it. A home with a sudden burst of color is more undeniably supernatural. The sheer scale is also intense. A rash on the elbow or navel can be concealed. A home’s surfaces are spectacles to onlookers, open secrets to guests.
The Torah highlights the difference between tzara’at of body and tzara’at of home, says Chizkuni, with the words “when you enter.” The body can receive a special sign anywhere; but affliction of the home is unique to the land of Canaan, as if the home were the skin of the land. Home plagues appear only “when you enter.” I would go further. A sign of ownership or sovereignty is the capacity to receive signs and wonders. For a people wandering in the desert, nomadic, transitional, still burdened by the memory of powerlessness, the only thing they really own, experientially speaking, are their bodies. When they enter the land, they become “home owners” in the literal and metaphoric sense. They gain stability. But ironically, no sooner do they acquire their homes then they become susceptible to the liabilities that come with ownership. There are no house plagues in the desert.
We might expect a text about the journey to the Promised Land to teach about the wonderful future that will greet us upon entry. But the Torah is more mixed, sober. The Land is a place flowing with milk and honey, but it’s also a place where one is held to higher account, where the moral bar is raised, and where one can no longer coast on the presumed righteousness of victimhood. The ability to receive and bear house plagues is a sign of growing up, a kind of spiritual graduation.
The text specifies “When you come into the Land of Canaan.” Why Canaan and not Israel? The obvious answer is that it is Canaan as long as Canaanites dwell there and as long as the land expresses Canaanite values; it only becomes the land of Israel once its character has changed. But there’s a deeper point, which is that the land has two names corresponding to two ways of relating to it. Canaan represents the materialistic attitude, whereby it is just another plot of land like any other. Israel represents the elevated attitude towards the land, in which the mission for being there is centered. Canaan is a means to an end. Israel is the end to which the people and the land must strive.
The land may be holy, but if one does not pursue a higher consciousness it can become profaned; then, it is Canaan, again. The plague on the house is a reminder of the holiness of the land, a reminder that if one does not safeguard the mission for being there, one risks profaning it. Tzara’at—now a defunct reality that lives only in imagination—is a sign of our responsibility to live a holy life. On the body, it says, you can always be holy no matter where you are. On the home, it says, will you treat your home merely as a shelter, or will you see it as a kind of mini-Temple, an opportunity to bring God into the world?
So much of Leviticus involves a pilgrimage of the laity to the Temple. But in the case of Tzara’at it is the priest who leaves the Temple to make a pilgrimage to the lay people. The priest is imbued with authority, but the fact that he comes to visit people where they are, in their personal spaces, suggests a proto-revolutionary idea. God can dwell in the Temple, but need not be restricted to it. In modern times, without a Temple, God exists in the form of human relationships; it is the encounter between people that is the Temple of our time. The home is an architectural expression of encounter; it is often where our most formative and meaningful relationships occur.
We cannot outsource the task of holiness to priests or anyone else. The more mature we are, the more the responsibility becomes ours. But we are always responsible. We are responsible to make our world holy with our bodies and with our homes; with our words and with our minds, with whatever we have. The Temple serves a purpose, the land serves a purpose, the people serve a purpose, the law serves a purpose. The purpose is not the Temple, the land, the collective, the law, all of whom can become idols.
The Exodus story, which we will re-enact on Passover in a week, is a story of moving from oppression to responsibility. Oppression is bad not simply because it is painful, cruel, and unjust, but because it makes it difficult for one to devote oneself to higher ends. But liberation from oppression does not guarantee positive liberty. And as many have noted, more free time has not necessarily translated into more leisure, that is, time used for deep consideration.
It’s ironic to read about plagues in the land of Israel on the cusp of a Seder night in which we will encounter the more famous “Ten Plagues” that visited the Egyptians. But the connection is worthy of thought. It’s a sign of success, of having come full circle, to receive plagues. The challenge is whether one will heed them, or whether one will be like Pharaoh. The Jewish way holds up a willingness to change as an ideal higher than moral perfection or spiritual achievement. Rashi, quoting the Midrash, says there are treasures hidden in the walls of the afflicted Canaanite homes. This is a beautiful metaphor for the treasure that lies in our own midst, whenever we are willing to disassemble ourselves for the sake of making ourselves better and holier. The home that gets no tzara’at also gets not treasure, but the one that requires serious work, painful as it is, proves to be a blessing in disguise.
Shabbat Shalom,
P.S.—Delighted to share my latest podcast conversation with my friend and teacher, John Tomasi, political philosopher and Brown Professor turned inaugural president of Heterodox Academy. John’s fusionism, open-mindedness, humility, and love of learning and teaching are a personal inspiration.
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