More Than You Can Know

Solitude, Community, Affliction, and Healing in Tazria

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 tzaraat affection; when the priest sees it, he shall pronounce the person impure. (Leviticus 13:3)

וְרָאָ֣ה הַכֹּהֵ֣ן אֶת־הַנֶּ֣גַע בְּעֽוֹר־הַ֠בָּשָׂ֠ר וְשֵׂעָ֨ר בַּנֶּ֜גַע הָפַ֣ךְ ׀ לָבָ֗ן וּמַרְאֵ֤ה הַנֶּ֙גַע֙ עָמֹק֙ מֵע֣וֹר בְּשָׂר֔וֹ נֶ֥גַע צָרַ֖עַת ה֑וּא וְרָאָ֥הוּ הַכֹּהֵ֖ן וְטִמֵּ֥א אֹתֽוֹ׃

Thus “phenomenology” means to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself. (Heidegger, Being and Time)

Parashat Tazria (Leviticus 12:1-13:59) introduces us to the strange skin-condition of tzaraat, often translated anachronistically as leprosy. The condition is at once deeply personal and deeply social. No sooner does it appear then it becomes an issue for priestly examination. If confirmed as a genuine case, it affects the entire camp. The person with the condition is put in a temporary ban, and sent outside the camp, but this affects everyone—the person’s family, friends, the whole community. Even the human body, which for Hobbes and the liberal tradition is the bedrock of personal autonomy and inviolable rights, is a social, political, and metaphysical affair.

In our time, tzaraat does not exist as a legal category, nor can priests purify us—without a temple and without sacrifices. We are simply presumed to exist in a state of basic, humdrum, ineradicable impurity. We are all together, as it were, outside the camp. This is the meaning of exile and diaspora, a kind of collectivized ostracism. Still, the tension between individual property and collective responsibility, when it comes to phenomena like contagion and impurity, are quite familiar. We are no strangers to bans and quarantines of all kinds, from pandemics to moral panics, from cancelations to economic sanctions. Thus, the form of tzaraat still speaks to us even if the details seem foreign and difficult to grasp, understand, or accept.

The core principle of tzaraat is that it cannot be found through self-examination. One cannot pronounce oneself impure. The second, related principle, is that although it has a physiological reality—a fundamental reality—it is really only a reality through pronouncement. Tzaraat only becomes what it is through declaration. The skin really does have a dis-coloration that is objective. But the meaning of tzaraat is subjective or intersubjective, coming about through the perception, and then, the languaging of it.

The Torah highlights this point by using two words that share the same root: lirot, meaning “to see” and l’harot, meaning “to show” or “appear.” Tzaraat exists only when it becomes not just physically visible but ontologically legible. Tzaraat isn’t simply a fabricated thing, but it’s also not a purely natural one. In the ongoing debate between naturalists and social constructionists, Tzaraat stands at the border. The task of the priest is to distinguish the case of mere physical appearance from the case of theological significance. Anyone can look at the physical world; only a person connected to the divine, as it were, can look at that same world and find in it “signs and wonders.” Thus, the affliction shows up on the skin; but the priest has to see whether it is something under the skin, too. The text shifts from describing the affliction as b’or habasar (the skin of the flesh) to amok m’or (the depth of the skin).

Don’t get hung up on the priest issue, which makes tzaraat a function of an expert class, not unlike a patient at the mercy of the doctor. The deeper point is less about the priest as expert and more about the priest as other. The reason we can’t self-diagnose is not simply because of confirmation bias, but because we can’t behold our own depth. We are the sign. We can’t be the sign and read the sign at the same time. In this way, the priest is less like a doctor coming in with a stethoscope and more like a therapist or coach or friend whose mere accompaniment allows certain things to surface that would otherwise just be hidden in plain sight.

Tzaraat is an affliction; it’s a negative experience. But it’s also, arguably, a positive one in that it hastens a process of purification and rectification; it is information, feedback, a message from God. The presence of the priest, the presence of a pronouncement, resolves an ambiguity and begins a process of repair. The anxious moment occurs when the appearance is there, but the interpretation is not.

Priests are figures of peace. Aaron’s epithet is rodef shalom, a pursuer of peace. Why is it the priest who visits the afflicted person? Is it just to keep things clean and pure, regulated, ordered? No. The presence of a diagnosis also allows the anxious person to take solace; to have a word for their private condition. The priest helps the person feel normal, not alone. Even as the person is put outside the camp, the normalization process has begun. This is all standard procedure. Nothing to worry about. Extrapolating this point, phenomenology is a kind of peace-making. It’s a way of letting appearances come to presence, non-judgmentally, as they are, in the way that they are.

“I see you, I notice you, welcome.” This is a mantra we may well practice when meditating or sitting alone with our thoughts, playing priest to those disturbing distractions and sensations that can feel like mental tzaraat. Can we transform the nega, affliction, into oneg, delight? Yes. The first step is not being afflicted by and about our affliction; just noticing it. Impurity is not failure; it’s a regular part of life.

God created humanity with two irreconcilable aspects, according to Rav Soltoveitchik. On the one hand, we are lonely, singular, solitary. On the other hand, we are social, collaborative, and conforming. It is not good to be alone, but it is also good, sometimes, to be alone, to experience oneself as unique and individuated. The time-out from the camp is not to be viewed exclusively as a punishment or a safety protocol; it’s also an opportunity to connect to one’s primal aloneness. It was when Jacob was alone (vayivater Yaakov l’vado) that he discovered himself and became Israel. The priest comes from the community, as the agent of community, to usher a person into the redemptive aloneness which the community needs to replenish itself.

One potential and classically given cause of tzaraat is lashon hara, speaking ill of others, gossip. One thing that drives gossip is simply a lack of a sense of self, a lack of security in who one is. If this is the case, then solitude is the perfect antidote for those who cannot sit with themselves and must constantly blabber about others. But we all commit lashon hara, even when not overtly engaged in malicious speech; for we all have an inner dialogue that includes words and judgments of comparison. “Why am I not more like so and so?” The priest comes with a message from God: “Why are you not more like yourself?”

Our desire for social validation is not going away; our envious, competitive spirit cannot be destroyed. It is a basic staple of life lived with others. But the practice of solitude and time outside the camp is needed to balance out these tendencies. Our joy and meaning must come from finding things that we would do even if nobody were watching or applauding. To be healthy the community needs us to leave the community—not because we are icky, but because we are more gorgeous, more generous, and more meaningful, than we know.

Shabbat Shalom,

Zohar

P.S.—I wrote a new mega thread on Giorgio Agamben. Here’s the twitter original and here’s the long-form readable version.

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