Metzora | Defilement

“Adonai spoke to Moses, Saying, ‘This shall surely be the ritual for a leper at the
time that he is to be purified.’”
                                                                  -Leviticus 14:1

“God is that aspect of reality which elicits from us the best that is in us and enables
us to bear the worst that can befall us.”
                                                                  -MMK - P.132

P'shat | Explanation
The fragility of life itself is no more apparent than here in this section of the Torah filled
with discussions of how to treat diseases of the flesh, plagues that afflicted even the
dwelling places of our ancestors and gave expression to their fear and respect for the
symbolism of blood and other bodily fluids that often flow unbidden from the bodies of
both men and women. “Leprosy” in the Torah was a generic term given to skin diseases
for which our ancient ancestors simply had no other name, and whose ease of infecting
others they feared. Here we are taught that the role of the priest is both spiritual and
physical, intermediary between supplicant and God in addition to assuming the role of
ultimate authority on health and wellness.

It is when dealing with the leper that we find perhaps the most poignant example
of the priestly role of arbiter between that which in Hebrew is termed, “tum’ah,” or
spiritual defilement, and “ta’harah,” or ritual purity. The priest has the power in his
hands through the rituals he commands to lift one up who is now healed but previously
has suffered from a skin disease that made him both feared by others and ostracized, and
elevate him back into the acceptance and good graces of the community. As Kaplan
alludes to so eloquently, the role of the priests is to appeal to the best of the human spirit
in the face of a disease that because it requires being ostracized from the community
often represents the worst that can befall us. The holiness that the ancient priests were
responsible for manifesting within the community by how they treated every individual in
need became a concrete, physical manifestation of God’s very presence itself among the
people. As the priest spoke words of comfort and blessings, it was as if God were
bringing comfort and blessings to ease their struggles and heal their afflictions as well.

D'rash | Reflection
It was one of those phone calls that come totally without preamble and for which there is
no way to exactly prepare oneself. The man on the other end of the phone was not a
member of my congregation, not anyone I had ever met or knew before. He had searched
for and found me after attending an interfaith, interracial wedding at which I had
officiated several months before the phone call. His opening words were, “I am calling
you because I am looking for a rabbi who is open minded and not so stuck in tradition
that he will say “No” to what I am asking without at least giving it serious thought.” As
you can imagine, I was intrigued from the get go.

“What is it I can do to help?” I asked. “Well, Rabbi, first let me ask, “Do you
believe in miracles? Do you believe that prayer works?” Having been a congregational
rabbi for many years, the minute I heard those two questions I began to imagine where
this conversation might be going, so I asked what kind of miracle he was looking for with
his prayers and wasn’t at all surprised when he told me he had recently been diagnosed
with Leukemia and along with the traditional medical treatment he not only wanted me to
pray for his healing (which is, after all, a relatively normal request for a rabbi), but more
specifically he wanted me to accompany him to the local mikvah and was hoping that I
would create a specific ritual of healing for his cancer that would include immersion in
the mikvah as well.

The mikvah has been used in many different ways in Jewish life, but all of them
relate in some way to the idea of changing one’s spiritual status from that of ritual
impurity to ritual purity and from various states of disharmony to spiritual wholeness.
Since for a mikvah to be kosher it must contain what in Hebrew is called, Mayim Hayim,
or “Living waters,” the young man recently diagnosed with cancer was putting his faith
in the literalness of the term and praying that the power of those “living waters” would, in
fact, renew his life as well."

He told me that the minute he shared with his colleagues at work that he had
cancer, he felt “just like a leper in the bible,” and that his cancer made others anxious and
fearful, as if they somehow might catch it from him and he could feel them pulling away
and avoiding him. The Torah specifically gave instructions to the priests, the physical
symbols of God’s presence on Earth to be the agents through which those who had been
cast out could be brought back into the circle of family and community and declared
ritually pure once again. We no longer have priests in Judaism, so it was left to me, the
rabbi, to step in to a kind of priestly role at the moment of this young man’s spiritual need
and create a ritual that evoked for him the power of the priestly blessings of old.
So we went together to the mikvah, and as he immersed in its living waters three
times, at each immersion I invoked prayers of healing, calling upon the power of those
living waters to bring renewed life to the cells of his body, and reminded him in the
process that “healing” takes many forms – sometimes it is healing of the body and
sometimes it is healing of the spirit.

When the ritual was over, he told me he believed that the water would, in fact heal
him, but that he felt at peace regardless of how his cancer might react to the mikvah and
prayers, because “my soul has been immersed and cleansed as well.” It reminded me of
the commandment in the Mishnah (Berahot 9:5) in which we are taught, “A person must
bless God for the bad just as one must bless God for the good.” One of our greatest
spiritual challenges in life is to recognize that we can, in fact feel a sense of the sacred
even in those experiences and circumstances that are painful, or frightening or unwanted.
Here in the midst of his fear of what the Leukemia might represent to his body, this
young man found the ability to feel peace and wholeness, blessings instead of curses as,
in Kaplan’s words, he bore “the worst that can befall us.”