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Tazria When a person has on the skin of his body a blotch, discoloration or spot and there is in the skin of his body from the plague of Tzara'as, he shall be brought to Ahron the Cohen or one of his sons the Cohanim. The Cohen will see the plague in the skin of his body, and hair in the plague has turned white, and the plague has penetrated the skin, this is the plague of Tzara'as. When the Cohen sees it he shall declare it unclean. Among the saddest mistakes of departure from traditional Jewish understanding and translation is to be seen in the mistranslation of Tzara'as as leprosy. The plague of Tzara'as mentioned in the Torah has nothing at all to do with Hansen's disease which is caused by the germ mycobacterium leprae. Rather Tzara'as was the physical symptom of a spiritual defect, occurring primarily in individuals on a high spiritual level, whose body functions were subject to their spiritual state. Thus an individual of lesser spiritual status could never get it. The superficial and misguided translation of Tzara'as as leprosy has condemned those who suffer from this unfortunate disease to being treated throughout many generations as 'lepers' and outcasts. It should serve to remind us of the hazard in learning solely from translations and the dangers found in those who would separate the written Torah from the Oral tradition of its understanding by those who received the Torah and keep its laws. Based on this we can understand why in earlier generations this plague was found but not in later ones. After all, tradition identifies Tzara'as coming as punishment for the sin of Loshon HoRah - an evil tongue. These days, when Loshon HoRah is so common, Tzara'as ought to be rife. The explanation is: Tzara'as can exist and reflect a spiritual defect when that defect is unusual within the individual. When he is otherwise perfect within, then a spiritual defect will be reflected in the physical manifestation of the person. However, when within the individual there are many spiritual imperfections, the ability for the spiritual to be reflected in the physical domain gets lost. The earlier generations, who were on a higher spiritual plane and had less imperfections within, even the physical reflected the unusual imperfection. This is unlike our situation where we have much to perfect within before it can be sufficiently unusual for imperfection to be reflected in the physical. When R' Shmelke Horowitz became Rav on Nikolsburg, his first speech showed his wide-ranging knowledge of what was happening in science and the secular world, in addition to his great erudition in Torah. When he was later asked why he had injected so much non-religious knowledge into his derasha he explained. "That a Rav should know Torah is obvious. However many of the more unlearned people in town believe that the Rav knows only Torah and nothing else, and it is therefore pointless to come and discuss with him their daily problems and difficulties. They reject any words of rebuke or encouragement as coming from someone who knows nothing of the reality of their daily lives. I therefore felt it important for my new congregents to see that I am fully aware of what goes on in the world." And today, even the idea that some one called "Rabbi" will know, love and accept the Torah, can not be taken for granted. |
