Metzorah 5771 - English

Rabbi Rami Pavolotzky
B’nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica


The Purification Ritual and Monoteism

Last week we read, in Parashat Tazria, about tzara’at, a word used to describe several skin diseases.  It is usually translated as “leprosy”, although it is known that identifying leprosy with the illnesses that the Torah calls tzara’at is incorrect.

This week’s parashah begins with the description of the complex purification ritual for people who, after suffering from the symptoms of tzara’at, had overcome their isolation period and whose symptoms had already disappeared.

The ritual itself was divided into three stages.  The first one (Va-yikra 14:2-8) was done once the cohen, or priest, had verified that the disease had disappeared.  Still outside the encampment, a ceremony started involving odd elements, such as two living birds, cedar wood, crimson wool and hyssop.  After shaving, bathing and washing their clothes, the “ex-lepers” could enter the camp, but not yet their homes.  After this first part, the person had to wait until the seventh day to begin the second stage (Va-yikra 14:9), which once again included the bathing, the washing of clothes and the shaving of every visible hair.  The third stage of the purification started on the eighth day (Va-yikra 14:10-32), which in turn included several elements and offerings.  After this rite, the person was deemed to be absolutely pure and without any ritual restriction.

When one reads carefully this entire complex procedure, through which a person who had healed from tzara’at could return to the community, many doubts arise.  One of them has to do with the perceptible magical aroma hidden behind the ritual.  The offerings, the blood aspersions, the cohen’s role, the birds’ liberation, the symbolic elements that occur in the different ceremonies, plus the fact that, in biblical times, tzara’at was considered as a plague or divine punishment, all lead us to suspect that this could be a magical ritual.  As if this was not enough, it is well documented and studied (see, for example, the “Leprosy” entry in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, or the exegesis of Bernard Bamberger on our parashah, in Gunther Plaut’s Chumash) that other neighboring nations of the ancient Hebrew people practiced similar rituals when this sort of diseases appeared. These rituals included magical elements, exorcisms, warlocks and the evident will to expel the demon causing the damage, dispelling it once and for all from the affected person.  Should we perhaps accept that the Torah is describing a magical ritual here?

The answer is a categorical no, as was brightly explained by Yehezkel Kaufman.  Although it is possible that this ritual is an aftertaste of ancient pagan customs, the Torah managed to eradicate every magical/pagan element of the ceremony.  First, everything starts once the cohen has checked that the disease has disappeared; the cohen has no powers, nor does he resort to them, to fight the illness, but simply verifies that its symptoms are gone.  It is noteworthy to add that the Torah itself registers a case of miraculous healing, that of Miriam (Bemidvar 12:10), but the divine miracle only occurs after Moses’ prayer for mercy.  The illness does not come from a demoniacal power, and neither is the ritual the weapon to fight it.  In biblical monotheism, both evil and good must come from God, and so does the disease.  The ritual does not try in the least to change the divine will, but is rather a symbolic act of purification, which we would call today a religious ceremony.

This is an example of how the Torah completely transformed the ancient pagan rituals, turning them into beautiful and profound ceremonies for the purpose of exalting the belief in one single God, the fundamental foundation of the Pentateuch.  The Torah offered the world solid bases on which ethical monotheism is strengthened: there are no longer hidden forces nor magic, but just one God, the source of everything that exists.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rami Pavolotzky
B’nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica