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Parshat Metzora
2005
House Cleaning
This week, the Jewish community marked Rosh Chodesh Nisan (the first day of the Hebrew month of Nisan), which, among other things, indicates that Passover is right around the corner. For traditionally observant Jews, the preparations for Passover are perhaps the most elaborate and time-consuming rituals observed in modern Jewish life. With as much care as our ancestors once prepared their sacrificial offerings, many Jews today seek to rid our dwellings of any possible crumbs of chametz (leavened products), cleaning our homes from top to bottom, moving every piece of furniture, scrubbing behind the stove and under our refrigerators (as well as thoroughly cleaning the appliances themselves), switching over dishes, covering countertops and much, much more.
In Parshat Metzora, which we read this week, the Torah describes another thorough but very different type of "home cleansing." In Leviticus 14: 34-42, we read:
When you enter the land of Canaan that I give you as a possession, and I inflict upon a house in the land you possess, the owner of the house shall come and tell the priest saying, "Something like a tzara'at has appeared upon my house." The priest shall order the house cleared before the priest enters to examine the tzara'at, so that nothing in the house shall become impure. There are many questions that this section of the parsha raises, not the least of which is what is the meaning of the expression tzar'at habayit - "a plague on the house." It appears to be some type of disease that grows on buildings, and many have speculated that it might have been some type of mold. But whatever the plain meaning of the text is, the rabbis declared that "there has never been, nor will there ever be, a house smitten with tzara'at. Why then was the law given? To study it and be rewarded for studying it." (Sanhedrin 71a) In other words, what is most important is not the nature of the actual plague (which may have never existed), but what we can learn from it allegorically.
So what then is the meaning of tzara'at? Modern Biblical scholar Nehama Leibovitch explains that "tzara'at is a divine signal to the straying soul to return to the way of the Torah, a sublime manifestation of God's desire to have the sinner do teshuvah (repentance)." (Studies on Vayikra ad locum) She bases this on a teaching from Maimonides, who was a physician, and taught that "tzara'at of garments and houses are not natural phenomena, but wondrous signs for the people of Israel to warn them against the sin of lashon ha-ra (gossip). Thus the house wall of those who indulge in evil talk will undergo a change. If he repents, the house becomes pure again; if he persists in his evil ways, so much so that his house is demolished, his leather couches and accessories suffer discoloration, but they will regain their purity if he repents. If he fails to abandon his bad ways, to the extent that they have to be burnt, his garments are affected by the tzara'at. If he repents, they regain their purity...." (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Tuma't Tzara'at 16:10)
Thus, in the case of tzara'at, Maimonides gives us a different way of looking at what it means to "clean our home" - it is not about the physical cleaning we do, but rather a spiritual cleansing - ridding ourselves and our households of all of those things that turn us away from living our lives according to our highest values.
Or perhaps this really is no different from the Passover cleaning we are currently engaged in, but another side of the same coin. For if we look at what exactly chametz is, we discover it is a substance which gets inside, festers and grows, changing the nature of the original object. If we take chametz to its allegorical level, then we can also see it as that which we allow to get inside of us, fester and take us away from living the lives we want to live. All of us have such chametz in our lives - perhaps it is a longstanding grudge against a friend who may have wronged us, or resentment toward a co-worker who got the promotion we thought we deserved, or anger toward loved ones for something they said or did that hurt us.
Whatever our own personal chametz may be, Parshat Metzora teaches us that we must find ways to rid ourselves of it. As we prepare for Passover this year, let us devote equal energy to the cleansing of this spiritual chametz as we do to our physical chametz.
Prepared by Rabbi Marc Israel, director, KESHER College Department
Learn More
Additional commentaries and text studies on Metzora at MyJewishLearning.com.
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