Metzora
How can we keep the balance between the inner and outer?
Reflection by Ariel Ariel Yisraelah Hendelman, the Or HaLev Team:
"In the Torah portion of Metzora, we continue learning about the procedures of purification for the one who has been afflicted with the mysterious disease of tzara’at. While tzara’at is often translated as `leprosy,` in Chassidic teachings it’s treated as a metaphor for slanderous speech. The one afflicted with this `skin disease` has weaponized their speech to harm others. Their forced distancing from the rest of the people is a kind of remedy for the distance that slander creates between the one who is being spoken about and those who hear.
The Mei Hashiloach (Rabbi Mordechai Leiner) suggests that the root causes of toxic speech are anger and resentment – rendering tzara’at a disease of one who allows anger to fester inside of them.
It’s interesting to note that after the Torah describes the case of a person with tzara’at, it then goes on to describe what happens when the walls of a home are infected. We might say that when one fails to utilize this state as a gateway into the necessary inner spiritual work, it spreads to the structures that hold them. There’s no way out but through.
When someone is sensitive, we call them `thin skinned`and when someone is insensitive, we call them `thick skinned. ` The skin, whether it be of the body or the walls of a home, is the barrier between inner and outer worlds. Tzara’at comes to show us when that barrier needs tending to, when something is off balance and the inner and outer are no longer in harmony.
Only the kohen, the one whose life is dedicated to elevating the material into the spiritual - who tends to the inner sanctuary on behalf of all who live outside of it - can make a proper diagnosis and engage in the ritual acts that will turn dis-ease into wellbeing once again.
May our meditation practice serve to strengthen our inner kohen, so that we can offer diagnosis and ritual remedy to ourselves to maintain balance whenever it’s needed."