I Don’t Know – Metzora 5782
We're still on leprosy this week in the Torah portion. There's beauty in things that peel, as we see in nature. I ordered some trees this week that shed their bark in beautiful curls of golden and orange, because I want to bring that beauty into my yard, even if it looks to some like the trees have been struck by disease.
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I bought some trees this week. Saplings, to plant on our back hill. They’re paperbark maples, which means their bark peels and sheds in beautiful curls of gold, orange, and brown. I can’t wait to see them fully grown, in the winter time, with the setting sun just behind them.
It’s funny to think that something which peels could be so ascetically pleasing. And it’s not just me. I first saw paperbark maples at the Arnold Arboretum, in Boston. It’s one of those old world Boston legacies, grounds first cultivated by Harvard botanists with the species samples they retrieved on expeditions to the farther reaches of the world. The park is hilly, offering lots of microclimates, and features plants from all around the world that can thrive at this latitude. It’s the perfect place to walk, picnic, or read a book under the rhododendrons. And it features more than one plant that peels or sheds in some exotic way.
Shedding the past is hard, and as much as we may often want to, we can’t just peel ourselves out of our own skin. But we can peel away the bits, metaphorically at least, that we don’t want, leaving space for healing and new growth.
We’re still on leprosy this week in the Torah, with laws about how lepers are determined clean, and how they re-enter Israelite society after being sent away to shed their disease. It’s an elaborate ritual, carried out by the priests, with sacrifices and signs, and re-entrance isn’t always guaranteed for lepers. Beyond the physical concerns of preventing the spread of illness, there seem to be meta-physical concerns of preventing the spread of sin. Leprosy, and other physical manifestations like boils, warts, and even skin color, have been used to justify otherness for the entirety of human history. The physical is held up as evidence of the meta-physical, that sin is present in this person’s life, and that sin must be exorcised from the community, like disease. Only when the guarantors of purity–the priest in this case–have declared the person free of physical and spiritual contamination, should they be allowed back into society.
But it’s not just people who can be afflicted. This week’s parsha features a recipe for how to address an affliction that appears on your house, and spreads, similar to leprosy.
The rabbis believe that the sara’at the Torah refers to, on the side of a house, is entirely meta-physical. It’s not real, it’s an idea of a sin inflicted house whose sin physically manifests on the walls, like a leper’s sin’s manifest on the person’s skin.
To me, it sounds like mold, maybe like the orange mold that pops up in my yard every year. It’s otherworldly. Gooey, vibrant, totally out of place. I don’t know where it comes from. And when it starts to spread inside, it certainly feels like what the Torah describes this week.
Leviticus 14:33
G-d spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying:When you enter the land of Canaan that I give you as a possession, and I inflict an eruptive plague upon a house in the land you possess, the owner of the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, “Something like a plague has appeared upon my house.”
There’s a level of uncertainty with this statement. Just like the orange goo that pops up in my yard, the owner of this house in the Torah isn’t certain what’s appeared on their walls, but it’s “something like a plague.” The rabbis encourage us to consider that the word something is there out of a sense of propriety.
“Even if he (the owner of the house),” says Rashi, “be a learned man and knows for sure that it is a plague he shall not decide the matter as a certainty saying, ‘a plague has shown itself to me’ but, ‘something like a plague has shown itself to me.’”
One of Rashi’s later champions, the late 15th century rabbinic commentator known as Mizrahi, quoting Talmud, wrote, “On account of proper behavior, such that a man should not say even about something that is clear to him, “[It is] certain,” but rather, “[There is] a doubt.” And this is what the Sages, may their memory be blessed, said (Berakhot 4a), “Teach your tongue to say, “I don’t know.’”
I've been thinking a lot lately about how to bring the outside in—whether its the beauty backyard flowers bring to my kitchen window, fresh air on warm days, or good vibes to replace any lingering negativity in the air. Sure, it blows dust and dirt and pollen into the house, but there’s something purifying about the gust of warm air that blow through the house on a bright sunny day, in the song of a bird that’s come to visit just for the bird seed I put out in the backyard, even if I track some of that seed into the house.
I can’t make the wind blow, or the sun shine, but I can put out bird seed that draws bluebirds and robins, cardinals and wrens. I can put a bee house on the stump halfway up our hill, attracting pollinators who can help the berry bushes I’m planting this year grow and bring more blueberries, blackberries, and marionberries into my life than I can possibly eat alone, meaning there’s enough to share, just another reason to invite the outside world in. Maybe I’ll make jam. I don’t know.
I’ve been looking at the moss, growing rampant in my backyard because there’s too much moisture and not enough drainage, and thinking how pretty it looks, rather than how invasive. I’ve been thinking about how the Torah and the rabbis encourage us to see the things we think we know and say, “maybe it’s so, and then again maybe no.”
Passover is coming next week, and with it the sense of renewal that seems to accompany spring. Daffodils are blooming in my backyard where the paperbark maples will soon be planted, and the squirrels are digging up the last of their winter nuts. Those left behind will be forgotten, returned to the ground through rot, or brought forth with the spring rains, blooming into tiny trees. I don’t know. But we will see.
Shabbat Shalom
