RABBI NACHMAN (NEIL) WINKLER PROBING BY Faculty, OU Israel Center THE PROPHETS l
As this Shabbat is also Rosh Chodesh Iyar, Chazal established that we are to read the final perek in Sefer Yishayahu (chapter 66) in which the navi foresees a time when all will come to worship Hashem in Yerushalayim on each Shabbat and every Rosh Chodesh. Nonetheless, these are exceptional times. I therefore felt that the selection ordinarily read for these parshiyot, a reading taken from the seventh perek of M’lachim B, offers us an important message for these trying times. For that reason, the article I share with you focuses upon the haftarah that COULD have been read today.
T
he opening words of the haftarah that we ordinarily read for this parasha, provides us with the clear connection to our parshiyot. “V’arba’ah anashim hayu metzora’im petach hasha’ar,” “And there were four metzora’im (lepers?) at the gate (of the city Shomron)” echoes the topic covered in the
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TORAH TIDBITS / TAZRIA METZORA 5780
Torah reading: laws of contamination and purification of the metzora. The rest of the haftarah, however, seems to have little connection, if any, to the detailed laws of tum’ah and tahara that fill the parshiyot we read. There is, however, an important lesson we can learn from the salvation brought to Israel by Hashem through these four metzora’im. In its comprehensive review of the laws of Tzora’at the Torah condemns the leper to isolation-“badad yeshev,” he must remain isolated, outside of the Israelite camp. As our haftarah relates, these ‘lepers’ were, indeed, relegated to a “lonely” area, isolated outside of the city. I would imagine that such a punishment, a limited form of “solitary confinement,” would have the effect of alienating these impure individuals. How understandable it would have been for these abandoned individuals to turn their back on the
