Tazria-Metzora: Gaze of God
In this week’s double-parsha (Torah portion), we learn about the diagnosis and treatment for a particular disease that afflicts the Israelites through their skin, surfaces and walls: tzara’at. Although it is loosely defined as leprosy, the Rabbis agree that the disease is actually much more of a spiritual affliction that has physical manifestations.
The Diagnosis
There are debates about what that spiritual affliction actually is. The most common interpretation comes from a dissection of the word “Metzora” (one who has tzara’at) – Motzi and Rah, which loosely means “one who spreads slander” There are other midrashim (commentaries), however, that argue that the affliction may also be a result of other bad behaviors, including selfishness, arrogance, and bloodshed (BT, Arachin 16a).
The Sefat Emet, a Chassidic scholar, adds another layer. He argues that the condition is related to a spiritual imbalance, a blockage, between the light of inner holiness and the outside world due to the sins mentioned above. The blockage manifests itself as disease in the barriers where holiness isn’t able to emerge: skin, surfaces and walls.
The Treatment
In the parsha (Torah portion), the person with this condition is required to undergo a period of isolated quarantine while the symptoms subside. Many of the rabbis saw this temporary banishment as punishment. What could be worse than being forced to leave your community for solitary confinement?
In another light, however, this quarantine is the Torah’s version of a meditation retreat. It is an enforced separation from society so that the person who has erected barriers within oneself is forced to shine the light of awareness on those barriers and the ways they are making her sick. Like meditation retreats, it may not be pleasant or easy, but the process leads to a necessary opening and healing, critical for the person’s continued survival and growth.
“The Unmediated Gaze of God”
What actually happens on meditation retreats? Why would we take significant time out of our lives to bring our awareness to the present moment, over and over again for several days, weeks, or months? The Chassidic commentator, Mei Hashiloach (also known as Mordechai Yosef Leiner), claimed that the Metzora, the person with this spiritual disease, encountered the “unmediated gaze of God” in his days of isolation. What might that experience be like?
In my early years of going on retreats, the first few days were almost always consumed by pain and discomfort. In the silence, and with none of my favorite distractions readily available, the fears about my future, the shame from my past, and the unexamined core beliefs about myself had the space to emerge, and they did. The physical and emotional pain of this was almost too excruciating to tolerate. I fantasized about leaving. I read and re-read the posted signs in the meditation center (reading actual books on retreat was discouraged). Sometimes I punched pillows in anger, imagining them as the faces of the meditation teachers. Each retreat, my defenses held out as long as they could before the vessel broke open in a flood of tears and new understanding brought healing into the blocked and wounded places in my heart.
I don’t know why that process took place each time I went on retreat. Somehow, the heart, like the body, just wanted to heal, and given the right circumstances, it found its way to do so. I think that is the unmediated gaze of God – the holiness within finding its way through the blockages to the holiness without. That, to me, is the miracle of healing.
The Metzora and Tikkun Olam
Could the isolation of the Metzora not just be for his own good, but for the well-being of the entire world? In the Talmud, the Messiah is actually referred to as the “leper” teacher (Sanhedrin 98b). The Rabbis indicate that there is a deep connection between a mysterious spiritual imbalance that requires isolation and reflection, and the emergence from that state into a position of bringing healing for others.
We each have the opportunity to be “leper” teachers. We can each turn towards our own suffering and pain with bravery and resilience, seeking to understand it, to be present with it, and, when it’s time, to let old wounds heal. In this process, our heart grows in empathy and compassion as we have seen so many of the causes and effects of suffering in our own experience and can more easily recognize them in others. The barriers between the holiness inside and the holiness outside clear up, and like the healed Metzora, we return, purified.
For an organized experience, IJS runs Jewish meditation retreats of many different lengths (http://www.jewishspirituality.org/) or you can find additional retreat offerings here (http://www.awakenedheartproject.org/ )and here (http://orhalev.org/).
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s mission is to develop and teach Jewish spiritual practices so that individuals and communities may experience greater awareness, purpose, and interconnection.
Learn more
jewishspirituality.org
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