Two Minute Torah Podcast

Tazria-Metzora 5772 by Rabbi Joel Alter

This week’s parshiyot, Tazri’a and Metzora teach about purity and impurity in Israelite society.

In Leviticus chapter 13 verses 45-46 we learn that a person suffering from tzara’at is to live outside the boundary of the camp until his tzara’at heals, and is to call out Impure! Impure! Tamei! Tamei! so that no person who is Tahor – pure - should touch him and inadvertently become Tamei himself, having then to suffer the same banishment.

Note that the text doesn’t say that the person is to call out Tamei! only upon the approach of another person. Rather, the words of our text seem to say that the one suffering impurity is to call out to anyone and everyone, or even to no one, continually, whether another person is in earshot or not, let alone whether another person is actually at risk of becoming contaminated by the sufferer’s impurity.

That the sufferer might call out when alone from beyond the boundary of the camp makes it seem overwhelmingly lonely.

In our communities, many are banished for all manner of reasons. On college campuses, as in other contexts, the people who are in and the people who are out are well known, even if their identity changes over time.

So let’s remember that those on the outs are calling out, in their own way, Tamei! Tamei! Perhaps they fulfill their fate by remaining on the outside. More likely is that the people on the inside are in some way calling out to the outsiders - Tamei! Tamei!, reinforcing their exclusion.

Life has always been like this, and likely will remain so.

Yet, let us, we who are listening, be among the few who strain to hear the faint call of the Tamei beyond the din of the crowd. Let us answer Tamei! back with Tahor! Tahor! You needn’t be on the outside! No! Come in! Rejoin the community!

You, the listener, know who is on the outs. You know who truly poses some kind of threat and who, if we’re going to be honest with ourselves, merely threatens our sense of convention. Such people are not Tamei in any way that matters. On the contrary, we need their presence and their contribution. Let’s answer their call of Tamei! Tamei! and make more room for them on the inside.

Shabbat Shalom.