Dear Friends;
I hope that you will enjoy the following Parsha summary followed by a Dvar Torah;
” Parsha in a Nutshell “
The Torah describes the purification procedure for a metzora (a person afflicted with tzara’at) upon conclusion of his isolation. This process extends for a week and involves korbanot and immersions in the mikveh. Then, a kohen must pronounce the metzora pure. A metzora of limited financial means may substitute lesser offerings for the more expensive animals.
Before a kohen diagnoses that a house has tzara’at, household possessions are removed to prevent them from also being declared ritually impure. The tzara’at is removed by smashing and rebuilding that section of the house. If it reappears, the entire building must be demolished.
The Torah details those bodily secretions that render a person spiritually impure, thereby preventing his contact with holy items, and the Torah defines how one regains a state of ritual purity.
” Dvar Torah “
Parashat Metzora, which is usually read together with last week’s Parashat Tazria, is always read in the month of Nissan, close to the Holiday of Passover. Accordingly, the Chachamim say that there must be a connection between the parsha, the month of Nissan and Chag HaPesach. So, what is the connection?
Well, from the beginning of the month of Nissan, we, specially the women, are all extremely busy with final stages of house cleaning and getting rid of all the Chametz. I don’t think there is any other Mitzvah in the Torah that the Jews, especially in our community, take it so seriously and perform it at its best. Getting rid of the Chametz is so important to us that we clean our homes from top to bottom so immaculately, by cleaning behind every piece of furniture, scrubbing behind the stove and under our refrigerators, switching over the dishes, covering the countertops, cleaning our basements and much, much more. By the day before Pesach, there won’t even be a trace of any chametz left in our houses!
In this week’s Parsha, the Torah also talks about some kind of “house cleansing”. The Torah says: ” When you enter the land of Canaan that I give to you as a possession, and I inflict a tzara’at disease upon a house, the owner of the house shall come to the Kohen saying, “Something like an affliction has appeared upon my house.” The Kohen shall command; and they shall empty the whole house before he enters to examine the affliction, so that nothing else in the house shall become contaminated.”
As we had discussed in last week’s Parsha, according to most commentators, “Tzara’at” is a heavenly disease that falls upon people’s homes, furnitures, clothing and eventually on human skin due to committing the sin of “Lashon Ha’ra”, gossiping and negative talking about someone else. The sequence of warnings or punishments for committing the sin were as follows. First G-d warned the offender by sending a sign of decay to the walls of his house. If the offender repented the condition stopped there. If he failed to do so, his furniture was affected, then his clothes and finally his skin.
But the question that bothers me is as follows. Why does the torah tell the person whose house walls are afflicted by tzara’at to empty the contents of his house before the Kohen comes to examine it so that the household items won’t become contaminated? We know that this disease was not contagious because it was brought upon a person who committed the sin of Lashon Ha’ra, and could only be stopped if he repents and stops his evil ways. So why to go through the hard process of cleaning the house?
Rabbi Frand gives the following beautiful explanation. The household items of the person whose walls might be afflicted by tzaraat is not going to become contaminated. The only reason the Torah is telling him to remove all the contents of the house, is to give him a warning that if he doesn’t stop from his slanderous ways, his household items are going to be afflicted by the disease too. During the process of taking out the household items, the person may come to realise that what he is doing is wrong and he needs to stop. There is no way to purify the house unless he purifies himself! House cleansing has to be accompanied by spiritual cleansing! All the effort that he has put into taking out all the contents of the house is going to go to waste, if he doesn’t stop from his evil ways. Only then, when he changes himself, does the hard labor of house cleansing become productive and the household items will remain pure!
Rabbi Frand says, the same goes with Pesach cleaning. As hard as we try to get rid of all the Chametz in our possessions, it’s worthless if we don’t get rid of the Chametz inside us too. Chametz is a fermented dough that rises. Accordingly, the chametz inside us is the ego and the pride that we have, known as “Ga’ava”, that makes us rise and feel superior over others. Pesach is the time to get rid of ALL the chametz in our possession, both physically and spiritually! We have to remember that all the physical mitzvot that we do is to benefit our soul and to improve our relationship with G-d. So there is no point for physical cleaning if we are not planning clean our souls!
Yes my friends, in order to get rid of the chametz, physical cleaning has to be accompanied by spiritual cleansing. When we clean our house, we should get rid of all the pride and ego inside us too. We should never look down on anyone. We are all children of G-d and deserve to be respected equally. Having money, good looks and high ranking positions are only because G-d granted us with these blessings, and on our own, we would not have had them. So there is no reason to take pride in them.
Remember that the beauty of a cake is measured by how much it puffs, but the greatness of man is measured by his level of humility.
Shabbat Shalom & Regards;
Martin