Our Torah reading today is perhaps the strangest in the Torah. It deals with a skin disease called tzaraat and how one is diagnosed and cured. Tzaraat is often translated as leprosy, but it wasn’t, and it afflicted a person not only on their skin, but in their clothing and on in their houses as well.
The cohen, the priest, would examine the afflicted person and would determine whether their disease was indeed tzaraat, and if it was, the person would be deemed tame, impure, and would be sent out of the Israelite camp, where he or she would live in isolation until the priest determined that metzora could come back into the camp after a ritual of purification that involved bathing, shaving, and animal offerings.
Why would the metzora need to be isolated? In the minds of our ancient ancestors, it seems they were worried that this disease was contagious and dangerous. Interestingly, throughout the centuries, because tzaraat was mistranslated as leprosy, people with leprosy were isolated in leper colonies because people were afraid of spreading the disease, when in fact, leprosy is not generally contagious!
We don’t actually know what this disease tzaraat was, but the rabbis seem bothered by the fact that the Torah required these people to be isolated from the community, so they add a moral lesson, saying this was a disease that resulted from gossip and slander. They wanted to draw a lesson from the Torah that gossip and slander are dangerous and contagious and can destroy a community, and so that’s why the metzora had to be isolated until they were cured of the disease of speaking badly about other people.
But all that is on the level of drash. The rabbis needed a drash because otherwise it would seem cruel to isolate people who were already suffering. So, setting aside the rabbis’ drash about gossip for now, let’s think about what it would be like for the metzora, for the one who is put in isolation, who is removed from the community. How would it feel to be the metzora?
[Answers from the congregation: Ashamed, Alone, Rejected, Embarrassed, etc.]
This Shabbat the Jewish community of Marin is focusing our attention on the issue of inclusiveness in our community. Who do we isolate? Who do we put outside the camp and exclude from fully being part of our community?
With the metzora, it is the priest who determines who is outside the camp and who gets to come back in. So, too, WE alienate and exclude people with special needs and different abilities, often unknowingly, and we also can be the ones to bring them into the camp, to make our community inclusive of everyone.
How might it feel for a family to be excluded from activities or social gatherings because their child has special needs? How might it feel for someone who wants to participate in services but can’t hear what’s going on? How might it feel for someone who suffers from mental illness and is avoided by people in the community? How might it feel to be called for an aliyah when you can’t stand up out of your wheelchair or you’re not tall enough to reach the table? Our parasha invites us to think about the alienation that the metzora feels, isolated outside of the camp, and invites to think about what we can do make sure that everyone feels welcome and included.
Our tradition insists that we see every human being as created in the image of God; everyone has infinite value. And we know, as we’ve talked about many times, how the Torah commands us to love and welcome the stranger.
And over the next few weeks, we’ll study Pirkei Avot and read how the rabbis taught us “to let other people’s dignity be as precious to us as our own.”
We know this, and we are compassionate and loving people, and we are doing what we can do make Kol Shofar accessible to everyone:
~ Sarah Rose has worked tirelessly with us to improve our sound system and assistive listening devices so that people with hearing loss can fully participate. ~We aim at Beit Binah and in our B’nei Mitzvah program to accommodate anyone who wants to participate.
~ Our architects are designing a Torah table in our new building that will be adjustable and fully accessible at different heights.
But there is much more we can do as a community, even in very subtle ways, to include and honor people with special needs: like not expressing annoyance or impatience or judgment if someone is disturbing you or needs special help –
you never know what someone’s story is, you never know what struggles are going on behind what seems to be someone’s unusual behavior. Again, the rabbis teach us in Pirkei Avot: Dan et kol ha-adam lekaf zechut, give every person the benefit of the doubt and judge them favorably.
And there is much more we can do in ways we haven’t even thought of to be more inclusive, and I want to request: if there is something you need, please ask, please speak to the rabbis or Orah, our Beit Binah director, or Mark, our executive director – we may not know what you need, but we are here to do whatever we can to make our community one in which everyone feels that they are in the camp.
To help us better understand and appreciate what it means to be welcoming and inclusive, I want to call on a few members of our community, who will share from their experience. Michael Perman, Sarah Rose, Jacob Perman, Talya Gates-Monasch.
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