The beauty of Torah study is its openness to individual interpretations. The Bible is wonderfully democratic, in that anyone can have an opinion, anyone can offer a possible solution to a conundrum, and no theory is ever wrong. Sometimes the richest Torah portions demonstrate this the best, because there's so much depth to the text that it's interesting to see what different people do with it. And sometimes the more challenging portions highlight this better, because everyone struggles mightily to find decent interpretations. What therefore happens is that every once in a while a new Torah scholar emerges, offering a fascinating new perspective.
One of our B'nai Mitzvah students at Ohev Shalom did just that this week. He had the misfortune of being saddled with Tazria-Metzorah, one of the most complicated Torah portions in the Bible. All we read about are laws of purification, skin disease, and cleaning "contaminated" houses. Most rabbis try to focus elsewhere this week, or they rely on rabbinic sources that reframe Tazria-Metzorah, and make it all about slander and gossip. Our brave young man, however, opened my eyes to a very interesting new perspective.
He had chosen to dedicate his Mitzvah (here: Social Action) Project to interviewing a Holocaust survivor, and this Shabbat he will be telling the congregation about the life story of this particular survivor. It happens to also be a particularly appropriate time for this D'var Torah, because last Monday was Yom Ha-Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Our Bar Mitzvah student looked at the atrocities
committed by the Nazis, and he saw that it all boiled down to how we treat people who are different, and how we deal with the fear of the unknown. He pointed out that the Israelites in the Bible feared disease and impurity, and required those afflicted to wait outside the camp for one week before returning home. The Nazis, in a way, were also looking to isolate what they saw as a "disease," but they took it to a whole new, monstrous and gruesome, level. And for the Nazis, there was no way to redeem oneself or return to society.
What a fascinating perspective! I've been thinking about this comparison for a while now, and it truly intrigues me. How do we treat "the Other"? How do we face our fears and seek to explain that which we cannot understand? The Israelites created their own rituals for dealing with disease and impurity, and through their rituals we identify their value system. Yes, the afflicted individual was forced to leave camp, but only temporarily. Re-admittance was always assumed. And the entire nation would wait for them to return before continuing on their travels through the desert. The individual was isolated, but remained indispensable to the community. Indeed, the way society - any society - treats its outliers betrays its morals.
This perspective also forces us to examine our own behavior. How do we as individuals and as a
collective handle illness, difference, dissension, and divisiveness? The Israelites offer us one, somewhat antiquated and sacrifice-based, model, while the Nazis offer us the complete antithesis of how to cope with any type of variance. What about us? In some ways we may be succeeding and in some ways we continue failing, but are we moving in the right direction? I think our Torah portion pushes us to think about these questions. I didn't really realize that before, but thanks to a wonderful new Torah scholar, my eyes have been opened! Have yours?
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