Tazria: Bring It In, Lepers!

Earlier this week, I pretended to be a jet setter for a day. I just "hopped" on over to Chicago for a single night, to attend a conference - a think-tank of sorts - for a small group of rabbis. One of the main 

topics of conversation was something called Keruv (pronounced "Kay-roov"). I suppose you could roughly translate it, from Hebrew to English, as "inclusion." It comes from the word karov, meaning "close by," and centers on ways to bring other people in and make them feel part of our community. By no means is this a revolutionary concept, and yet when we actually think and talk about specific ways to do this, it can make people uncomfortable and uneasy, and it challenges our status quo. So let's talk a little bit about keruv, and especially how it's essentially the opposite of what our Torah portion suggests this week.

Tazria, our parashah, focuses on the unpleasant subjects of skin disease and impurity. It outlines the rituals for declaring a person, a garment, or even a wall to be "stricken" with an ailment that renders these things impure, and offers ways to bring them back to a state of purity again. We cringe at the topic of 

bodily functions and discolorations, but we also cringe because of the Torah's treatment of these issues and these individuals. It feels - shall we say - less than compassionate. It doesn't employ much sensitivity or delicate subtlety, and it does not feel kind. It also doesn't feel inclusive or welcoming. It seems instead to push people further away, to create categories of who's "in" and who's "out," and to label people in a way that suggests their skin disease entirely and exclusively defines them. Keruv flexes a different muscle. It challenges us to see the nuance and totality of other people, and to welcome and accept them as multi-faceted, complex beings; just as we ourselves would want to be treated. Keruv is about opening up our own narrow definitions of what's "pure" and what's "impure," and learning to see things in new ways. 

We could be talking about interfaith families, and how to make our congregation more welcoming, accepting, and supportive of people of all faiths (and no faiths). We could focus on LGBTQ engagement, and how to be more sensitive in our language, our building, and our 

understanding of how families are "supposed to" look. We could also discuss wheelchair accessibility, dietary considerations, and a whole host of other topics where we sometimes don't take the time to be more sensitive and thoughtful. Keruv can even be a reflexive challenge to the self; finding ways to both push ourselves to get more involved, and also carefully consider what we say and to whom in an effort to be more inclusive. This may seem like a particularly modern concern, but in fact it can be traced right back to our Torah portion, Tazria. 

We imagine that the Torah is exclusionary; labeling people as "pure" or "impure," essentially "clean" or "unclean." And yet, our parashah is really all about how to bring those people BACK into the community. These labels are not permanent, and the people who are afflicted should not be indefinitely saddled with the stigma of their illnesses. 

Oddly enough, the Torah is actually trying to teach us how to see these people as MORE than just their maladies. We can, and should, go the next step, which is to stop seeing individuals and concepts that are different as repulsive. We still sometimes treat The Other as a leper, and we should be able to do better, to have evolved in the millenia since the Torah was written. One thing the Torah definitely can teach us, is that keruv, inclusion, isn't even really about that other person. It's about me and you, and pushing ourselves to change our mindset and be open to change, difference, and non-traditional... WHATEVER! We need to stop pushing The Other away, and retraining ourselves to do the exact opposite; to welcome, to embrace, and to "l'kareiv," to draw close.

Photos in this blog post:

1. CC image courtesy of Kitt Hodsden onWikimedia Commons

2. CC image courtesy of National Library of Australia on Wikimedia Commons

3. CC image courtesy of ANGELUS on Wikimedia Commons

4. CC image courtesy of Petteri Sulonen on Wikimedia Commons