Tazria-Metzorah – Communication and Community

We are counting towards Sinai, that time and place where we stood – in a description so familiar that it has become trite – k’ish echad b’lev echad, as one person with one heart. That count moves us through the Sefirah period when we mourn the deaths of the students of Rabbi Akiva who failed to treat each other with respect. We make that journey accompanied by the consistent study of Pirkei Avot, the section of the Mishna dedicated to explicit teachings of the derech eretz, the sterling traits and behaviors that are both prerequisite and characteristic of true Torah accomplishment.

The most valuable tool in building our interpersonal relationships is the power of speech. Communication is intended to build community, yet we often use it in ways that create rifts. This week’s double Parsha focuses extensively on tzora’at, the plague of leprosy that results from negative, divisive, and antisocial speech, lashon hara, such that the metzorah is condemned to live outside the community, michutz lamachaneh, and is even separated from his family. It is a poignant reminder of how negative communication not only isolates the individual from the community but divides us into opposing camps.

We encounter these lessons immediately following Pesach. The villain of the Pesach story was the wicked King Pharaoh, who - as our Sages teach us - became a metzorah himself, with that condition serving as a pretense for his inflicting further torture on the Jews (Rashi to Shemot 2:23 based on Shemot Rabba 1:34). Pharaoh’s strategy (see Shemot ch. 5) was to isolate the Jews from any source of support such that they could not serve G-d and would see it as counter-productive to turn to Pharaoh for help. His systems turned Jews against each other, turned the community against its leadership, and even isolated husbands from their wives. Pharaoh was in that sense not only the king of Mitzrayim but also the king of the metzora’im.

It is therefore on Pesach, the festival of our redemption from Pharaoh’s clutches, that we celebrate and build pro-social communication, the very opposite of the metzorah’s behavior. The Haggadah, literally “the telling”, is the holiday text we use to communicate our past to our future, with parents guided to use their power of speech to grow their children’s sense of identification with the story and experience of the Jewish nation. Even the name of the holiday is understood in mystical sources as celebrating speech, with peh-sach read as a composite of two Hebrew words meaning “the mouth speaks”. This is how we celebrate the redemption from Egypt, growing deep connection and trust through substantive and refined communication.

This is how the journey from Pesach to Sinai takes us through Sefirah with a stop at Tazria-Metzora. Beginning with the celebration of Pesach we enhance our communications with each other, speaking and listening in the ways that create community, building our personal derech eretz along with our interpersonal relationships by treating one another with respect, until we arrive at Sinai as one person with one heart, k’ish echad b’lev echad.