Feature Tidbit
for Parashat Tazria

Body & Soul

That's us. From the moment we're born (actually, before that) until death, we are the special combination of the eternal, holy soul and the temporal, mundane body. These two components of each of us do not, cannot, operate independently.

Imagine this: A person falls and breaks his arm. Simple fracture, left arm, ulna - that means that the person didn't say Birkat HaMazon with proper kavana. A painful hangnail results from showing disrespect to one's teachers. A toothache happens because a person ate a food with a questionable set of ingredients.

How do we know those things? We don't. But what if we did?

There was such a thing. There is. Except we are not knowledgeable in how it works, so it isn't "practiced" today. Imagine a person who speaks LASHON HARA (for example) and develops a certain skin condition that IS a direct result of his sin. Imagine a physical manifestation of a spiritual transgression.

That is TZORA'AT. (People tend to translate it into English as Leprosy, but that disease does not conform with the descriptions from the Torah and Mishna as TZORA'AT. Some of the manifestations of the one resemble those of the other. TZORA'AT is the main theme of Parshat Tazria, not just M'tzora.)

Our sources say that LASHON HARA is the main sin that causes TZORA'AT, although other sins are also implicated. Not every skin problem is TZORA'AT. A person was required to consult an expert Kohen if he develops certain symptoms. Sometimes, the Kohen would declare the person TAHOR (ritually pure) upon the first inspection. Basically, that would mean that the particular skin problem should be shown to a dermatologist - it is a physical problem only. Sometimes, the Kohen would declare the person a M'TZORA and sometimes the Kohen would recheck the signs a week later to determine what's what.

The point is - there is a direct connection between a person's spiritual behavior and his physical well-being. Things are much more complicated than this, but there is enough here to provide food for thought. Today, without TZORA'AT, we still have the notion that there is a connection between what we do and what happens to us. We might not know the mechanics of the connection, but we believe (should believe) that there is a connection. In our VIDUI, letter KUF, we say, "we were stiff-necked". In the AL CHEITs, we asy it again - KASHYUT OREF. Siddur commentators define the sin of stubbornness as refusing to accept that there is a connection between our behavior and what happens to us and insisting that everything is random and coincidental.

This connection is not meant to negate a physical-physical connection. Physical maladies do have physical causes. A certain disease can be caused by a bacterium or virus. What caused the disease? A virus. Yes, but what caused this particular person to have fallen victim to this virus and the disease it brings about? That is the question that often has a spiritual or a moral-behavioral answer. When the mitzvot (halachot) of NEGA'IM were active, if a kohein declared a blemish to be TZARA'AT, then it was forbidden to treat it as purely physical. We are not allowed to cut off a sign of Tzara"at. And we must not ignore the call to introspection and T'shuva that was then and still is now, albeit in a different format.

We are made up of a body and sould which are firmly linked to each other throughout a person's lifetime.

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