Parasha: Metzora · Aliyah: Fourth (Netzach)

כי תבאו…ונתתי נגע צרעת, When you come to the land…and I will give a plague of "leprosy," etc. How can one describe the plague of "leprosy" breaking out on one's house as good news so that the Torah describes it as a gift from G'd? Why did the Torah not merely write: "when the walls of your houses develop certain stains, etc." in the same way as the Torah described such a skin disease in 13,9? Vayikra Rabbah 17,6 was conscious of this and explained that the Canaanites who heard that the Israelites were approaching hid their valuables inside the walls of their houses. When the walls would display signs of "leprosy," the Jewish owner would investigate and discover the hidden treasure. This is homiletics, of course. Rabbi Levy explains in that same Midrash that when G'd wishes to reprove us He does not immediately inflict pain on our bodies, but He first afflicts our houses, and in the event this does not help He afflicts our clothing. Only if we fail to respond to these two warnings does G'd inflict the plague on our bodies, i.e. our skin. When viewed in this light the affliction on the house is indeed a "gift" i.e. a demonstration of G'd's loving concern for us.

Why then did the Torah list the respective plagues on man, his clothing, and his house, in the reverse order of what Rabbi Levy would have us believe? I have explained this previously. At the time the legislation was revealed the Israelites had not yet entered the Holy Land and therefore G'd could not warn the guilty individual by smiting his house first. The reason the Torah introduced this paragraph with the words: "when you come to the land, etc." is to tell us that as of that time the order of afflictions would be reversed and G'd would first strike the house of the guilty person whom He wanted to warn to mend his social behaviour. You may still ask why the Torah does not list the "leprosy" on one's clothing before the "leprosy" on one's skin, seeing that everyone wore clothing at the time this legislation was revealed? G'd could have demonstrated His loving concern for the guilty by first smiting his clothing and the Torah describing this as the first example of such a נגע צרעת? It appears that the reason the Torah chose to position the legislation of "leprosy" on one's clothing in between the legislation of skin disorders and "leprous-like stains" on the walls of one's house, is because there are some common denominators between the stains on the house and on the clothing on one side, and between the stains on the clothing and on the skin on the other side. The minimum size of a נגע צרעת on one's skin and the size of such a נגע צרעת on one's clothing is identical, whereas the minimum size of that plague on a house to be considered as טמא is twice that of people or clothing. On the other hand, the plague on both clothing and houses is characterised by a greenish colour, whereas the skin disorder which afflicts man is of some kind of whitish shade.

Furthermore, we need to understand why the Torah did not complete the laws pertaining to the plague on people before introducing the legislation about a plague afflicting one's clothing. The reason cannot be that the Torah wanted to group together all the laws of ritual impurity resulting from such stains before describing the procedures leading to their purification. If that had been the Torah's intention why did it not also describe the impurity arising from a plague on houses before commencing with the laws of purification? I think it is quite obvious that the unusual positioning of the law of the plague on one's clothing right in the middle of the legislation concerning "leprous" skin, is proof that the Torah wanted to teach that G'd first afflicts man's garments before afflicting man himself. The Torah made plain by the positioning of the נגע בגדים that it too was caused by man's sinful conduct. When the Torah describes the purification rites after having spelled out the law about the respective ritual impurity the garments conferred on the sinful man who wears them, it is clear that had man responded to the call to repentance of the plague on his garments, he would not now also need to purify himself from the effects of the נגע צרעת on his skin.

Another reason the Torah did not first mention the affliction on man's garments is that had it done so we would have assumed that a plague on one's garments indicates guilt of a minor nature, whereas a plague on one's skin is indicative of a sin of a more serious nature, rather than that both plagues are a punishment for the same sin, the skin-disease being a punishment for lack of sensitivity to the message G'd sent to the wearer by afflicting his clothing.

והגיד לכהן לאמור, and he shall tell the priest, saying, etc. The word לאמור appears to be superfluous. Torat Kohanim explains that the word means that the priest is to tell the afflicted person words of admonition, explaining to him why he had been so afflicted. This is pure homiletics, seeing that the Torah speaks of the owner of the house doing the talking, not the priest. Our sages simply used the principle of אם אינו ענין לדברי בעל הבית תנהו ענין לדברי כהן, "if we could not find a reason for the owner to say something other than what the Torah recorded here, we may apply the words exegetically to what the priest says instead." The author of Korban Aharon explains the sequence as follows: והגיד לכהן, the reason the owner of the affected house is forced to tell the priest about his problem is לאמוד, so that the priest can sermonize to him and explain why he was made to suffer this plague. If this explanation were correct the Torah should have written the word לאמור after the words כנגע נראה לי בבית, "it seems to me that the house has developed a plague." No doubt the approach of Torat Kohanim is quite correct.

However, the question remains why the Torah did not simply write that "the priest spoke, etc.," and I would not have had to search for the meaning of the verse? Clearly, the Torah wanted to leave something for us to exploit exegetically. Our sages have articulated this very principle themselves in Torat Kohanim. This is what is written there: "why did the Torah not write that the owner said נגע, but describes him as saying כנגע, "something like the plague?" They answer that the letter כ teaches that even if the owner is very learned and he has no doubt that the symptoms he has found are those of a נגע, he must not take it upon himself to pronounce judgment but he must leave it to the priest. What forced the author of Torat Kohanim to explain the extra letter כ in this manner? Perhaps the Torah was afraid that if it wrote simply נגע the owner would feel that unless he was certain that the symptoms were really those of the נגע צרעת there was no need to call in the priest. The Torah therefore made it plain by the additional letter כ that the priest has to be called in regardless of whether it is doubtful if the symptoms were truly the ones resulting in the house having to be torn down. What the author of Torat Kohanim meant was that all the Torah had to write were the words והגיד לכהן. The words "I think that something like a נגע appears on my house," were quite unnecessary. It was clear from the context of the paragraph that the owner referred to this. Considering these extra words, Torat Kohanim concluded that the reason was to teach us that the priest has to be called in regardless of whether there is doubt or not. This explanation is based on the scholar who holds that on occasion the Torah wrote things in order to encourage us to engage in exegesis.

Torat Kohanim continues to exploit practically every word here in a similar fashion. The words נראה לי, are explained as "appeared to me and not to my light," i.e. I could see it with my own eyes unassisted by artificial light. This is the basis for the rule that one need not open the windows of a house in order to start searching for symptoms of a נגע. The word בבית, "in the house," is taken to mean that even if the stain occurred in the upper floor, the whole house is afflicted. Many other halachot are all derived from these basically superfluous words of our verse. Even though our sages often use the above mentioned method of exegesis, it is preferable to derive a rule from a direct sequence of words such as לאמור כנגע in this verse. It means that regardless of how definite the appearance of that stain, the owner has to report it as being only "like a נגע." We are not bound by the exegetical method used by our sages in deriving certain rulings from the presence of or absence of certain words or letters provided we follow accepted norms of exegesis. The major restriction we are bound by is that our exegesis must not result in הלכות directly opposed to those arrived at by the classical commentators.

בטרם יבא הכהן, before the priest arrives. The reason the Torah had to write the word הכהן "the priest" again is, that otherwise I could have thought that the priest can issue directives before he arrives at the scene. According to that, the priest would not have had to delay himself until the people had cleared the house in question of all its contents. By writing the word הכהן, the Torah made it plain that the word בטרם is not linked to the mention of the priest as the one who issues the directive but is connected with the words ופנו "and they shall clear out."

כל אשר בבית, everything that is within the house. The meaning is that none of the items that have been removed prior to the arrival of the priest will be affected by the declaration that the house and all its contents have become ritually impure. The reason is that G'd is concerned with the belongings of even the person for whom He expressed some disdain. We must ask ourselves that seeing this is so why did all these items have to be removed prior to the priest's arrival when the impurity decreed on these items does not become effective until after the priest's departure (compare verse 38)? The Torah wrote ולא יטמא כל אשר בבית, "in order that all that is in the house not become defiled," to teach us that once the priest has observed the symptoms on the walls of the house as being those of a נגע, he may not delay pronouncing the house and its contents as ritually unclean any longer. If the people in the house had waited until the last possible moment with removing all mobile objects they would most likely have forgotten some in their haste. It is better therefore that they should do so as soon as they became aware that the priest was on his way.

We are taught in Keylim 12,5 that G'd's concern is only for earthenware vessels seeing all the other vessels are subject to purification rites except earthenware jars, etc. According to our explanation G'd is concerned even about very small and inexpensive earthenware vessels.

וראה…בקירות הבית, and he sees…on the walls of the house, etc.This paragraph alludes to the actions of G'd and how He deals with the wicked who chose to be defiled by associating themselves with the evil urge which is known by our sages as נגעי בני אדם, the plague which afflicts human beings. According to the Zohar volume 1 page 187 G'd equips the body with a soul. If the partnership is successful, all well and good. If not, G'd yanks the soul from that body and places it in a different body. This is hinted at here in the Torah's description of what happens to the afflicted house. The house symbolises man's body. The priest represents G'd as we have pointed out previously in our analysis on page 1106. The Torah describes that G'd examines the walls of the house to determine how far the evil urge has penetrated the body of the person concerned. The word שקערורת may be understood as a composite of the two words שקע רורות with the letter (vowel) patach being swallowed up as part of the pronunciation. The missing letter is perceived as being an א. The meaning of the two words would be "the cursed one (ארור) has penetrated deeply (שקע). Inasmuch as wickedness is multi-faceted, the Torah uses the plural ending when describing the evil urge. The Torah goes on to speak of ירקרקת, an allusion to sin we are familiar with from Shabbat 33, where הדרוקן, dropsy, is described as a symbol of the wickedness of the person afflicted by it. The word אדמדמות, refers to the sin of bloodshed. When the Torah speaks of the priest ordering the house to be shut up, this means that the person represented by the house will cease to receive outpourings of G'd's generosity. This is the mystical dimension of the banishing of certain wicked people from society. They are banished in order to prevent them from receiving the outpourings of heavenly bounty. If the person so afflicted becomes aware of what is happening to him and why, well and good; if not, the priest i.e. G'd, will subject this person to sufferings. If that does not help either, He will eventually order the destruction of the house, i.e. the body which the soul in question inhabits. This is the meaning of ונתץ הבית את אבניו, "he shall break down the house, its stones, etc."

דברו אל בני ישראל ואמרתם, "speak to the children of Israel and say to them, etc." This entire verse appears redundant in view of verse 1 before it. Perhaps we may understand it in light of Torat Kohanim which explained that whereas the Israelites confer ritual impurity when they suffer from the involuntary seminal emissions called זיבה, the Gentiles do not confer such ritual impurity if they come into contact with Jews or touch their belongings, etc. The Torah therefore employed the expression דברו to indicate the relative severity of this legislation. Expressions such as דבר always indicate some degree of harshness when compared to the expression אמור. A Jew suffering from this disease transmits ritual impurity to anything he sits on or lies on, even. The Torah continued with the softer ואמרתם to console the Israelites that the fact that they transmit ritual impurity is a compliment for them as it shows that prior to that disease they were in a state of ritual purity, a status never enjoyed by Gentiles. The word אמר is used as indicating spiritual superiority in Deut. 26,17 where G'd described the mutual bond between G'd and Israel in those terms. The considerations we have just outlined form the mystical dimension of the statement in Shabbat 13 that a שוטה, a person of unsound mind, does not suffer afflictions. The meaning is that he does not realise that he is discriminated against by suffering what others do not suffer.

איש איש כי יהיה זב, any man that has an issue, etc. Why did the Torah repeat the word איש? Perhaps the Torah wanted to inform us of something we learned in Tanna de bey Eliyahu chapter 15 that if a man experiences a seminal emission he is obligated to immerse himself in a ritual bath. Such a person may reason that inasmuch as no outsider is aware of this emission, he need not bother to go to a ritual bath. He will use the same kind of reasoning when it occurs a second time. If he experiences such an emission a third time without having purified himself in the interval, he would become guilty of what is written in Job 33,29 פעמים שלוש עם גבר, "twice or three times with a man;" i.e. that G'd lets man get away with his inadequacies twice or three times before disciplining him severely. Ignoring the need for ritual immersion will eventually result in such a man becoming a זב, afflicted with the flux which forms the subject matter of our paragraph. The word ,איש איש alludes to the person who ignores the need to purify himself repeatedly. We find the word איש used in Deut. 23,11 where the Torah speaks of a man experiencing nocturnal seminal emissions and becoming ritually impure as a result. The Torah hints that such a person cannot expect to get away with his failure to purify himself more than twice.

זוכו טמא הוא, in his issue, he is impure. Our sages in Torat Kohanim understand the last three words of the verse, i.e. זובו טמא הוא as belonging together. The verse tells us that the flux he emitted is ritually impure. You may ask that this could have been arrived at by simple logic, seeing that the Torah had told us that the person who emitted the flux is ritually impure although he is one step removed from the cause of the impurity; it would therefore stand to reason that the agent causing the impurity would be ritually unclean! We may counter that we do not apply this kind of reasoning in connection with the scapegoat which is considered pure although it confers ritual impurity on the persons touching it (compare Leviticus 16,28). The Torah therefore had to write that the emission itself is ritually impure. Torat Kohanim uses another argument justifying the statement זובו טמא הוא. The emission is ritually impure whereas any blood issuing from the same bodily orifice of this afflicted person is not impure. Had it not been for these three words I would have reasoned that seeing that the spittle of the afflicted person is impure although it issues forth from a pure area of the individual, blood which issues forth from the same orifice as the seminal discharge would most certainly be ritually impure! The Torah therefore wrote זובו טמא הוא, that only "it," i.e. the seminal discharge from that canal is ritually impure. The scholar quoted in Torat Kohanim uses similar reasoning in reverse when he needs to find an otherwise unnecessary word or letter to include the urine of the person afflicted with זוב as conferring ritual impurity. This is based on the letter ו in the word וזאת in verse 3. Had it not been for that extra letter I would have reasoned that if the spittle which issues forth from a "clean" part of the afflicted person's body transmits ritual impurity then urine which issues forth from an already impure part of his body certainly does so? Why then did the Torah have to include such a הלכה by writing וזאת? Answer: Seeing above reasoning is not true in the case of any blood issuing forth from that orifice which nonetheless does not transmit impurity, the Torah had to write a letter to include urine in the liquids which do transmit impurity. Niddah 56 raises the question of why blood is included in the list of liquids which does not transmit impurity whereas urine is included in the list of liquids which does transmit impurity. Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai answers that urine leaves the body only after a quantity has collected, similar to spittle, whereas blood leaves the body one drop at a time. Besides, both spittle and urine can be re-absorbed by the body in the form in which they left the body, something that is not possible with blood seeing it congeals and hardens.

The difficulty with this answer is that if true, all the Torah had to write was the word וזאת in order to include urine. I would then have applied the previously mentioned contradictory two קל וחומר to arrive at the conclusion that the logic of either cancel each other out. This would have led me to realise that the Torah wrote the inclusive letter ו in וזאת in order to demolish the קל וחומר. Seeing that the letter ו could include only one liquid, I would have known that the liquid in question had to be urine according to the explanation offered by Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai. I would therefore have excluded blood. I would not have needed the word הוא to exclude blood as not transmitting ritual impurity. [I have omitted a few more arguments along this line presented by the author. Ed.]

The author concludes from all this that there is a moral-ethical dimension to the restrictive word הוא. The Torah teaches by means of the superfluous word הוא that not only the body of the afflicted person causes him to be impure but there is a meta-physical dimension. G'd is trying to impress the afflicted person that his affliction is due to his sinful conduct. The word הוא refers back to the afflicted person, not to the seminal fluid. This is why the Torah decreed that the entire person becomes a primary source of ritual impurity, i.e. אב הטומאה. In that capacity the afflicted person confers ritual impurity on both humans and all kinds of vessels he will come in contact with. Although the scholar in the Torat Kohanim had used the word הוא to exclude the afflicted person's blood from conferring impurity on others, this was prior to the exegetical use made by the interpretation of the word וזאת. After having explained the word וזאת, the previous interpretation of the word הוא became subject to revision and to different interpretations. There are numerous instances in which Torat Kohanim proceeds in this manner. The author of Torat Kohanim thus left room for subsequent scholars to offer their own interpretations.

טומאתו בזובו, his impurity in his issue, etc. According to Torat Kohanim the sequence of these words mean that only the whitish coloured discharge transmits impurity as distinct from a reddish, blood-coloured discharge. The meaning is that but for the restrictive letter ב in the word בזובו, a discharge of blood would have been considered as conferring impurity even if the Torah had written the word זובו טמא הוא as it did in verse 2, we would have had to rule that a discharge of blood is also conferring ritual impurity. In other words, the restrictive expression we discussed at length in verse 2 would not have sufficed. The reason would have been that the expression זובו was used by the Torah in both verses. We would have been forced to conclude that the restrictive nature of the word זובו referred only to the afflicted person himself and not to his discharge. I would then have learned the קל וחומר from the הלכה that his spittle confers impurity as we explained on verse 2. Alternatively, we would have reasoned that the reason we have to exclude it is only because there was a special letter needed (the letter ו in the word וזאת) to include urine otherwise we would have excluded it.

טומאתו היא. it is his impurity. In Torat Kohanim the sages explain the logic as follows: If a זב, a male afflicted with this discharge who does not transmit impurity through a discharge of blood, nonetheless transmits impurity when discharging a whitish fluid, a זבה, female equivalent, who transmits impurity when discharging blood (from that orifice), most certainly would also transmit impurity if she discharges a whitish fluid. Therefore the Torah had to write טומאתו היא, it is his impurity, seeing the word טומאתו was quite unnecessary unless it was meant to tell us that a female when in the throes of this disease does not confer impurity by the discharge of a whitish fluid but only by discharging blood. This exclusion is based on the pronoun-ending טומאת־ו as opposed to the pronoun-ending טומאת־ה. We disagree with the author of Korban Aharon who uses the word היא as the basis for this exclusion. When you will examine the exclusion to be derived from the word היא more carefully you will be forced to admit that the word describes the impurity and not the person who has become impure.

I have already discussed at length the fact that the קל וחומר that Torat Kohanim presents here as a possible reason why the text had to specifically teach us an exclusion is the exact opposite of the קל וחומר the author of Torat Kohanim suggested as a possible reason for the inclusion of the urine in the fluids causing impurity. I have told you that such hypothetical logical approaches are not necessarily final and may be abandoned when new tools of exegsis come to light. Another example had been Torat Kohanim on Leviticus 14,7. We can answer these apparent contradictions by pointing out -as did the Talmud in Niddah 54- that there are elements in the laws about the blood of a menstruating woman which provide us with a reason to consider her as the more stringent case. Details are that her blood confers impurity regardless of whether it is still wet or has already dried whereas the discharge of someone afflicted with זיבה transmits impurity only while it is wet. Also, a menstruating woman causes impurity as soon as she has spotted blood the first time, whereas the blood of a person afflicted with זיבה transmits impurity only after several sightings or sightings on consecutive days respectively. The menstruating woman causes impurity to things she sits on or lies on as soon as she sights her menstruating blood the first time, something that is not the case with a male זב. These factors combined entitle us to assume that discharge of blood should cause impurity, more so than the discharge of a whitish fluid. On the other hand, the fact that a male זב transmits impurity already after several sightings of discharge even on the same day, as opposed to his female counterpart who only causes such impurity, after sighting a discharge on the third of three consecutive days, indicates that his discharge is viewed more severely and that therefore also a bloody discharge of his could confer impurity. For the above cited reasons we can understand why the two apparently contradictory attempts to learn a hypothetical קל וחומר are both reasonable.

The reason why the Torah wrote the word היא (a second restrictive expression in addition to טומאתו בזובו), may be because the Torah was concerned that unless there was an additonal restrictive expression one might interpret the first such expression as merely reducing the level of impurity the whitish fluid from a זבה transmits i.e. a lower degree of impurity than that transmitted by her blood. Whereas the blood she emits confers ritual impurity on anything she sits or lies on already at the first sighting, the whitish fluid would not have that effect until after several sightings on several days, etc,. I would not conclude, however, that the whitish fluid does not confer impurity at all. Hence the restrictive word היא is needed to teach that whitish fluid issuing from a זבה does not confer impurity at all. Only the male זב confers impurity through emission of a whitish fluid. [I confess I have some problem with this seeing that verse 25 did not mention anything other than the blood of a זבה. Why was there a need to exclude anything other than blood? Ed.]