METZORAH - TZORAS

June 6, 1994

"This is the law for all manner of plague of leprosy, and for a scall; and for the leprosy of a garment and for a house; and for a rising, and for a scab, and for a bright spot;  to teach when it is unclean, and when it is clean; this is the law of leprosy."  Leviticus 14:54

The Chumash describes in great detail the disease of 'tzoras', commonly and mistakenly translated as 'leprosy'.  When a person sees a manifestation on his body that might be tzoras, he calls in a Kohane who makes the determination whether it is or is not tzoras.  If it is, the Kohane declares the person to be 'tomay', impure, and the person must leave the camp and live an isolated existence until the Kohane pronounces him free of the disease.

But what causes this disease that the Chumash spends many pages describing in so much detail, why is it focused on as opposed to other diseases, and why don't we see it around anymore today?

A big clue to the answer appears in Eruchin 16a, where Reb Yochanan says that there are seven causes for tzoras.  They are: loshon hara (bad mouthing others), gila arayes (sexual immoraility), shvichas domim (spilling of blood), tzoras eyen (selfishness and stinginess - literally 'narrowing the eye'), gasas haruach (haughtiness and arrogance), gezel (stealing), and shvuos shav (making a false oath).

When we look at this list, it is immediately evident that these are the seven anti-social actions that destroy the social fabric of society.  If people did these things, the society would collapse into frightening chaos, as it has at times seemed to approach during certain dark nights of history. 

Therefore tzoras is a disease that attacks the person as a form of mida-keneged-mida, measure for measure.  While a person has tzoras, he must live away from people, outside the camp, in isolation.  The punishment pefectly matches the crime. Since he has exhibited within him the tendency to do actions that attack society, he must be removed from society to protect society from him.  It's a kind of jail, where people are 'taken off the streets' and prevented from adversely affecting the world of social interaction that the rest of us need and benefit from.  And because he has attacked society, he is removed from the benefits of society.  In his lonely, isolated abode on the outskirts of the camp, far from human beings, he can ruminate on how much he needs other people and daily social intercourse. He has time to reflect on how bereft people become when they are deprived of social living, a natural outcome for everyone if enough people exhibit the anti-social behavior that he exhibited.

After he has time to feel his loneliness and his need for others, he can see how destructive his anti-social behavior is, and has the time to contemplate and change.  If and when he changes, the tzoras departs, he is in effect 'freed from jail',  and he can return to society.

Since tzoras serves such a useful purpose, why did it disappear?  We need it now more than ever!  A possible answer appears at the end of Messechet Sotah.  There it says that at one point, before the destruction of the second Temple, the Rabbis ended the institution of giving possibly unfaithful wives the bitter water that would prove whether they had in fact been unfaithful.  Why?  Because it would only work if their husbands had been faithful, and there was so much promiscuity of husbands that the bitter water would no longer work much of the time. 

And then the Gemorah in Sotah says that around the same time the institution of 'eglah harufah' was also stopped.  This is a sacrifice performed when a person is found dead in the woods, and the town closest to the body has to bring a sacrifice in the woods to atone for the fact that it hadn't provided better protection for the traveler. Why was this sacrifice, ordained by the Torah, stopped?  Because there were just too many murders, too many dead bodies found in woods.

Perhaps this gives us a clue as to why tzoras stopped.  Tzoras works as long as there is a 'camp' of good people that the person with tzoras is sent out of.  But if the number of people who should get tzoras grows too large, then there might come a time when there are more people outside the camp than in it.  At that point, there is, in a sense, no 'camp' to be sent out of, because so many people are together on the outskirts of the camp, not feeling isolated, but rather feeling the commaraderie of their fellow sinners.