Parshat Metzora - Bringing back someone who was sick into the family, community

Parshat Metzora 5771/2011

©Rabbi Neil Tow, 2011

*Please excuse incomplete sentences!*

1.      It’s been a long, difficult winter, and spring doesn’t feel so springy yet…

2.      There have been lots of colds, sniffles, all kinds of bugs going around

3.      How many people have had something this past season?  More than one something?

4.      The parsha this week is about a person who is on the mend, on the mend from tzara’at, a sickness/disease of skin.

5.      Not important – what was disease, is important – how we bring back sick person to self, family, community after sickness over.

6.      What happens when sick?  Stay in room.  Stay away from other people healthy. Special diets, Medicines. Can’t move around as much.  Aches and pains.  We’re not who we usually are, body just doesn’t respond.

7.      Can’t go to regular activities.  Feel like outsider, falling behind, everyone else having fun.

8.      Parents take care of us, loved ones take care of us, friends send us notes, care packages, even visit if it’s safe to visit.

9.      Still, doesn’t feel the same, different, uncomfortable.

10.  How do we get back into the groove, into our activities again?

11.  Parshat Metzora – teaches us how – starts in a way that sounds strange

12.  2^nd verse says, On the day when the metzora will be pure again, the metzora is brought to the kohen, to the priest.  And then the 3^rd verse says, The kohen will go outside the camp to examine the metzora.

13.  Do others lead the metzora to the priest?  Or does the priest go out himself to meet the person? 

14.  Seforno – metzora brought to a place just outside the camp (the large encampment of the Israelites in the wilderness), and the Kohen can then more easily come to see.

15.  The kohen who is not infected with the disease has to go outside the camp to where the “sick” person is, to see that person. 

16.  Kohen represents the spiritual community and carries the community with him as he steps over the boundary line, effectively enlarging the borders to include the person who will be examined and, hopefully, will soon return to be amongst friends and family.

17.  To help someone who’s been sick feel like part of the group again, it’s up to us to do something similar to what the priest did long ago – we have to actively reach out, visit when possible, make sure someone who is sick knows that his/her friends and family are surrounding them with love, attention, caring even if they’re not right there in the same place.  We have to send all this over the border of the sick room, and then help the person who was sick to feel welcomed and comfortable on returning to school, to work, back home.

18.  My prayer is that we all have the courage to step forward in this work, which is part of tikun olam – repairing the broken parts of the world, and helping to make them whole again.  By helping others to feel wholly themselves, we also make ourselves more sensitive, stronger and more whole – and also we create the positive energy that will increase the presence of chesed – loving-kindness and compassion in our world.

19.  Shabbat Shalom.