Metzorah, this week’s parshah, describes the skin condition
of tzora’at. Previously, tzora’at was mistakenly identified as leprosy (Hansen’s
Disease). The parshah describes the ritual
for spiritual purification of the sufferer.
Rabbis are regularly asked, “Why me?” when someone gets
sick. It’s a powerful question, full of
anguish. I have asked it myself, in
times of loss and confusion. The
question expresses a belief, found in the Torah, that illness can be a moral
statement rather than a medical one. It
can sometimes feel as if suffering were a moral judgment, a punishment doled
out by a disapproving God like a bitter headmaster with his wooden ruler. Painful as that idea is, some find it more
soothing than grappling with the idea that the universe is incomprehensible to
us, that neither success nor failure are moral indications. Pain doesn’t make sense.
Jewish tradition does not believe that suffering is
redemptive. It does not come to punish
us, nor to teach us a lesson. I do not
believe that we are given pain in order to help us grow.
That said, we may indeed learn and grow from our
suffering. This is a subtle, but very
important difference. I have certainly learned
from my pain, but I do not believe that the pain was “sent to me” in order that
I might learn those lessons. The pain is
just pain, no more nor less. The meaning
I make of it is up to me.
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