The Torah portion for this week is not a fun read. Let’s just be really honest about that. Nearly all the verses, which span the length of two chapters in the book of Leviticus, talk about skin lesions. In great detail.
“When a person has on the skin of the body a swelling, a rash, or a discoloration, and it develops into a scaly affection on the skin of the body, it shall be reported the person shall be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons, the priests.” — Leviticus 13:2
And the text is just getting started. Read on and you’ll learn about what to do if a lesion is white, or if a person’s hair has changed color, or if it spreads. It’s as though we took a quick detour out of the wilderness and are now auditing a Dermatology 101 class.
During non-leap years (not this one), Tazria is paired with the next portion, Metzora, which deals more specifically with lepers. In my experience, synagogue attendees tend to complain about these two portions a lot. Especially b’nai mitzvah students who have to read about scales and pus in front of their relatives in celebration of their maturity.
To be fair, these verses aren’t the most obvious source of spiritual inspiration. I don’t feel transported when reading about whether a rash has spread or not. There is so little space in our hectic lives for spirituality, and it can be a bummer when the little space left gets taken up by a topic that’s, frankly, kind of gross.
All this is to say that I knew I was facing a challenge when I began reading, which is why I was surprised to resonate so readily with the text. There’s a verb in here that keeps coming back in a fascinating way. I’d never noticed it before, but it really spoke to me this time.
The verb in question is וְרָאָה (v-ra’a), which means ‘and he saw.’ Sometimes, in Hebrew, what looks like one word is actually a few words. But that’s a story for another time.
The he, in this context, is the priest. The thing he keeps seeing is whatever ails the sick person. This word is used 21 times over the course of this portion. Each time someone falls ills, they are brought before the priest to be seen. This word has been translated as ‘examined’ or ‘looked upon,’ but both of these strike me as too distant.
