by Lawrence A. Hoffman

April 10, 2008

As a book about real life, our Torah discusses plagues, not just those inflicted on the Egyptians, but the diseases that run rampant among us as well. The Hebrew word for “plague,” nega, comes from the root meaning “to touch.” Disease is indeed spread by touch, but our ancestors, who knew nothing of bacteria, thought “touch” could happen at a distance, particularly with words.

It is not true that “sticks and stones can break our bones while words can never hurt us.” Used destructively, words hurt a lot: They plague us until the day we die. Believing in “touch at a distance,” the rabbis insisted that evil words alone can cause a nega.

All of this may help the poor bar/bat mitzva parents seeking messages for their children in this week’s sedra, so much of which revolves about a particular nega, an affliction of the skin called tsara’at. How do you convince adolescents of the Torah’s lasting value when the reading they’ve been waiting for all their lives focuses on skin disease?

Tsara’at is decidedly not leprosy, despite translations to the contrary. Its exact identity is unknown. So the Talmud (Arakhin 15a) worries less about what it is and more about what causes it. Its answer: words used destructively, which is to say, slander.

In Jewish law, slander is a subcategory of lashon hara, relating bad things about others. The content of lashon hara may actually be true, but even truthful gossip is still gossip, which we are to avoid. All the more so, must we stay clear of motsi shem ra, actual “slander,” where we defame others with what we know to be false. The Talmud labels that a capital offense, because (says Rambam) slander is an addiction to which people grow accustomed, until they cannot stop doing it. Their punishment, tsara’at, is apt, because it causes slanderers to be quarantined where no one can hear what they say.

The cure for slander, then, is not so much capital punishment literally as it is driving slanderers out of the camp of human fellowship, where their evil words cannot be heard. Like the victims of capital punishment, they are cut off from human contact. Though punitive in effect, the quarantine is intended as protection from further damage that we assume the unrepentant slanderer will bring about.

The most famous commentator on the subject, the Chafetz Chaim, goes further by stipulating an instance that cannot be treated that way: people who think so little of themselves that they exercise lashon hara (even motsi shem ra ) against themselves! That, he holds, is forbidden. But we cannot quarantine the victimizer without equally punishing the victim — they are the same people.

The Chafetz Chaim is thinking of the overly critical — and, therefore, demeaning — things we say about our very own selves. We end up feeling so worthless that we either retire into a corner or overcompensate so obnoxiously that others avoid us. The end result, either way, is the equivalent of self-inflicted tsara’at, isolating ourselves, as if people can actually see our discomfort the way you can a rash.

Though ostensibly discussing skin disease, then, our sedra’s lesson is not just skin deep. It provides a profound understanding of the power of words — and not just what others say, but what we say ourselves, to ourselves, and about ourselves. Even more than the words of others, it is our own misguided self-recriminations that have such dire consequences on our outer bearing, that we find ourselves removed from society, lonely, and in growing despair.

It follows, then, that we should affirm the worth of people we meet, just in case they already suffer from self-inflicted tsara’at, either obviously so or covering it up with smiles and swagger. Certainly when we see people treating themselves as unworthy, we should remind them that since they are made in the image of God, they are doubtlessly better than their own misguided self-assessment insists.

That, says the Chafetz Chaim, is why the Mishna insists that the priest who diagnoses tsara’at “shall declare the sufferer purified.” Declare, note! Just as the tongue causes the damage, so the tongue relieves it.

And the Torah calls us all “a kingdom of priests.” Declaring that those who think they are worthless are really quite worthwhile is a sacred act for which, as “priests,” we are all responsible. Not only must we avoid slandering others, we must equally avoid slandering ourselves; and when we see victims of self-slander, we should recall that what God most graced us humans with is the power to speak — in this case, the power to cure, just by using words of compliment and of love.

Lawrence A. Hoffman, an author and speaker on Jewish ritual, prayer, and spirituality, is a professor of liturgy at the Hebrew Union College in Manhattan.

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