The Talmud records a conversation between Eliyahu Hanavi and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi regarding the whereabouts of Moshiach. Eliyahu tells Rabbi Yehoshua that Moshiach can be found at the entrance to the city, sitting among the poor and sickly. According to Rashi, and as is implied elsewhere in the Talmud, “the sickly” refers to people suffering from tzaraas, and Moshiach himself is also a metzora—a person afflicted with tzaraas.
Why is Moshiach said to be a metzora?
The Torah calls tzaraas an affliction “in the skin of his flesh,” not a disease of the flesh itself. This indicates, says the Alter Rebbe, that a person can develop tzaraas only when he has eradicated his deep internal character flaws, and his spiritual blemishes are solely skin-deep. Since the person has already refined himself entirely “from within,” and his shortcomings are only superficial, G-d afflicts him with a supernatural skin condition to prompt him to perfect even these slight and uncharacteristic imperfections.
Accordingly, we can understand why the Talmud identifies Moshiach as someone suffering from tzaraas. Moshiach’s condition reflects the collective state of the Jewish people in the final days of our exile. Over the generations, the Jewish nation has been effectively refined, both in body and in soul; any remaining imperfections are largely only external. Therefore, in the final days before the redemption, Moshiach, the collective soul of the Jewish people, is comparable to a metzora, whose deficiencies are only slight and superficial. It is only a matter of moments until we perfect even these final details and merit our complete and final redemption.
—Likkutei Sichos, vol. 22, pp. 75–79
