Part III. Living with Leprosy
The Death of Quarantine
And now we come to our final example of the living dead – the metzora. The leper in our sedrah is considered like a meis. You know why? Because the Torah says ץ לַמַּחֲנֶה מוֹשָׁ בוָֹּדָ ד יֵשֵׁ ב מִחוּב – He has to dwell by himself outside of the camp (Vayikra 13:46) It’s a law of the Torah that the leper must live outside the city and we’ll soon see that loneliness, that separation from humanity, is like being dead.
Now some people would like to explain this procedure of living alone as the quarantining of a man with a dangerous illness. After all, don’t we see that even today lepers are kept in separate places? But the truth is that reason is not valid at all. It could be a side benefit, it could be one of the reasons why the Torah said it, but that certainly wasn’t the purpose of the Torah law. Because we know that shiluach metzora is only for a metzora Yisroel; a gentile leper is not sent away. And if it was a matter of contagion, that wouldn’t make any sense.
And so we see that there’s a lesson here. We’re being taught that a person who doesn’t know how to live among people – he doesn’t get along with others, he speaks lashon hara, other things – so we send him away. Let him separate from society for a while and think about what happened; let him recalibrate his way of living among others.
Wicked, Dangerous Phones
Nowadays the metzora would be able to use the telephone. It’s a problem, the telephone. How can he be in the solitude he needs to heal his ways with a telephone? Ach!
Actually the telephone is a problem in general, not only for the metzora. What a wicked instrument it is! Over every telephone there ought to be a sign: ‘Beware! High voltage! Extremely dangerous!’ Some people put stickers on the phone, מֵ רָ עָנְ צֹר לְ שׁ וֹנְ ך. Very good. But I think it should be a more drastic sticker. The telephone is the most dangerous thing in the house. It’s like an instrument that has 50,000 volts.
It’s a good idea not to install a telephone when you get married. Of course for that you’ll have to marry the right kind of a wife. Only one of the girls who come here to listen are eligible for that. The others who never heard this will need still a lot of training.
But in the ancient days, before Alexander Graham Bell, a metzora was very alone. And in that solitude, away from people, he was able to appreciate his mistakes and plan to rectify them.
