The Gift of Tzo’raas
Tzo’raas, the variety of skin diseases which afflicted a person who committed various sins such as arrogance, lashon hara, and stinginess caused by a love of money, required the person to be examined by the Kohain, the Priest, perhaps several times. It could involve a period of quarantine, isolation, and ritual sacrifices. What was it all about?
Rabbi Chatzkel Abramsky, z”l, was once riding in an Israeli cab and the driver told him a story.
“After our IDF military service was over,” said the cabbie, “some friends and I went on a hiking and camping trip. In the middle of the night, we heard shouts and awoke to find a large snake wrapped around one of my friends. It was squeezing him so hard he could not breathe.”
“We didn’t know what to do, as it slowly killed him, and one of my friends said, “You’re going to die, say ‘Shema Yisrael!’” As he did, the snake uncoiled and slithered away. He was so moved that he became a baal Teshuva [a penitent Jew,] studied Torah, and is completely religious today.”
R’ Chatzkel asked him, “And what about you? Did you become more religious too?”
“Me?” replied the taxi driver, “Why should I have become more religious? The snake wasn’t wrapped around me!”
As the cabbie in the story showed, sometimes you just don’t get the message until it happens to you. Tzo’raas was the ultimate personal tricorder that showed what was going on inside.
The person’s rotten traits could have remained hidden if not for the fact that Hashem was kind to him or her. By manifesting as they did on the surface, the signs of tzo’raas forced the person to face up to what he had done wrong and work on correcting it or the tzo’raas would not go away.
Rather than a punishment, the affliction was a kindness of G-d, showing the person how he or she could improve and come closer to Him. Though we don’t have tzo’raas today, Hashem still sends us challenges, suffering, and pain, not to punish us, but to wake us up and get us going in the right direction.
