Word Power - Tazria Metzora 5786

Every year when we get to this Parsha, it is a reminder, among other things, of the power of words and how careful we must be in using them.  It also strikes me as a great reminder of how relevant every part of the Torah is, regardless of whether it seems to be something that is distant from our experience.

The plague of Tzara’at that we learn about in the Parshiyot Tazria and Metzora has not happened for 2,000 years.  It is not leprosy, as many translations call it.  It is not contagious, does not cause any of the symptoms of leprosy, and happens to humans, clothing and houses.  It does not manifest when the Temple is not standing.  While it does affect the physical person, Tzara’at is a disease of spiritual origin.  Rather than a medical doctor diagnosing the disease, it is diagnosed by a Kohen, a spiritual leader, who also pronounces the disease cured when it is gone.  What does all this have to do with us?

On one level, we know that Torah is Hashem’s wisdom.  When we fill our minds with Torah, we are bonding with Hashem’s wisdom and His will, and since “Hashem and His wisdom are one,” we are really bonding with Hashem Himself.  In that case, it doesn’t matter if the subject is directly relevant to us, because either way bonding with Hashem is part of our purpose on Earth.  But actually, every word in the Torah has direct relevance to us.  The word Torah means teaching, showing us how to live our lives, and that applies to every word of the Torah.  If the simple meaning is not relevant, there is a deeper understanding that affects us personally.

Tzara’at is a perfect example.  It is an affliction that was visited on someone who spoke Lashon Hara - gossip or negative talk about another.  This doesn’t mean slander.  Lashon Hara means true accounts of someone’s shortcomings or transgressions.  Chassidus teaches that words have a real impact on the world and on people.  If someone is struggling to perfect their behavior and overcome a spiritual challenge, the negative talk by another makes it much harder for them to win that battle.  I know it sounds strange, but what we do has more impact than we think, and Chassidus explains that every word has an outcome.  Words bring our hidden thoughts into the open, and similarly words cause the potential into the actual.

If this is true of negative words, it is more potent with positive words, because, as our Sages taught, “the measure of good is much more than the measure of punishment.”  True praise goes a long way toward encouraging the subject of the talk to move forward in their spiritual growth.

Professor Eliezer (Eduardo) Zeiger was a person who made a difference with his words. We will mark his first Yartzeit this Sunday, 2 Iyar.   Eliezer was a scientist, a professor of Biology at Stanford.  He was offered a tenured position at UCLA and moved, with his wife Dr. Yael Fischman, a noted psychologist and global expert on PTSD, to Southern California for several years.  They moved back here after he retired.

Eliezer, a consummate scientist, studied Torah and Kabbalah, and dedicated his life to bringing together Torah and science, showing that not only do they not contradict, but that together they fulfill Hashem’s plan.  Eliezer founded the Torah Science Foundation, working closely with the great Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg and his colleague Rabbi Moshe Genuth in Israel.  They started working on a high school textbook to teach science from a Torah perspective.  He wrote a few amazing chapters, but unfortunately did not get to finish the book.

In the early years when I got to know Eliezer, he told me how he explained the seeming contradictions between Torah and science.  He compared the two approaches to different maps of the same area.  You can create several maps of an area and each will look different.  There can be a map of the streets, of the terrain, of rivers and streams, of the buildings.  Each of them is a picture of the same place, but they each look different.  Science and Torah each have their language, but they are discussing different aspects of creation.  This concept is also related to the Parsha, where we see a physical affliction that is deeply rooted in the spiritual. 

Eliezer was a pillar of our community, with great humility making a major difference for his fellow Jews as well as the world in general.  Rabbi Genuth is coming here especially to mark the Yartzeit.  He will be speaking at Shabbat lunch on the theme: Finding G-d in Nature: The legacy of Professor Eliezer Zeiger.  I invite you to join.  We will also be visiting Elliezer’s grave on Sunday, please be in touch if you would like to join.  May his memory be a blessing, and may his legacy continue to grow and bring light to the world.