(Originally published in 2021)
In describing the eruption of a plague upon a house, the Torah strangely uses the word venatati, “I will give you” (Leviticus 14:34), a word implying a matanah, a gift, a blessing bestowed upon us from God. As it turns out, this affliction is indeed a gift.
The midrash explains that there were treasures inside the walls of these homes, hidden there by the Canaanites years earlier. By causing leprosy to erupt on their homes, God was forcing the Isarelites to break down the walls and discover the treasure (See Rashi on that verse). What looks like a revolting eruption turns out to be the key to treasure; the way to gold is paved by plague, by the process it precipitates of uncovering and discovering what lies hidden deep inside.
This image is resonant for inner work; parts of us that on the surface sicken and disgust us and cause us pain may turn out to be a “gift”; they either are the treasure themselves or they lead us to the work of uncovering the treasure deeper inside us.
The haftarah (2 Kings 7), too, echoes this theme. We hear of a time when four individuals with leprosy are sitting outside the borders of the town, as lepers are required to. It is a time of famine and siege by the Arameans, and the starving lepers decide to risk venturing into the Aramean camp in search of food. When they enter the camp, they discover that the Arameans have fled — it turns out God had caused the Arameans to hear the din of a huge army approaching — and left all their possessions intact in the camp. The Israelite lepers enter and feast and begin to hide away some treasures for themselves, but soon decide that they want to share the good news with their fellow Israelites, who, upon hearing, come with great joy to join them.
Here again we see leprosy associated with the discovery of treasure. The lepers, who are outsiders, have a special avenue to revelation, and also, it turns out, to redemption. It is they, with their outsider vision, who can see the road to redemption that no one else is able to see.
Again, the application to inner work is apt; the lepers inside us, the parts of us that for whatever reason have been banished to the outskirts of our consciousness, that sit starving and lonely and unwanted, these parts have an important contribution to make to our system; they know things — they can see things– precisely because of their outsider status. We need to listen to them, to open to them, to allow them to lead us to the places of treasure only they know.
The Hasidic commentator Mei Hashiloah begins his discourse on parashat Metzora by citing a verse from Jeremiah: ואם תוציא יקר מזולל כפי תהיה — “If you bring out what is precious from that which is worthless, You will be like My mouth” (15:19). God explains to Jeremiah here that his job is to turn the zolel, the worthless, into the yakar, the precious — and if he does so, he will become “like God’s mouth,” a true vessel for divine words, for words that have the ability — by knowing the good in all creation — to turn lead into gold, to see the gems in the garbage and thereby enact the transformation.
Mei HaShiloah applies this verse to a person’s negative character traits, to the hisronot, the perceived deficiencies and imperfections inside each of us. He suggests that there is some process by which we can, in turning towards these negative traits, draw out of them something precious, something that is divine, something that is in fact Torah. He rereads the first phrase of our parsha, zot tehiyeh torat hametzora — “this is the torah (the law) of the leper” — to mean: This, this very thing that you consider leprous, that you cast out — this one — zot — this one itself will become Torah.
We all have leprous parts of ourselves, parts that we have rejected and banished, parts we consider unworthy of sitting inside the city with the rest of us, parts we find difficult to feel and shameful to acknowledge. Our natural tendency is to reject and deny and despise these parts of ourselves. But the message here, in these, probably the most leprous — least loved and wanted — parshiyyot of our Torah — the message here is the opposite: precisely here, precisely this. zot — this most hated piece of us — precisely here is the road to redemption, to gold, to the true treasure of our essence.
The key is to turn towards these leprous parts as a venatati , as an “I will give you,” as a gift from God. Faced with an unwanted appearance of some difficult emotion or part — anger, jealousy, despair, anxiety — suddenly faced with an eruption of such a plague — not to turn away from it and distract, but to turn toward it and say: this, too, this, especially, this is a gift from God; this itself is gold, this is the key to the door of discovery; I will follow where this one leads; it knows something; it wants to show me something I need to know, something that will free me and redeem me.
In my own experience, this way of interacting with difficult emotions — though not easy — is powerful and transformative. It is similar to the process psychologist Tara Brach suggests — saying “yes” or “I consent” to what is difficult. There is immediately more space in the system. Instead of fighting the plague, you are welcoming it as a gift, and this allows it to relax and untangle and reveal its true nature either as itself a treasure or as the doorway to a deeper hidden gem inside you. When you really open to the neediness inside, it turns into a baby’s mouth crying and that mouth becomes a portal to God’s continuous love that is also hidden inside you. Or what seems like shakiness and anxiety, once welcomed, is transformed into the energy of excitement and creativity, a sense of readiness for new ventures. Loneliness turns out to have inside it eternal divine accompaniment, and despair can serve as a doorway to compassion.
Left alone to fester, the plagues become extreme and painful inside us. But when we turn and look at them deeply — as the priest is enjoined here to do many, many times — when we turn towards them and welcome them as divine gifts, they break down walls for us and reveal the hidden jewels buried inside us.
