This week’s double parsha deals with tzara’at, a skin disease. If a person has this skin disease, the instruction is for them to go live alone outside the camp until they are healed (Leviticus 13:46).
How are we to understand this sending out of someone who is ill? It is often explained either as a punishment for sin, or as a public health measure designed to contain infection. But what if we looked at it instead as a way of healing, as a therapeutic treatment? That the Torah understands that many human afflictions come from an essential disconnection with ourselves and with God, a breaking of that cord, and that a retreat into solitude offers an opportunity to reconnect, to once again listen to ourselves and to God in a deep way, to return to our center. to heal from the inside out.
We should note how unusual this treatment plan is. It is assumed that the person has within them what they need, that there is a natural healing process which, given the time and space, will unfold on its own. There is no one fixing anyone else.. The kohen who declares you unwell and later declares you well, he doesn’t cause the healing. He is not a doctor and he is not a savior. He only witnesses the healing, he sees it and he names it. It is solitude that does the work.
This type of solitude seeking later in history became a Hasidic spiritual practice, the practice known as hitbodedut, which comes from the same root as our word here for aloneness, badad. Perhaps we can see the prescription in our parsha for the metzora (the afflicted one) to dwell alone as an early prototype of this hitobodedut practice and as an affirmation of its profound healing effects.
Trying It
So let’s try it right now. Badad yeshev. He will dwell alone, in solitude. Mihutz lamahaneh moshavo. His dwelling place will be outside the camp. Hitbodedut, too, is a practice that is traditionally done outside of normal societal structures, often in nature. So imagining yourself travelling outside of society, outside the concrete walls that we live in and outside all the conventions and conditioned beliefs and demands and expectations and away from all the constant news and emails. Rashi says “outside the camp” means outside all three of the Israelite camps which were layered one inside the other, so taking your time to make the travel internally, one layer after another, moving deeper and deeper into your private internal cathedral, the place of your inner truth and essence, the “I” voice that is different from the “they” voices of society. Maybe imagining passing first all your current institutional and cultural and social influences, your loved ones and friends and community, and then travelling past your childhood camp and all those who impacted you in the past, passing each “they” and nodding to it, honoring it and then moving through it to the next layer. And as you travel away from all the social influences, maybe also, as the metzora did, tearing your shirt and letting your hair down, letting yourself be disheveled (Leviticus 13:45), doing these things as a way of letting go of social conventions, not caring what people think, travelling through each social layer inside until you find yourself in an open space mihutz lamahaneh, outside of all the encampments that have taken up space in your soul. There are no tents and no buildings here, no traffic noise and no text messages. No shoulds, no comparisons or evaluations or obligations. No “they.” There is no one here other than you in your deepest internal “I” authority.
Sitting With Yourself
It can be a little scary to enter this space. It is pretty unfamiliar to us and at first, it does feel badad, alone, terrifyingly alone. But know that you are not alone here, you are in fact less alone here than anywhere you have ever been. Because it is here that you meet yourself, that you meet your soul, that you meet your God. You stop looking out for a moment and become truly present to yourself. We are so infrequently truly present to ourselves. Maybe taking this moment to do just that. Having moved through all those layers of social encampment to this quiet alone space, here you are, maybe out in an open field or in a deep forest, no one else around; find a spot to sit quietly and just listen and be present to yourself. Maybe you can sense a little child, your abandoned essence, who has been sitting here alone for a long time waiting for you. Maybe she’s sitting on a tree stump in the middle of the forest crying. You abandoned her a long time ago, by necessity, in order to get along in the world. Seeing her now, maybe you can sit down beside her on that stump and just be with her, sensing the connection, the love, the cord between you. Maybe, too, sensing God with you as you do this, sensing how God, too, has been waiting for you here with her, with your soul, your essence, your truth, your little child. It’s all of a piece. Returning to your own truth, feeling that truth in your body as an aliveness, as a fullness, the opposite of the lonely emptiness we often feel. You are alone, badad, but you are full, you are whole, you are connected. Breathe deeply here and know that this is right, this is healing, this is repair, this is the ease that can, over time, relieve the sense of dis-ease, of something being wrong inside you. All is right with you when you are with yourself like this. All is right with you. Let this moment begin to heal those places of affliction in you.
Belonging
The Torah uses an interesting and unnecessary word at the end of the verse we have been looking at – moshavo. “his dwelling place.” Mihutz lamahaneh moshavo. “Outside of the camp is his dwelling place.” Here is how I read it – outside of the camp, in solitude, is where you find the dwelling place that is yours – moshavo, not just a dwelling place, but your particular dwelling place, your seat, your center, the tree stump where your little child sits. On your own in solitude, you find your seat in the universe, you find your dwelling place, where you belong. What you find is that you do belong. You belong here, you have a place, a seat at the table, you are part of the forest, part of the earth, part of what was meant to be here right now. Can you feel that in your body, what it’s like to return to a sense of belonging? As if the earth has been calling out for you, and only now, when all the other noises quiet down, when you are alone with the dirt and the grass and the trees, only now can you hear it, the earth calling your name, calling you into connection, into your place, saying – you belong. Ah, this is my place, my center. I can relax and be here.
Love
There is love, too, here in this solitude, so much love. Badad means alone but we could also read it as ba meaning “in” and dad or dod, meaning “love.” To dwell in solitude is to dwell in love, both in God’s love for you and in your own love for yourself, an untapped resource inside you. There is no one else for miles around in this quiet moment of solitude in the forest and all the love in the universe can flow into you, as if the world has indeed been created just for you, as if you are the only one. Let yourself bathe in it, immerse in it, this divine love inside and outside you. Ba – dad. Be in it. Just you alone in a warm bath of love.
Not Selfish
It isn’t selfish. It is the best thing you can do for everyone around. Healing yourself, loving yourself, being with yourself, returning to self connection, it is good for you and good for others. You won’t stay forever in this place outside the camp. It is a retreat from which you emerge refreshed, nourished, repaired in your relationship to yourself, and from this place you have so much more to give. That love you bathed yourself in, that sense of connection with your own essence, it is the same love and connection you can offer outward. The two are deeply intertwined, connection to self and others, love of self and others.
A Regular Practice
This practice of solitude, of hitbodedut, of badad yeshev, it is not a one time practice. Nor does it necessarily require a trip outdoors or a lengthy amount of time. We can incorporate solitude into our lives even when we are still very much in the camp. It can be as simple as pausing for a moment midstream and turning inwards, making the internal trip out of the societal camp to the forest inside where your child, your soul and God await your return. Or you might designate a particular physical space – mine is a green glider – as your moshav, your dwelling place, a way to anchor the return to self connection. We think when we are in the thick of it, when we are struggling with someone or something, we think we need to keep at it, we get stuck in a loop of triggering and lashing out, of irritation and hurt, when what we need is to get out of the camp and to return to our own seat for a moment and recenter. From that place of inner connection, we then know how to proceed with love and clarity, centered and strong.
Anchoring
I invite you to anchor the sense of moshavo, of this seat of yours, in your body, what it feels like to reconnect to yourself, to your soul, to the little child essence in you, to God inside and outside you, that sense of belonging and belovedness, of rootedness and alignment, knowing who you are and feeling the weight of your own being in the universe, how much you matter. Anchoring all those sensations in the cells of your body, in your body’s memory, and perhaps setting an intention to come back here often, not just in times of need, but also as a regular practice, as a way of dwelling in your own house which is at the same time always God’s house, shivti beveit Hashem. Also sensing the deep healing energy of this space of solitude and offering it to all the parts of you that need it, physically and emotionally. Whatever your affliction, knowing that being here often will help you heal and thrive and be whole.
Redemption
The messiah is said to be a metzora, a leper waiting outside the gates of the city for us (Sanhedrin 98a). Perhaps the return to ourselves outside the camp has a kind of messianic redemptive quality to it, both for us and for the world, as if each of us, in connecting to ourselves in this space of solitude, brings redemption to the world. May it be so.
