From skin to speech: What Parashat Tazria teaches us about toxic speech

There are diseases of the body, and then there are diseases of the soul. Parashat Tazria, in the Book of Leviticus, appears at first glance to belong entirely to the first category. It speaks in unsettling detail about Tzara’at– a mysterious affliction that appears not only on human skin but also on garments and even on the walls of a home. “When a person has on the skin of his body a swelling or a rash or a discoloration…” (Leviticus 13:2), the  What kind of illness spreads to clothing? What kind of infection inhabits architecture?

The sages  saw what the text itself is hinting at: tzara’at is not only dermatological, it is moral. It is not merely a condition of the skin, but a symptom of something corrosive within. “Metzora,” they teach, is shorthand for motzi shem ra (מוציא שם רע), one who spreads harmful speech. The affliction, in this reading, is the external manifestation of internal decay. The Torah’s insistence on isolation “The afflicted person shall dwell alone; outside the camp shall be his dwelling” (Leviticus 13:46) is not only about contagion of the body. It is........

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