Glen Rock Jewish Center, Conservative

I was born at the Washington Hospital Center in 1978. Twenty-five years later, I found myself returning to the same part of Northwest Washington, D.C., to serve as a chaplain-in-training at the Children’s National Medical Center just a few blocks away from the Hospital Center. There was a sense of coming full circle. Whereas in 1978 a medical team had cared for me, I now had the opportunity to serve as part of the team who would provide care for others. My training did not allow me to be part of the medical team that offered treatments and medications. I could, however, be part of the healing process for the patients. While cure and healing are complementary, they are different aspects of the process that hospitals and other health-care centers offer. This week’s portion, Metzora, demonstrates the power of healing as an important aspect of recovery from a condition that affects human beings. This week’s portion is not a medical handbook, but we can draw upon its themes and ideas to engage in a discussion about healing of the mind and spirit.

While "cure" and "healing" are synonymous in our language, they express different areas of concern within pastoral care. Cure, or curing, relates to the medical arts. A person has been cured when he or she no longer exhibits signs of the disease or condition. Healing relates to the individual’s ability to find equilibrium with the world in light of his or her condition. It is an introspective, reflective, and spiritual process that causes the individual to think about the experience of illness as part of life as well as its impact on life, theology, and the family.

These two processes are complementary, but they do not always function in tandem. There can be cure without healing. We can recover from an illness to find that we are questioning our faith and feeling like an outsider in our family and community. There can also be healing without a cure. A terminally ill patient can find ways to strengthen bonds of love and friendship and find peace of mind in reflecting on his or her place in the world. As is often the case, patients experience neither a complete cure nor a complete healing. Physical and spiritual health and wellness are ongoing concerns in our lives, and time spent in the sickbed is only a more acute phase of the dynamic force that is our health. It is a dynamic force since we fall out on the health-illness spectrum in different places all the time, and many times we find that the ability to maintain our good health is beyond our control.

The "tzarua," the individual with the skin disease "tzar’a’at," does not appear in the Torah as someone who is sick or ill in the way that we think about these health terms today. The lens that the Torah brings to tzar’a’at is a religious-spiritual one rather than a medical one. Instead of viewing the tzarua as existing on a health-to-illness spectrum, the Torah suggests the person exists on a purity-to-impurity spectrum. Instead of a separate medical professional, the kohen, priest, is empowered to identify the impurity and also to facilitate the re-purification if and when the condition passes. The cure is something that happens beyond human control. While some may argue that the practices suggested in the Torah are appropriate methods for dealing with the conditions mentioned in Leviticus, the Torah itself does not suggest that the rituals are medical in nature. God commands us in the particulars of the ritual purification of the tzarua, and, indeed, in the general identification and classification of the conditions. In order to understand the healing wisdom of the Torah, it is necessary for us to first accept that this week’s portion is replete with religious and spiritual meaning rather than scientific or medical procedures for curing the Metzora.

The ritual of purification that this week’s portion describes is a process of healing that takes place between the tzarua, God, and the kohen. The first act of healing in this process is an act of reconnection to the community. The kohen goes outside the camp to where the tzarua is living during the duration of the skin condition. The fact that the kohen steps outside the camp to meet the tzarua where he is demonstrates the community’s willingness to bring that person back into the fold. Healing begins when the individual senses that he is no longer an outsider. Cutting one’s hair and bathing suggest a refreshing and renewal of the body like the snake that sheds its skin. During illness we can neglect our appearance, and also illness can change our appearance. The refreshing of the body is a healing act as the individual creates a new self-image with which to face the world. There is also healing in the way that the kohen marks the ear, hand, and toe of the tzarua. This act of identification reaffirms that the individual has passed through the purification ritual, and anyone who might see the remnants of these marks will know that this person is now fully a member of the community again. With the marking and completion of the required sacrifices, others need not fear interaction with the person who is no longer a tzarua. We know how sometimes there is fear when someone who was ill returns to the community. There may be fear that the person is still sick in some way and can pass the disease to others. Our challenge is to do our best to overcome the discomfort.

This week’s Torah reading can help inspire us all to become healers. We can strive to be fully present for those who are sick. We can allow them to share their stories as we listen. We can learn to respect the silence of the sickbed when an individual is unable to talk, and we can reconnect to the healing power of prayer in the form of tehillim, psalms, and prayers from the heart.

As we approach Passover, the healing message of the rituals and practices in this week’s Torah reading remind us of God, who, upon the occasion of our redemption from Egypt, told us, "I the Lord am your healer."(Ex. 16:26)