This week we read a double portion tazria-metzora, which describes treatment for a biblical skin disease commonly referred to as leprosy. The haftarah, from 2 Kings 7:3-20, tells the story of the army of Aram besieging the city of Samaria. The famine is so great that the Israelites have resorted to cannibalism of their children. The reading begins by telling us there are four Israelite lepers who are outside the gate of the city. Lepers were shunned out of fear of the possible contagion of their disease. Speaking one to the other, the lepers realize they face certain death if they return to the city or stay where they are. They fatalistically decide to go to the Aramean camp because the worst that could happen to them is to be put to death. Approaching the camp, they find no one is there.
God has caused the sound of a great army approaching and in response the Arameans have fled in panic, leaving everything behind. The lepers enter a tent and eat the food they find there. They take gold and silver and bury it. “Then they say to one another: We are not doing right. This is a day of good news, and we are keeping silent! If we wait until the morning light, we shall incur guilt. Come, let us go and inform the king’s palace.” (v.9)
When the news reaches the king, he suspects that it is a trap by the Arameans. However, he is convinced to send out a few scouts who confirm that the army has fled. The people pour out of the city to find an abundance of food.
While God plays a role in this salvation, the lepers are key to the story. They are the ultimate outsiders—feared for being “dangerously” different, they are relegated to the margins of society. They are outside the gates—not inside, but still in a tenuous relationship to their community. That in-between status allows them to perceive a solution to a seemingly unstoppable tragedy.
As readers, we get three insights into their personalities. The most obvious is they could have used their discovery to loot all of the gold and silver and perhaps tried to hide the food to sell it to the inhabitants of the city. Instead, despite how they have been treated by the city, they act to save them. The other insight is that these four act as a collective rather than following a leader—twice the text tells us that they spoke one to another as they make life and death decisions. Finally, the lepers in our story can be heroes because they have the perspective of outsiders.
In America, some seek to put those who are different outside the gates of our society. They are not just different because of who they are, but they are labeled as dangerous to all the “non-different” people residing inside the gates. There are many such groups under attack now, including people who identify as trans.
We have taken pride in being called ivri/Hebrew, which the rabbis understood to mean that we are willing to stand on one side even if the whole world stands on the other. Perhaps the trans perspective, which brings a wider view than the simplistic binary divisions of our world, offers a new way of seeing ourselves and one another. For after all, God is the many that is one and the one that is many.
The roots of all living things are tied together. Deep in the ground of being, they tangle and embrace. This understanding is expressed in the term nonduality. If we look deeply, we find that we do not have a separate self-identity, a self that does not include sun and wind, earth and water, creatures and plants, and one another.
