Weekly Torah

This week’s Torah Portion is one of the primary reasons why most people fail to achieve their New Year’s resolution of the reading through the Bible in a year. However, I repeat what I often say to people – I love Leviticus and its guide stones for life. It is not just a book for back then but it is a primer for how we live today – regardless of whether or not we observe Kosher. For the lessons of God are timeless and His call to “be ye holy as I am holy” are forever.

For I know that on the surface, it appears that Moses in Leviticus simply has written a litany of do(s) and don’t(s) for the people to follow. It might even appear that perhaps God is expecting too much from the Chosen People with the lists of prohibitions, even down to how to clean a house. And if that is what you gleaned from the reading of this week’s portion, go back and read again … for there is far more to the story that one might realize.

And that is why this week’s portion will examine the two chapters which Moses gives to the subject of leprosy. Chapter 13 begins with the approach that the priest must take to examine a sore on an individual’s body. The chapter continues with how to examine garments that have been worn. Chapter 14 deals with the steps that need to be taken for cleansing (seeking atonement) the leprous individual along with the person’s home. Lots of details and lots of regulations and one is allowed to ask why?  Why did God have Moses devote so much time and papyrus to the discussion of leprosy?  Perhaps it is because of what leprosy represented to God and to the people as much as the disease itself.

Leprosy represented the fact that someone was unclean and needed to be separated from the people. Leprosy is not necessarily contagious (unless proper precautions are not taken), but it does symbolize in Scripture an unclean attitude and heart. Lepers were separated from the people so that their example and lifestyle would not infect and affect other people. In the New Testament as well as the Hebrew Scriptures, lepers had to live outside of society and announce their status when they saw someone coming their way. Leprosy was obviously an anathema to God because it symbolized an individual who had not taken seriously the reminder to be holy as God himself is holy.

This should be a reminder for us to always be diligent to the important details of serving God. The details that God himself has established but not the ones that we add on to make ourselves self-satisfied and self-righteous. For we need to be careful not to drift into the self-satisfied action of legalism nor to give away to the attitude that we can do whatever we want either but to always mindful of the cliché “but there for the grace of God ….” This in its own way is another form of disease and just as deadly and repugnant to God.

So … ask yourself, is there something in your life that could cause you to appear unclean before God. If so, deal with it now before the call of “Unclean” becomes truth instead of just possibility. God bless. Shalom.