Alienation of loneliness
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Parshat Tazria-Metzora / Slander and its price
The Torah's prescription of a weeks solitude for those who slander is an enlightened punishment
In this week's reading the Torah instructs a person afflicted with tzara’at – a biblical disease often incorrectly translated as leprosy - to leave the camp for seven days. The person is then quarantined at a specified site and prevented from having human contact.
Traditionally, tzara'at is considered a direct response to – or as a kind of punishment for - slander. This is based on the story of Miriam, Moses' sister who is punished with tzara'at and forced to sit in isolation out side of the camp for speaking ill about her brother. Many commentators understand the story of Miriam to teach us that the forced isolation out side of the camp when one receives tzara'at, is because the disease itself is a punishment for slander.
Why however would the Torah mandate seven days of loneliness as punishment for slander? The Hebrew word used in the text, "badad," denotes not only isolation but a sense of loneliness.
Slander and loneliness
One fourth century Talmudic sage, Master Joseph, suggests that slander is one of the great inducers of loneliness, isolation and estrangement. Therefore he who caused the alienation of loneliness through his slander should experience the alienation of loneliness through his isolation. A sort of sensitivity heightening measure.
I believe the Miriam story, however, offers an even deeper understanding.
God's response to Miriam's slander and subsequent punishment in the book of Numbers, chapter 12, is God's affirmation of the uniqueness of Moses’ prophecy - suggesting specifically that Moses' prophetic experience is qualitatively different than other prophets.
The context of this divine affirmation is the story of Miriam's slander. But why would Miriam slander Moses, the brother she loved so much – Miriam, who risked her life for him when he was set adrift in a basket on Nile. Miriam, who spent countless nights rocking her brother to sleep, wiping his tears. Why would Miriam speak badly about Moses?
Root of slander
The Midrash records that the subject of the slander is Moses’ relations with his wife. Something in Moses’ experience caused him to leave his marriage. And of course slander usually revolves around the personal life of others.
Sexual slander about the private life of leaders has long been the way people seek to express frustration, disappointment and even anger with our leaders.
It is in response to the slander directed against him that the text says, “Moses is unique in my house. Moses speaks to Me face-to-face.” Moses' experience of prophecy his spiritual vision, is completely different than that of any other prophet in the book.
Subtle clarity
The point is subtle but clear. Miriam is unable to grasp the nature of Moses’ experience. In some sense Miriam is threatened by Moses’ spiritual ‘status’. Somehow it undermined her sense of her own spirit and prophecy. She was unable to grasp how he lived in the world, his sense of being, the places where his life and personal choices were inexplicable to her.
Perhaps she felt inadequate and exposed when she talked to him. Moses rankled her sense of identity. All she understood was that he had reached a place that she was unable to touch. Viewing Moses through this glass ceiling her sense of value and self worth was threatened.
Minor league
Both Miriam and her other brother, Aharon, also a prophet marry and have children. Brother Moses, on the other hand, leaves the framework of marriage and children, called as he is to a singular life. Miriam and Aharon are angry and challenged to the very core.
The uniqueness of Moses’ choices undermined their own sense of identity as prophets. They defined their identity in relation to Moses. Miriam says to Aaron, “Does he think he is the only prophet – are we but secondary figures - minor league prophets?”
Last defense
And so, Miriam did what many do when they want to avoid feeling threatened or inadequate. She slandered. Slander and gossip are often our last defenses against our own sense of insecurity.
This is what the Chassidic leader Mordechai Lainer meant when he taught that gossip is ultimately rooted in our own pathology - and that only if we are willing to work through, not around, our personal pathologies will we be able to live with people in true love and friendship.
The Torah is teaching that slander, which is so often the rejection of the singularity of other, is really rooted in a rejection of self. The inability to recognize - to receive - the soul print of another goes hand-in-hand with the inability to recognize and receive myself.
Touching ourselves
Deeper still, however, when I can’t recognize someone else’s uniqueness of experience, somehow I feel threatened and fight to undermine their integrity. What better way to do it than through slandering the nature of their personal relationships, the unique decisions they had to make in the world of intimate relations, the world of marriage and divorce.
When oppressed by feelings that we haven’t truly touched our own lives, it becomes very difficult to receive other.
Enlightened punishment
So what induces the act of slandering another? The feeling that their life is somehow at my expense. So I ‘cut them down to size’ with slander. The deeper source of the problem though is me and not them. I am disconnected from my own life.
The solution suggested in this week's parsha - a week of solitude - not to induce loneliness per se, but rather to invite me to wrestle through my own loneliness till it becomes the positive point of my singularity.
In my week of loneliness I have opportunity to re-discover the unique invitation of my life and thus to be freed from the feeling that they are living or somehow stealing my life energy. Once that happens the essential motivation to slander has been removed.
Would that all punishments were so enlightened.
