The Garden Within | TAZRIA-METZORA תַזְרִיעַ-מְּצֹרָע - Portion 27 & 28

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Teachers of Torah have coined the Hebrew term PaRDeS (פרדס – a word literally meaning “garden” or "orchid") to refer to a four-tiered system of biblical interpretation, which reveals that each word, verse, and story in the Bible could be simultaneously understood on four different levels.  

Through this year-long course, we will explore the very words of God from these levels of the garden.  The name The Garden Within was chosen for this teaching series because it adopts the PaRDeS system of learning and because it delights in the spiritual pleasure through reaching new understandings and being pierced by lightning flashes of the intellect. The pleasure gained, of course, also refers to the nearness we feel to God when learning His Word.

One of the primary goals of The Garden Within is to demonstrate that the “stories” in the Torah are not merely one-time occurrences, temporal incidents undergone by specific individuals long ago. Rather these stories are archetypal in nature, reflecting or representing various physical and spiritual energies ever present in all aspects of reality and within each and every person.  That is, the Torah is deeply personal and speaks directly to each individual reader for where they are in their life.  So, come, take a walk with God in the Garden of the Torah!

#immlutheran #drchadfoster #christian #lcms #messianic

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Good evening, everyone, Air of Cove. Welcome to the Garden Within. As we are picking up after our bit of a holy week, hiatus, continuing our journey through the Torah through the garden, through the par days, picking it up with the double portion this week. And we'll talk a little bit about that and what that entails. But let's get started first with the blessing before the study of Tora. We pray. Baruchata Adanai, Ellahenum, Ashekidishano Bomis Vita Vesevanu le esog bidivre Torah. Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with his commandments and has commanded us to be immersed into the words and the matters of the Torah. Amen. All right. Before we begin officially this evening, I do want to make you aware, if you're not already, of two new books for you, if you are interested. One is a devotional called In the Shadow of the Cross. And it looks at the Old Testament of 13 stories, kind of using a bit of what's known as topology. Most of them, about 11 of the 13, I believe, are really looking at the concept of wood, or like, you know, like a rod, or you know, the gopher wood of the ark, or Aaron's rod that blossomed, or Aaron, or Moses' staff, um, and so forth. But there were two instances um uh that I couldn't resist uh that involved hands but made the the cross formation. But so it looks at um mainly instances of the use of wood, including like the types of wood used in making uh the Temple Solomon's Temple, uh, and then how those are foreshadowing the cross. Um they're kind of written in devotional style. Uh so if you would be interested in that, there is that. And then there is, it's a small little book, but it's powerful. Um, I think so. It's something I'm I've been working on for well uh a decade or more. Uh like when I would go to Israel on my own in private study. It's called Golgotha Revealed. Um, it's something I'm in the minority of, but I feel strongly I'm correct on, and that is the location of Golgotha. So if you ever go to uh uh Israel on a tour, uh you'll be taken to two places for Golgotha. One is called the Garden Tomb, which is beautiful. I would encourage you to go. It's a wonderful place to worship, wonderful place to have holy communion with your tour group. It definitely gives you the setting, the visual, and all that, but it is absolutely in no way, shape, or form uh the location of Golgotha. For uh you could go on for the reasons why. And no one believes that anymore. Even the people there will not try to defend it anymore. They just know it's a great place to go. Um, and then the second place they'll take you is called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and that's where you'll see like National Geographic and CNN during Holy Week. If they're showing you Holy Week services in Jerusalem and all the crowds with the holy fire and all that, that's at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Uh, I do not believe that that is the location either, uh, and that's outlined in here as well why. Um, I believe it's located on the Mount of Olives. And so the case is outlined there from a biblical point of view, starting with the book of Hebrews, chapter 13, where the author specifically says Jesus was crucified by the altar outside of the camp. So he gives you that, and I don't know why that's always so overlooked, because there was an altar, an actual altar. There were three altars to the temple, two within the temple grounds, and then one that was literally outside the camp. Uh, and so he pretty much nails where it was, and so I track that down and the location and all that. But other instances in the New Testament, including the Gospel of John, uh, that talk about the Tapos in Greek, the location of Golgotha, uh, as well as looking at some of the Jewish sources where the red heifer was sacrificed, because the book of Hebrews also is very, very intentional about tying the crucifixion of Jesus to the red heifer uh and the sacrifice of the red heifer, uh, and for good reason because that third altar, that altar outside the camp, is the altar of the red heifer. So um I worked with uh a professor at, was at Yale, is now REL University outside of Jerusalem in the West Bank, as well as a professor at the University of North Carolina. And uh the location uh I think can be pretty much pinpointed. And then uh at that location, underneath uh there is uh a necropolis, and there's some neat little pictures in there uh from the uh uh official dig uh of that necropolis. And in the Oshuary boxes, the bone boxes are the inscriptions of the names. And so I share with you some of those names, some of the inscriptions, some of the artistic inscriptions, and uh used my math degree uh used Bayes' theorem and came up with the probability of uh 95% of what this graveyard, whose graveyard it is. Uh I think you would be pleasantly surprised if you've ever been there exactly what you were looking at, and uh which gives more credence to why that's Golgotha, why they would have chosen that as their burial place. Uh so that's called Golgotha Revealed. So in the shadow of the cross, uh devotional, looking at the Old Testament different ways, especially through wood, uh foreshadowing the cross of our Messiah, Golgotha Revealed, a little more technical, not devotional unless you just are like me and really enjoy digging deep into the word of God. Uh I find that devotional. Um it's only 70 pages, but I think it's nice power-packed. Um, those will be available if you are interested afterwards. If you are checking us out on YouTube or the podcast, you can just contact us and we can get those out to you, or you can just buy them online. And hopefully within three to four weeks they'll be on Amazon. But they are available from the publisher now. Um, all right. So with that, let's get started with this week. So this week brings us to uh portion 27 and 28. Uh and even though we had two weeks off, we only missed one portion. Uh and that's because uh one of those weeks was a festival, uh Pesach, Passover, uh, and it doesn't uh include a fest uh portion. You have a special reading for that. Uh so we only missed one week, we missed portion uh 26. Uh but this week is a double portion, 27 and 28, Tazria Mitsorah, and covers Leviticus chapters 12 through 15. Um the name of that 27th reading from the Torah is Tazriah, which means she conceived. Uh, the name is derived from the words of Leviticus chapter 12, verse 2, where the Lord says to Moses, when a woman conceives and bears a male child, and then Leviticus 12 discusses the laws of purification after childbirth. Leviticus 13 introduces the laws for diagnosing and quarantining lepers, uh, which is really the bulk of what these two portions are about, is about leprosy. Uh, and except in the biblical calendar where it's a leap year, Tazria is always read in conjunction with metzorah. Metzorah is the 28th reading of the Torah's 54 portions. Metzorah is the Hebrew word that means leper. Uh, it appears in the second verse of that reading, uh, Leviticus 14, verse 2. This shall be the law of the leper, the metzorah, and the day of his cleansing. And chapter 14 spells out the complex rituals for purification and cleansing of the leper and the leprous home. Uh, so we're gonna kind of talk about that, that leprosy isn't a physical condition, it's not a physical sickness, it's not the same thing that gets called in the medical world today as leprosy. Uh, and part of that is the idea that the Torah is very clear that even your house can catch leprosy. So um, yeah, I have yet to see a house catch a cold or catch the flu, uh, but it can catch uh leprosy. Uh, so it talks about uh the rituals for cleansing uh both the individual as well as one's home. Uh Leviticus 15 also covers the laws regarding uh ritual unfitness stemming from various bodily emissions. Um, I will say this, we won't talk about it tonight because uh the focus, but I would encourage you, whether you do it through the podcast or whether you do it through YouTube, the playlist, uh, to go back to our series when we were in the sun and the scriptures. Uh, they're broken out into the two portions, Tazria and Mitsorah, separately. Those both really break down how these two portions foreshadow Messiah and really talk about that. And I think Tazria is fascinating because it talks about, you know, when uh when she bears a male child and how that is uh foreshadowing the virgin birth and so forth. Uh it's so uh I would encourage you this week at some point, uh, if you haven't listened to those in the past, uh to check those out. Again, the series The Sun in the Scriptures, check out Tezriya and Metsorah. They're separate portions in that series. Um but this week um we are going to do it through the garden. And so we're gonna look at it a little bit deeper. And so I want to talk about the spiritual dimension of this week's portion of Tezria and Metsorah. And so the portions Tezriya and Metsorah, as I've mentioned, deal primarily with the skin disease that in Hebrew is called Zaarat. That's spelt T-Z-A-R-A apostrophe, Zaarat. Uh it will usually be translated in your English Bibles as leprosy. Uh, I'm fine with it being translated that. I would rather you just keep it as Zaarat in your Bibles uh because I don't want you to think it's modern-day leprosy, uh, because it's not. Uh the sages point out that this particular disease was not caused by any physiological factor. Uh rather, it was the outcome of various spiritual flaws. And so biblical leprosy, za'arat, is a spiritual condition. Now, I will try to repeat this several times throughout this evening. This does not mean every condition, uh, illness, disease, etc., is a spiritual condition. I am not saying that. Repeat, I am not saying that. All right, but I am saying biblical leprosy is one of those. It has a spiritual root. It is a spiritual disease. And therefore, it does give us pause to consider the connection between our spirituality and our physical life. It at least gives us pause to think about that and to ponder the connection between the physical world and the spiritual world. And even as we'll do a little bit later on, the fact that a home can catch this condition, uh, it should give us pause to think about that as well. Uh, and we'll we'll think about that and its application for us. Uh, so as you look through this week's portion or this double portion, again, it might be one of those portions that would be tempting to say, this has nothing to do with us. We don't have people walking around with these, you know, patches that we might think of as eczema or psoriasis, and then having religious priests come and diagnose them, and then we send them outside of the camp, by the way. Um, as a good plug here. East of the camp always uh is where you send lepers, uh, east of the camp to uh be isolated and so forth. We don't do that, uh, nor am I suggesting we do that. Uh so what in the world could this possibly have to do with us now? That's what we're gonna talk about. Uh so as we look at it, one of the things to consider, and how this has always been approached throughout the ages by the commentators, is that God allowed certain individuals to be afflicted with this specific disorder, this specific disorder, not all disorders of all kinds, but this specific disorder, to hopefully force them to come to terms with the reasons for their malady and change their ways, i.e., to bring them to repentance, for them to ask themselves difficult questions of what in my lifestyle, what choices have I made that have put me in this position? And in some ways, that's never a bad question to ask ourselves, right? Uh if we find ourselves um isolated and not having very many friends, we might want to work on maybe, maybe we're not as self-aware as we think we are. We might want to ask ourselves questions like, hey, if I haven't been very successful at this church and that church and that church and that school and that school, maybe it's not all of their faults. Maybe it's my fault that I'm isolated and alone. Maybe there's something for me to work on. And so this particular malady, God had them be isolated on the outside to give them their time out, right? So that they could focus on how did I find myself in this predicament? All right, and uh, hopefully bring them to repentance. The Talmud and portion Arachen, uh, folio 16A enumerates a long list of reasons for this particular ailment, from bloodshed to robbery to false oath to sexual misconduct, pride and selfishness, but there really are two that stand out as the primary cause of zaarat, biblical leprosy. And those are slander and gossip. Those are the two main causes. And you even see this in the gospels with Jesus when he encounters a particular leper and he heals him, and he tells him, Don't say anything to anybody, i.e., it's you running your mouth is why you got into this problem. Don't say anything to anybody, but go straight to the priest, i.e., do exactly what Leviticus 12 through 15 tell you to do. Jesus was saying, obey your Torah, uh, and and then you'll be good. And then what does the guy do? He doesn't go straight to the priest, he does what? He runs his mouth and blabs it, right? Which is is again showing the connection between leprosy and running one's mouth. All right. Uh the sages even interpreted the Hebrew word uh mitzorah, leper, right? Mitsorah means leper, as a contraction of the phrase Motzishemra, which means a spreader of slander, or literally one who brings forth evil. Uh the stone Humush points out that all of the sins that I just talked about really have one common denominator: an insensitivity to others that implies a tremendous amount of egocentricity. So, in a measure-for-measure response, God ensures that those who are inflicted with this za'arat, this biblical form of leprosy, again would be isolated from the community so that they could experience in some measure a little bit of the pain that they had caused others through their words and through their ego. And this would hopefully cause them to undertake a sincere introspection, move them to repent, and then they would rejoin the community as better citizens of the community. Now, as we've noted many times in our classes together, the Torah is eternal, and the Torah speaks to each person in every generation. And so we do well to note that the only disease specifically singled out by the Torah for discussion is this Zaarat. And all the commentators agree that the disease's cause was, in fact, spiritual. And as we will see, the eternal message taught by Zaarat not only stems from its emotional and psychological and spiritual cause, but also from the dramatic and transformation of its healing process of the afflicted individual. In other words, it wasn't just what caused it, but it was also the cathartic way in which the person was transformed as they were healed from it and restored back to the community. That's equally as big a deal in this. The healing process leading to this genuine paradigm shift in relating to the world occupies much of the two portions this week. So that's really for us as bigger picture people, looking beyond just what this meant 3,000 years ago with a high priest from the tabernacle coming and looking at your, you know, your skin patch. It's about this paradigm shift and how you relate to the people around you, how you relate to the people in your community, how you relate to those that God has asked you to interact with. So despite all of the tremendous advances in medicine over the last century, it was very recently that Western medicine was, uh, until very recently, Western medicine was reluctant to attribute illness or disease to non-physiological factors. In other words, it was very much entrenched in rationalism, scientism. Everything had to have a rational, scientific, biological cause. The patient's mental state was presumed irrelevant to the occurrence and the prevalence of the disease. But this attitude has begun to change as more and more evidence attests to emotional, psychological, and spiritual factors that lead to stress and unhealthy lifestyles, which subsequently can cause certain types of disease or unhealthy conditions in the human being. Western medicine now recognizes that these non-physiological factors are major risk factors for the onset of a whole host of medical conditions, including obesity, ulcers, migraine headaches, insomnia, back pain, constipation, and other digestive problems, as well as, of course, high blood pressure and other heart conditions. Many other serious medical conditions and diseases are now thought to stem to some degree from non-physiological factors as well. So you think about even things like cigarette smoking or poor eating habits, alcohol or drug consumption, lack of exercise, right? Well, believe it or not, if you really track down those, you can find out many of those are caused by stressful, pressure-driven lifestyles and things not dealt with from a mental health perspective or an emotional health perspective, or even a spiritual health perspective. If that's not dealt with, it can lead to these other conditions, which then lead to a breakdown of one's health. And so things are connected. The mind-body connection is receiving more and more attention and credence, while alternative healing methods that try to treat the whole person, not just the disease, are gaining popularity and making inroads into conventional medicine. Not only are the causes of certain medical conditions being attributed to things like the human psyche, but the tribute the treatment and the alleviation of these conditions also are believed to be dependent, at least on some extent, to the patient's attitude and their willingness to change ingrained behavioral patterns. So these contemporary display. Regarding the intrinsic connection between the spiritual and the physical, between the mind and the body, they were alluded to thousands of years ago in the Torah's description of Zaarat. One beautiful allusion to this connection is found in this verse in Leviticus 13, verse 3. If the hair in the affliction has changed to white, and the affliction's appearance is deeper than the skin of the flesh, it is the affliction of Zaarat. The phrase deeper than the skin alludes to the source of the disease being deeper than the superficial physiological symptom alone. And furthermore, the priest's extensive role in identifying the disease and then his role in shepherding the leper through the healing process emphasizes not only the spiritual cause of the disease, but the need to treat it spiritually as well as physically. Later Jewish writings such as the Talmud, the Midrash, the Kabelah, and the Chasidut are replete with references to disease. And furthermore, they explain the cause of disease and provide advice on how to heal it as well as how to engage in healthy living. The Rambam, for example, wrote extensively about medicine and the prevention of disease because he was not only a rabbi, but he was actually the court physician of a sultan. And his teachings had profound impact not only in the medical profession of his time, but on spiritual care long afterwards. All these teachings are predicated on the belief that sickness in some way is connected to one's attitude, one's actions and belief system, and the many types of sicknesses, certainly not all of them, are ultimately a wake-up call, reminding the individual that they may need to change his or her ways or his or her attitude. Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsberg wrote that the Hebrew letters khet and lamid are the root letters for the word kolai, which means sick. And it also, khet and lamed, appear in, as the root, appear in several words denoting sickness and weakness, including words like makala, sickness, or khalash, being weak from being sick. But paradoxically, these letters, chet and lamid, also form the root word for strength, vigor, life, chai, khail. In Aramaic, this same two-letter root can mean either bitter or sweet. It can mean either one. And Rabbi Ginsberg explains that this paradoxical linguistic phenomenon alludes to the fact that sickness can lead either to weakness, even death, because corpse means kalal, khet, and lamid, or if understood properly, can ultimately lead the individual to strengthen themselves and alleviate the sufferer. Recovery is predicated on the patient's understanding of the cause of the sickness, including its spiritual causes, drawing the proper conclusion and making the necessary changes not only physically and in their lifestyle, but in their spirituality. This understanding of disease is superbly illustrated by the effects of a fever. On the one hand, fever makes us weak and sick. Fever can even kill you. But on the other hand, it's a crucial part of your body's mechanism for fighting illness. From a traditional Torah perspective, sickness and disease, like all suffering, is treated as an opportunity for self-awareness, for introspection, and a chance to draw closer to your God. Yet they only have this effect if the sufferer comprehends a deeper meaning and relates to them accordingly. Given the spiritual roots of some diseases, again, not all, it is not surprising that the Hebrew words for pardon, which is machilah, and beseeching God in prayer, which is vayachel, also which Moses used when he prayed for God to spare the people after the golden calf, also contain the root chet and lamed. In a broader context, the latter Hebrew word, bayachel, to pray, alludes to the very positive effect that prayer can have in the process of repentance and healing. Rabbi Nachman of Brezlav often emphasized that sadness and depression are the root of many, again, not all, physical and mental ailments. Indeed, the evil inclination, the enemy himself, is actually more interested in the depression that follows a sin than the actual act of the sin itself. In other words, you think about it this way Satan isn't actually interested in getting you to commit a single act of sin. That's not that big a deal to him. He rather wants you to commit the act of sin to enter you into the whole depression, guilt, shame, bad behavior that's going to follow from it. That's more what he's interested in. So, in order to count the despair, the guilt, the shame, the overwhelming sense of worthlessness that can accompany this, Rebbi Nachman taught that the greatest antidote and ultimately the strongest preventative medicine was to adopt a positive outlook and fill your days with as much joy and optimism as possible. One of my teachers was a disciple of Rebbi Nachman of Brezlov. They're called Brezhvers. They're still quite a large group in Jerusalem. They're known on Friday nights, they'll wear gold coats with blue stripes, is one way you can identify them. A couple of other different ways, um, their Zit seed will have a blue, blue Tecalid in them and so forth. Um, but the they're quite literal in this. So they're the ones like in Jerusalem. If you're driving around, they drive vans with big speakers on the top of the roof, blaring music, and at red lights, they run out and play Chinese red light, blare music, and start dancing and encourage everybody to join them and dance. And then they're constantly singing, they're constantly dancing, uh, anything to try to create joy, optimism, happiness, because they believe that's the best way to approach life. That as long as you're doing that, um, you're warding off the enemy's attacks. And so uh when our kids were very little, we used to play uh my teacher played music, and so we recorded him when he would come to visit us, and we would play that, and uh we would have them run around the den and all that dancing and so forth. So every once in a while, uh when they're home now from college, I'll I'll blast the music for them and they'll start laughing. Um but and it works because like when they they do it, they all laugh. We forget what we're worried about, and we just kind of dance. Um, so like Rebbe Nachman, that was one of his sayings, like it's a great mitzvah, it's a great connection to be joyful always. Right. Um so always be joyful. Uh these teachings written uh well over a hundred years ago, extraordinarily perceptive as they diagnose the root cause for so much that bothers people today. Understanding the true nature of Za'rat enables us to arrive at a general genuine appreciation for the Torah's wisdom and allows us to perceive a contemporary relevance and how we can approach a better, healthier lifestyle. Um, because I think if you're honest, not only with yourself, I mean that's where you want to start, but like think about like your just your coworkers or your neighbors, like I mean are the people sitting next to you at a red light or the people behind you, right? Like everybody is like on edge, man, right? I mean, everybody's pushed to the limit. Like um this week's portion has a lot to say to that. It has a lot to say to it. So uh it's more than just about skin, these portions. Okay. All right, a case study of leprosy and hurtful speech. As I said, Zaara leprosy is intimately biblically speaking, connected with negative speech. And so we're gonna spend the rest of our time talking about that. So in Numbers chapter 12, in a selection of verses, it says, Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married. And when the cloud departed from above the tabernacle, suddenly Miriam became leprous, as white as snow. So there's see the biblical connection? She ran her mouth against her brother, and what happened? Then Aaron turned toward Miriam, and there she was, a leper. So Miriam was shut out of the camp seven days, and the people did not journey till Miriam was brought in again. So the Torah recounts how Miriam and Aaron, sister and brother of Moses, complained to God about Moses' seemingly inappropriate behavior, separating from his wife. Right? In other words, they went even to God, but they still went to a third, you know, somebody else not involved. They did a triangulation and they wanted to complain about Moses when Moses wasn't around. And so they went to God and they talked trash about Moses to God. And God didn't like that, and God didn't approve of that. Um, yes, there's an answer to, because I will get the email. What about Aaron? There's an answer to it. Listen to the archives. God rebukes them and explains the unique character of Moses. This is where you get Moses was the most humble man in all of the earth, of course, written by Moses. As a result, Miriam was afflicted with Zarat and had to be confined outside the camp for seven days. This incident serves as a primary source for the idea that the affliction of Zarat, leprosy, is connected to inappropriate, hurtful speech, what is in Hebrew called Lashan Hara, evil tongue. It is interesting to note that during the seven days Miriam was in isolation, the people out of great respect for her did not travel until she rejoined the camp. That's verse 16 of chapter 12. Following verse says, Then the people departed from Hazarote, and they camped in the desert of Paran. Now this verse, verse 16 in Hebrew, has seven words, alluding to the seven days that they waited for her. In an earlier incident, when Moses was put in a basket in the Nile River to save his life, Exodus chapter 2, verse 4 says this. His sister, Miriam, stood from afar to know that what would be done to him. That verse also has seven words, which leads the commentators to deduce a connection between the two incidents. Since Miriam waited in great concern to see what would happen to her brother Moses, Moses and all of Israel waited for Miriam to rejoin the camp before they traveled on. Now, let's define this idea of evil speech. Lashan Hera. Leviticus 13, verse 20. And the priest shall look, and behold, if it appears to be lower than the skin. Okay, and so this is again where this passage this week's portion has to apply to all of us because we all struggle with this, do we not? A skin of fiction that appeared to be below the surface of the skin was one of the sure signs of biblical leprosy. Evil speech is also more than skin deep. Jesus teaches that evil speech comes from the evil that's stored in a person's heart. And that's true when you think about it, because sometimes you you will find that to be the case, right? Um sometimes you're you're in a conversation with someone. I can't remember then the name of the movie it comes from now, but the phrase is well that escalated fast, right? You know, um all of a sudden, like a quick comment, and all of a sudden just a bunch of stuff spews out, right? And things from years ago are recounted, and you're like, where in the world is this coming from? It's coming from the heart, right? That's where it's coming from, right? And that's where evil speech comes from. It reveals an evil heart. It reveals that the evil one has got a hold of the heart and it's finally spilling out. Uh, evil speech is the opposite of love. Love covers a multitude of sin, Peter says, 1 Peter 4, 8, which is to say that love will put up with imperfections. A loving person intentionally looks the other way or knows how to put the best construction on the weakness of another. Evil speech is the opposite. The speaker of evil delights in pointing out character flaws or deficiencies in others. Uh, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, who's often known as the Kofetz Kaim, is a famous uh rabbi for his classic books about proper speech. Uh, you can even get like daily books, or what I would say daily devotionals, where they're like pages, one-page pieces from his writings. He spent his whole life just teaching on how to speak properly, uh, how to speak properly about people, including difficult conversations, how to have the difficult conversation in a biblical way, how to say something that is not so flattering about someone and yet doesn't cross the line of evil speech and so forth. He dedicated his whole life to that. Um, and there's tons of his writings out there about that. But one of the ways he defines what is called le shanhara, uh, malicious speech, slander, gossip, so forth, um, is this. Okay. He defines it like this it's information which is either derogatory or potentially harmful to another individual. A derogatory statement about someone is lashan hurrah, even if it will definitely not cause that person any actual harm. To focus on the shortcomings of another person is itself always wrong. A statement that could potentially bring harm to someone, whether it's financial, physical, psychological, to their reputation or otherwise, is always Lashan Hrah. Even if the information is not negative, even if it's a true statement, a true statement can still be derogatory or harmful, and therefore a true statement can still be Lashon Hurrah. So that's an important thing because you can sometimes hear people say, someone's talking, you're like, hey, man, that's gossip. And their response is, it's not gossip, it's true. You ever heard that? Gossip can be true, right? If you're saying something that's true, but your motivation, your heart is I want to harm their reputation, I want you to think less of them, I want something bad to happen to them, I want a group of people to start investigating them or to doubt them or to criticize them, or I want me to look better than them, or I want me to look right and them to look wrong. Even if what you said is true, if that's your motivation, that's evil. And that's your heart. And therefore it's Lashan Hera. We can break it down further. Um, derogatory information. What's derogatory information? This is again from the Kofitz Kaim. A derogatory statement is any negative comment or criticism speaking about a person's characteristics can be derogatory, such as mentioning that someone is stingy, that they're reckless, that they're haughty, relating an incident from someone's past can be derogatory. For example, mentioning that someone, that a person used to be short-tempered, because now you've made a person think that that person's hot-headed. You've damaged their reputation. You've made a true statement, they used to be short-tempered, but now you don't know how that person you just told that to, how they're going to interpret that, how they're going to understand that, and how they're going to pass that along in the telephone game. Derogatory information should be considered evil, even if the information is common knowledge and true. Like it's not gossip. Everybody knows it. Everybody's saying it. Yeah, and you're still sinning. Though it may be completely harmless and totally true, it's still a shana because it can cause others who are now hearing the information to think less of the person or to lower their opinion of the person, and therefore that's wrong. Potentially harmful information, the Kofitzkaim says any information that might be potentially harmful to a person, even if it's not in and of itself derogatory, that too is considered Lashanhara. If the information would cause any embarrassment to the person, it should be regarded as harmful. If it could jeopardize the listener's feelings, their feelings of goodwill toward a person, it's harmful. So if you're talking to a person and what you're saying is going to cause that person to have less goodwill toward that person, it's wrong. Suppose two mothers are discussing whether a certain movie is appropriate for viewing for children. One mother expresses her strong conviction that it is not. And the other mother casually mentions that so-and-so family lets their children watch the movie. That statement's not derogatory, and that statement's not negative, and that statement's true. It's just a statement of fact. But it's potentially damaging the relationship now between the person she told it to and that family. And therefore, it could be Lashan Hera. So it's tricky business, right? And that's where this week's portion applies to all of us, right? This is a week uh, you know, living in the times to watch what we say. Watch what we say. A careful analysis. Leviticus 13, verse 23. But if the bright spot remains in its place and does not spread, it is only the scar of the boy, and the priest shall pronounce him clean. The laws of biblical leprosy are complex. The priest had to check and recheck the symptoms on a person suspected of having leprosy before making the final diagnosis. In many cases, what first appeared to be biblical leprosy turned out to be something else. And the same can be true for Lashana Ra. Sometimes negative remarks that could appear to be Lashana Ra are actually not. There are times that are valid reasons that justify speaking difficult information. In some instances, it's not only permissible to say these things, it is the ethical thing to do. And so the Kofitz Kaim give some guidelines that can help a person determine whether a particular piece of challenging, difficult, is this borderline negative information, is it permissible to speak? First, the rules of proper speech apply primarily within the fold of the people of God. Leviticus 19, verse 16 says, you shall not go about as a slanderer among your people. The term your people refers to the people of God. We should not refrain from identifying wickedness and evil for the fear of looking impolite. For example, there's nothing wrong with identifying a racist as a racist, and so forth. Even within the people of God, it's permissible to speak negatively about a person, the Kofitz Kheim says, for the following purposes. To help a person about whom one is speaking. When there is sin and there might be the opportunity to bring correction, we should reprove the person. We should discuss. It with that person alone. And perhaps, if needed, bring someone along to help. So this is we have this in the Gospels, right? Matthew 18. So the way to deal with it, like if you had a problem with me, the way to deal with your problem with me is not to talk to Steve about me without me being there. And only for me to perhaps find out about it from either the person you talked to about it or the person you talked to about it, who then talked to someone about it, who talked to someone about it, who finally told me that they heard about it, that's not the way to do it. The way to have the issue is to come to me. If you believe my behavior is going to harm me, or harm my family, or harm someone else in some kind of way, your responsibility is to come to me. Then it's not Lashana Ra. Kofitskheim says it's also to help someone who's been victimized or is in danger of being victimized. If you've witnessed a brother or sister causing damage to another, then it's permissible to speak up. When someone is suffering emotional, psychological, or physical injury, it's appropriate to discuss with the people and the events involved in order to bring comfort, healing, and resolution, and hopefully correct the situation. This includes protecting people from falling victim to another person's behavior or deception. And then he says it's also appropriate to speak these challenging words, to bring peace by resolving a major dispute. He says argumentation at times can be good. Personal sad, but he says this: this is the check. This is an important check. This is the one I have to watch if I'm being transparent. The personal satisfaction we feel in conveying negative information will prove that we are speaking evil from our hearts. In other words, if you feel like I've got to speak up on this matter because an injustice is going to happen, or people need to know about this so that you know the wrong can be righted. If you are being, if you're feeling satisfaction in revealing this information about this person, then even if you're doing, quote, the right thing, you're doing it for the wrong reason. And your heart's not in the right place. Even if it's the right thing to do, the Kofitzkaim says, you're doing it for the wrong reason. And that's an important thing too. You can do the right thing for the wrong reason. Like I said, sometimes I have to check myself on that. I'm like, I'm like, I sometimes have to catch myself and think, I think I'm deriving a little too much pleasure from like revealing this. Like, even though it's necessary, it probably shouldn't like, you know, it should break my heart more than it is. Um believers are welcome to hold a variety of opinions. They're free to have disputes that threaten to divide the community. Um there may be rare situations in which it's necessary for the leadership to speak up and out against those who are disrupting the peace. If we want to pursue the truth, we must be free to point out errors, deceptions, delusions, and fabrications, exposed wrong teaching, and wrong ideas. And sometimes it's necessary for the sake of peace and truth to point out a lie, to point out a hoax, or to point out something that is demonstratably wrong. But again, are you deriving pleasure from it? If you're part of the problem or you're part of the solution, you might have a justifiable reason for speaking. If you're not part of the problem or part of the solution, then it's not your problem. That's an important one. If you're not part of the problem and you're not part of the solution, it's none of your business. The information must be firsthand, not hearsay. The speaker must be certain that everything that they are saying is true and accurate. And the intention of speaking again must only be for the constructive purpose. Potential undue harm must be measured, like what's the end game, what's the collateral damage, all of those things must be weighed. And most important, we must find ourselves um not deriving any personal satisfaction out of this. The house of leprosy. Leviticus 14, verse 35. This is a good one, too, I think, for us to reflect upon. Very practical. Leviticus 14, verse 35. Then one who owns the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, Something like a mark of leprosy has become visible to me in the house. Like, in other words, you know like what a leper looks like? Well, that's like now like what my wall looks like in my house. It's like my house has got leprosy. So Leviticus 14, verses 33 through 53 describe the ceremonial procedure for diagnosing and cleansing a home with the signs of biblical leprosy that have appeared on the walls. Now, mold and mildew are not uncommon on interior walls. It can be a real problem in Israel during the rainy and winter season. But mold and mildew, however, do not constitute biblical leprosy. That's not what they're talking about. Not every form of mold and mildew is leprous. As with the man who was suspected of leprosy, the priest had to come and make an examination, a diagnosis of the house. If the priest diagnosed the problem as biblical leprosy, he declared the home ritually unfit. The procedure for purifying such a house is similar to purifying the leper. In both cases, the ritual with the two birds, the cedar wood, the crimson, and the hyssop, are identical. Listen to the Sun in Scriptures, and you'll find out the power of the cedar and the crimson. And furthermore, the shaving of the leper's hair can be compared to having to scrape the plaster from the afflicted house and even knocking out walls. The sages blame leprosy in a house on the words spoken within the house. And there's where it hits home for us. The house caught leprosy. Just like you catch a cold from someone because they've sneezed on you or whatever, your house did catch it. It caught leprosy. But it's a spiritual condition, so it caught it spiritually from you. Because remember, leprosy is connected with negative speech. And so the house was so filled with negative speech, critical speech, always slamming things, always slamming people, always talking about people, always seeing the worst in people, always, you know, assuming the worst of people, that the house absorbed the energy. And that became, the house became sick, quite literally. Most of the evil speech we indulge in happens within our four walls of our homes. Our spouses are our confidence as we unburden our hearts and blow off our steam and lodge our complaints about others. The kind of murmuring can seem innocuous, right? There are no victims. The words never leave the house. What's the problem? But actually, there is a victim. There's more than one victim. For one, you are the victim. By indulging in critical speech, you are conditioning yourself to exercising a critical spirit. Day after day, you're patterning your mind to concentrate on being critical of yourself and others and their shortcomings. And moreover, you are poisoning the other members of your household. Those are the other victims. Your children, for instance. They learn that pattern of behavior. They learn that bitterness. And then they become that way in their lives when they're at school. One could say that the very walls of your house become a victim because they absorb the evil spiritual energy you've created, and the entire home becomes defiled. The solution is to break the habit. Make a pact with those in your home not to speak or tolerate Lashan Hera any longer. Scrape the infected spiritual plaster off the walls and start with a fresh coat of optimism, grace, and kindness. When you do that, you will see that it freshens up the place quite a bit. And then that brings kind of a neat little lesson here. Leviticus 14, verses 33 and 34. Says the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, When you arrive in the land of Canaan, that I give you as a possession, and I will place a leprous plague upon a house and the land of your possession. Read literally, this verse gives no indication that God was bringing the plague of Zarat to warn the house owner that he was erring spiritually. Indeed, Rashi quotes the Midrash, which explains that having one's house struck with Zarat could actually be beneficial. The Midrash explains that when the Canaanite nations learned of Israel's plan to conquer their lands, they took advantage of the 40-year interlude between the Exodus and the Hebrews' arrival to hide all of their gold and their precious gems in the walls of their houses. And under ordinary circumstances, the Israelites would have never found that gold because part of the promise was you're going to enter into the land and you're going to live in houses that you don't build. You're going to just take over and you're going to inhabit these homes that are already built. They would have never known a fortune was in these walls. Only the plague of Zararat and the subsequent ritual that required the removal of the infected walls would reveal the fortune, the gold's discovery. And so the Midrash reflects this is how so much of life can unfold. Those very events or occurrences that we first interpret as being bad, especially bad for us, often turn out to be some of the best things that could have happened to us. Maybe because it wakes us up, maybe because it brings us to repentance, maybe because it causes us to change. But there is much gold hidden in the walls of challenge and adversity. Disease itself, as we discussed at when we began, when we relate to it properly, can be transformed into an opportunity for our healing, our repentance, and our restoration. All right. So we will stop there as we took a look at biblical leprosy, but from a deeper perspective of the idea this week of how it relates not only the mind and the body and our attitude, but our speech, right? And we're, I mean, we all need to work on that. I need to work on that. Everybody needs to work on that. Um it's just true. Um, this is uh uh, you know, if you take seriously the idea of how Torah study works, right? This comes up at the perfect time for you. Uh it's also the time like divine appointments, right? This is this is the week that God is especially available to to work on you and your heart and your mind in this area. Um so this is the time to pray about it, journal about it, confess about it, get right with people about it. Um you know, change your ways. Um spring cleaning, uh, so to speak. Uh do it spiritually too. Uh so we will pick it up next week with portion number 29, but let's close with the blessing. Baruchata alonai not tenhantara. Blessed are you, Lord God, who has given to us the gift of the Torah. Amen. Go in peace. Hi, everyone. Thank you for engaging this teaching. You know, we and Emmanuel have as one of our goals to make our teachings available online to anyone, everywhere, at any time, whether that's through a podcast or our YouTube channel, on MP3 downloaded.