The sections of Tazria and Metzora, which will be read in synagogues this Shabbos, deal largely with the laws of tzora’as, a condition that, besides afflicting people, also attaches itself to clothing and houses. The Torah, in these parshiyos, presents at length the laws governing the affliction itself, as well as the means of purification from it. One of the important laws of the entire process of becoming impure with tzora’as and then attaining purification from it, is that only a kohein can declare that tzora’as has, indeed, appeared, and only a kohein can declare that it has left. In regard to this law, the Zohar to parshas Tazria, no. 49, commenting on the verse in parshas Metzora, "the kohein shall look and behold ! - the affliction has been healed from the metzora (the one afflicted with tzora’as)" (Vayikra 14:3), explains that the kohein here refers to God Himself ! Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izhbitza, in his Mei Hashiloach, mentions this passage in the Zohar, and explains that when God looks into the soul of a Jew, he is automatically cured of all his shortcomings. That, apparently, is how the kohein is able to purify him. One may ask, however, why it is that specifically in regard to the purification of the metzora, there is a need for God’s participation in the process. I believe that a closer look at the nature of the affliction of tzora’as, as well as the process of purification from it, can help us answer this question.

We have noted in the past that the metzora is likened by the rabbis to a dead person. In fact, the Talmud in the third chapter of Moed Katan derives many laws of mourning from the laws of the metzora. In essence, the process that the metzora must go through once the affliction has been identified and declared as such by the kohein is a process of mourning over himself, as Rav Tzvi Shachter has referred to it. Usually, the reason for this status is explained as being due to the metzora’s isolation from the rest of the community. In Netvort to parshas Metzora, 5765 (available at www.yucs.org/heights/torah/bysubject), we offered a different explanation, based on the fact that the most prevalent cause of tzora’as is the speaking of leshon hora, or evil speech, which is rooted in one’s loss of his own self-identity. However we explain it, the fact remains that, halachically, the metzora is, to a degree, a ‘dead person walking.’

This status of the metzora is reflected in some details of the purification process, as well. As part of this process, the kohein takes two birds, cedar wood, a crimson tongue of wood and hyssop. One of the two birds is slaughtered, and then taken together with the cedar wood, wool and hyssop, and dipped into living water, or water taken from a spring, and the kohein sprinkles from it onto the metzora (Vayikra 14:4-8). We find an analogy to this kind of sprinkling as part of a purification process in only one other instance, which is that of the Parah Adumah, or red heifer . Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra, in fact, already noticed this similarity between the purification process of the metzora and that of the red heifer. The difference is that in regard to the metzora, a slaughtered bird is dipped together with the cedarwood, wool and hyssop, while in the case of the red heifer, ashes from the slaughtered, burned heifer are mixed with the living waters.

Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik zt’l explained that the process of sprinkling in regard to the red heifer procedure must be understood within the context of the kind of impurity it comes to remove. The red heifer is used to purify someone who has come into contact with a corpse. Death, explained Rav Soloveitchik, is something that human beings are unable to deal with on their own. Man cannot make peace with the fact that he will eventually die, and that this is something totally out of his hands. The only way he can come to terms with it is by recognizing that he has an eternal soul which is attached to God, Who is eternal. Thus, it is only through attaching himself to God that man can become purified from his encounter with death. This dependency on God in dealing with death is symbolized by the process of sprinkling living waters upon the impure person. Whereas other forms of purification depend upon immersion in a mikvah, which is under man’s control. Purification from contact with death requires, in addition, the sprinkling of living waters by an outside force. The ultimate purifier, explains Rav Soloveitchik, is God Himself, as the prophet says, in His name, in reference to future times," then shall I sprinkle pure waters upon you." (Yechezkel 36: 25). This is reflected in the comment of the Midrash Tanchumah, to parshas Chukas cited by Rabbi Soloveitchik (Man of Faith in the Modern World, page 109). Commenting on the verse, "and one who is clean shall gather the ashes of the red heifer)," (Bamidbar 19:9), the Tanchuma says that ‘the one who is pure’ refers to God. In a similar way, then, the metzora, who himself has undergone an encounter with death, can only become purified by attaching himself to God, through the purification process of the sprinkling of living waters. I believe that this is the meaning of the comment of the Zohar, that the one who purifies the metzora is God Himself.