Guard Your Thoughts

As important as it is to guard our tongue from negative and slanderous speech; it is even more important to alter our thought patterns. METZORA METZORA

Why Skin Disease?

This week’s twin parshiyos—Tazria- Metzora—address the person who was stricken with a skin disease known as tzara’as, often mistranslated as leprosy. In fact, our Sages tell us that this condition was a direct consequence of a person who would be guilty of the sin of lashon hara, the evil tongue or slander. When a person would break out with these skin lesions he would know that he had slandered another. Even Moses and Miriam, two of the greatest and most saintly people that lived, we are told, were stricken with this disease because of some mildly disparaging things they said.

The question can be asked, why would G-d choose to afflict the person guilty of Lashon METZORA Hara with a skin disease? Why specifically the skin? If it was intended as a punishment for the transgression of gossip, there are so many other ways one could have been punished. Why of all the organs and limbs of the person was the skin singled out for this affliction?

Exposing the Negativity

One explanation is that the sin of Lashon Hara is essentially one in which a person has verbalized and externalized the otherwise inner, private negative thoughts about another. If people would have kept their negative thoughts to themselves and not spread the slanderous information to others, their negative feelings would have remained inside. Now that it has been exposed to the outside world, the “punishment” is that their outermost organ—their skin—becomes diseased, as a way of saying that the sin was not the thought itself, but the verbalizing and exposing of the negative information to others.

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To be sure, negative thoughts about others are just as evil. Indeed, the Alter Rebbe, the founder of the Chabad Chassidic movement, in his classic work, the Tanya, states that evil thoughts have a more detrimental effect on the person’s soul since thought is closer to the soul than speech.

Passover: Freedom of Speech Preceded by Freedom of Thought

Bas Ayin, a Chassidic commentary on the Torah, takes this notion a step further:

In many years, we read this parsha that deals with negative speech in the Shabbos that precedes Passover; a Shabbos that is also known as Shabbos Hagadol: the great Sabbath.

Bas Ayin explains that the word for Passover in Hebrew “Pesach” is actually a composite of two words: Peh and sach, which means a “mouth that speaks.” This suggests that the spiritual focus of Passover is about the power of speech. When our speech is tainted it is in exile. It is held hostage by the various influences that “compel” us to say things that METZORA are inappropriate either because they go against G-d, one’s fellow or against one’s own spiritual identity.

Passover, as the Holiday of Liberation is thus the time that our speech can be liberated.

However, the Shabbos before Passover we focus on the purity of our thoughts. Before we can control the way in which we speak, it is imperative that we learn how to control our thoughts, because ultimately if our thoughts are improper it is just a matter of time before we blurt out something that was on our mind for so long.

Thus, the Shabbos before Passover, when the focus is on our thoughts, the source and root of our speech, is referred to as the “Great Shabbos” because it represents the liberation of the thoughts that precede and are even more important than the liberation of our speech. Passover is the “regular” Shabbos because its focus is on speech, and the Shabbos before is the “great” Shabbos because its emphasis is on the purity and liberation of thought.

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Obviously, when a person speaks ill of another and is guilty of the sin of Lashon Hara, he or she has also thought ill of the other. It is rare that one should speak evil words without first having harbored these negative feelings in one’s mind and heart.

We can now understand why the Metzora— the person afflicted with the skin disease— had to be quarantined. It was not—as some erroneously think—due to the contagious nature of this disease, for there is no evidence that it was contagious.

The classic reason given by our Sages is that Lashon Hara causes people to be shunned and isolated. Thus the slanderer gets a taste of his own medicine and is also isolated.

Double Quarantining

But, the Torah describes situations in which the person has to be quarantined twice. What is the reason for the second week of isolation?

One might suggest that one week of isolation was intended to have the person realize the METZORA evil in publicizing negative information about the other via the medium of speech. One learns how destructive and painful the power of speech can be by having to witness the detrimental effects of the disease affecting one’s most external organ.

However, the second period of seclusion was provided to enable the guilty party to get to the very root of his sin—the evil thoughts that he harbored that led him to speaking evil. It is not enough to just focus on the awesome power of speech; one must also reflect on the even more awesome power of thought and its role.

Positive Speech and Thought

Whatever is true in the realm of negativity is equally true in the realm of goodness. Positive speech is what reveals the hidden positive energy that is latent or just beneath the surface. The more we say positive things about G-d, other people, positive values and experiences, etc., the more we help these things materialize.

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Thus, the emphasis on speaking about Moshiach and the future Redemption. Speaking about it helps to make these powerful energies come to the surface and actually materialize in the most literal and obvious sense.

How do we get ourselves to speak about these positive matters?

It is by reaching in to our thought processes and learning to think in a positive way; learning how to think in Redemption oriented fashion.

And how to we cultivate the proper positive thoughts?

We accomplish this by learning more Torah; specifically the parts of Torah that discuss the concepts of freedom, Moshiach and the future world of goodness and true peace.

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From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Tazria-Metzora by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.