Parsha Metzora: Time to Clean Up!
To the tune of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”:
I’m making my list, checking it twice
Wish I was Sephardi so I could have rice!
Pesach time is coming to town…
It haunts you when you’re sleeping
You clean while you’re awake.
Who knows if it’ll be bad or good
But it’ll be clean for goodness sake!
So you’d better not shout. You’d better not cry.
You’d better just clean, I’m telling you why:
Pesach time is coming to town!
Yes, that’s right, Passover (Pesach) is right around the corner. With two babies under two, we’ve had to start our preparations extra early this year. It really helps to have a good song or two to sing while you work, which is how Rachel came up with the one above.
But Pesach isn’t only about cleaning up your house. All that cleaning to get rid of chometz in the physical sense leaves lots of time for reflection and it is an ideal time to focus on cleaning up our spiritual selves. It is often said that chometz is a metaphor for the ego. All the hot air that puffs up bread is like the ego that puffs up a person. Pesach is the time to get rid of it, to empty oneself so one can be a more humble receptacle for G-d and His Torah.
But this week’s parsha reminds us that ego isn’t the only thing we have to clean out of our lives. Miriam, Moshe’s sister, speaks lashon hara and develops tzaaras, a spiritual malady with a physical manifestation, often mistranslated as leprosy. We don’t have a real translation for tzaaras because it doesn’t exist today. Most people would, perhaps, see this as fortunate. Phew, I don’t have to have an ugly skin disease just because I spread some gossip about my neighbor! But in reality, it is sad. The fact is that gossip is so accepted and so rampant in our society that if tzaaras existed we would probably all be afflicted! So G-d has removed the malady from us.
As we clean our homes for Pesach it is the perfect time to clean ourselves of old, bad habits. As we brush aside our ego, one of the first things we should do is to brush aside our inclination to gossip. We can choose not to speak it, choose not to read it, and choose not to listen to it. We have the power to decide, and in that power comes freedom. The freedom of Pesach.
Shabbat shalom!
Read more on Parshas Metzorah: Tsaraas: Sometimes a Bad Thing Can Be a Good Thing
