Parshas Metzora

Volume 6 Issue 29

by Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky

Like (lîk) adjective 1. Possessing the same or almost the same characteristics; similar: on this and like occasions. 2.Alike: They are as like as two siblings. 3. Having equivalent value or quality.

Ah, the good old days, when the word meant something. Today, the kids have found a new interpretation for the word.

"So I was, like, hello?" "So I was on the checkout counter, and the girl in front of me had, like, some apples."

I am wont to interject, "were they like apples? You mean, that actually they were not apples, but rather they were really oranges disguised by a shiny red coating?"

But just as our parents learned to realize that the word cool was no longer a setting on an air-conditioner, or a description of current climate conditions, I decided to accept that like has also metamorphosed into just another expression. I guess it's, like, cool.

But maybe there was more than etymological benefit to this exercise in social adaptation. I began to adjust my thought process and applying the fact that the word like has taken on new meaning. And I applied that thinking to this week's Torah reading.

The parsha tells us this week that just as the concept of an irregular blemish can appear on one's body or hair, it can also appear on the walls of his home. And when a negah appears in his home, he goes to the kohen and declares, "like a negah appeared to me in my home." The afflicted sounds like a child of the new millennium. Why does he not say I may have a negah? Why use the words "like a negah." After all if it looks like a negah and acts like a negah than it must be a negah! Why then does he use the word like in describing it?

Rabbi Paysach Krohn loves to tell the beautifully haunting story of the woman who left Rusk Institute with her child who was in a wheelchair. It was a wintry day and the chill that pervaded the young boy’s fragile bones declared its chilling presence with the icy frosting it left on the exposed metal of his wheelchair.

Waiting at the bus stop on the corner of 34th and 2nd Avenue, three large city busses whizzed by, unable to accommodate the mother and the child and his special chair. It was only after a half-hour wait that the mother flagged down a bus and insisted to the driver that he allow them to board.

As the poor woman struggled to lift the wheelchair into the narrowly impatient doors that waited to slam like the jaws of a tiger, the driver shouted at her, "Lady you'll have to wait for a bus with a lift! I gotta go!"

Immediately a few passengers jumped to her defense! "It's freezing out there. We will wait!"

Embarrassed into submission, the driver acquiesced. As the mother and child settled in their place on the bus, one said to her, "Your child is not handicapped. It only seems that way. In truth it is the driver that has a handicapped mind!"

The Torah is telling us an important foundation in negativity. When one seemingly has a blemish or sees a blemish in his own home, he has no right to declare it as such. He may have a problem but should never declare it until seeking spiritual confirmation. One may think it is a blemish, it may even appear as a blemish yet until confirmed by the compassionate kohen, it is only like a blemish. However, until confirmed with counsel, it is not. If one goes to the kohen and learns to utilize the impairing experience to grow, to become more patient, more understanding, and perhaps more sensitive to others, then the hindrances that he or she experience may be troublesome, they may even be disheartening, they may even be like a handicap -- but they are truly not. Because the handicap is only in the mind; and what is on the body is only like a blemish that can fade away like the whiz of a speeding bus on 34th Street.

Dedicated in memory of Alisa Michelle Flatow , Daughter of Shmuel Mordechai and Rashka Flatow L'Iluluy Nishmas Chana Michal Bas Shmuel Mordechai V'Rashka Flatow Nift'rah Al Kidush Hashem, 10 Nissan HY"D

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Copyright © 2000 by Rabbi M. Kamenetzky and Project Genesis, Inc.

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The author is the Associate Dean of theYeshiva of South Shore.

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