Last year, I read Daniel Kahneman’s magnificant book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which provided a window into ways our mind makes judgments that are “fast,” quick and intuitive, verses judgments that are “slow,” or deliberative and holistic. According to Kahneman, there are major consequences for teaching people to be more slow to judgment in how they make decisions. He writes:
“We would all like to have a warning bell that rings loudly whenever we are about to make a serious error, but no such bell is available, and cognitive illusions are generally more difficult to recognize than perceptual illusions. The voice of reason may be much fainter than the loud and clear voice of an erroneous intuition, and questioning your intuitions is unpleasant when you face the stress of a big decision. More doubt is the last thing you want when you are in trouble. The upshot is that it is much easier to identify a minefield when you observe others wandering into it than when you are about to do so. Observers are less cognitively busy and more open to information” (Thinking, Fast and Slow, 417).
Kahneman’s theory is that one ultimately makes better, more thoughtful judgments when they think “slow,” yet thinking slow requires that we have the discipline to stop and judge our perceptions for a second time, an idea that is reflected in this week’s parasha of Tazria-Metzora.
The general consensus of our rabbinic commentators is that while we cannot ignore the literal ways in which tza’raat affects the Israelite community, the actual effect of tza’raat is meant to be a decidedly spiritual one. In his commentary on the Mishnah, Moses Maimonides writes that tza’raat is a supernatural phenomenon:
“Tza’raat was meant as a warning and chastisement, for we are obviously not dealing here with natural illnesses, since garments and houses are inanimate. This is rather a wondrous supernatural phenomenon...whatever happens to the garments and houses is, like the plague affecting the human being, called tza’raat figuratively...and the tza’raat becomes clean when its color turns white again--and this is the most important message and purpose, because of the spiritual nature of the entire subject of tza’raat” (Maimonides, Commentary to Mishnah Negaim 12:5).
If we accept Maimonides’ contention that we should look at tza’raat as a spiritual, rather than literal, affliction, it would also make sense for us to see the lessons that we can take this parasha as spiritual, rather than literal. Below, I will share how our rabbinic interpret one particular aspect of the procedure for determining tza’raat in Parshat Tazria/Metzora, and how making a distinction between the literal and spiritual can teach us something essential about the value of thinking “slow” in our relationships with one another.
When our parasha describes how a Kohen should determine whether or not a person is afflicted with tza’raat, the Torah includes a curious repetition concerning the procedure how the Kohens should check for tza’raat:
“The Kohen shall examine the affection in the skin of his body: if hair in the affected patch has turned white and the affection appears to be deeper than the skin of his body, it is a leprous affection; when the Kohen sees it, he shall pronounce him impure” (Vayikra 13:3).
When examining this passage, our rabbis note that our verse states two times that the Kohen “looks” at the garments in order to determine tza’raat. In response, our rabbis determine that the multiple uses of the word “look” provides us a window in the spiritual message of this mitzvah.
Commenting upon a later which references the need for a Kohen to look and determine whether or not a person is afflicted with tza’raat, Rashi asserts that there exists different reasons why a Kohen might “look” for tza’raat in different situations. He writes:
“And on the day” (13:14)” What does Scripture teach? It comes to teach that there is a day when you may see it and there is a day when you may not see it. Hence our rabbis said, “A bridegroom is granted [exemption from examination] all the seven days of celebration for himself and his garments and his house; and similarly on a festival one is granted exemption all the days of the festival” (Rashi on Vayikra 13:14).
This commentary, which alludes to rabbinic teachings that can be found in the Babylonian Talmud in Moed Kattan 7b and Bechorot 34b, implies that there exists instances where it is clear that one must declare a person to be impure, yet there are also instances where circumstances would require one not to declare someone impure, even if they might be impure according to only the letter of the law.
Regarding our verse specifically, the Meshekh Hokhmah, the Torah commentary of Rabbi Meir Simha Ha-Kohen of Dvinsk, takes a spiritual approach and writes that the repetition of “seeing” refers to two different modes of looking, each of which reflects a certain aspect of interpersonal engagement. He writes:
“Why the redundancy? One can say that the verse refers to two different aspects. In the first, the Kohen shall examine the affection. This involves the physical act of looking, where the Kohen checks to see if there are signs of tzara’at. The second aspect, though, refers to another type of “looking.” Thus we are told, for example, that if the person is a bridegroom in the first seven days of his marriage or if a person comes to the Kohen in the middle of a festival, the Kohen does not judge the person to have tzara’at until that week or that festival has ended, so as not to disturb his joy. Thus, the Kohen must “look” at various external factors as well, for the ways of the Torah are ways of pleasantness. (Meshekh Hokhma, Rabbi Meir Simha Hakohen of Dvinsk, 1843-1926, Latvia).
In this commentary, the looking commanded of the Kohen refers to both the external physical indications of tza’raat, as well as the contextual factors surrounding that person’s life at that moment. By implication, the Meshekh Hokhma argues that it would be possible for a Kohen to observe the external, physical characteristics of tza’raat, yet still not pronounce that person impure, if the external factors do not warrant such a ruling. This reading of the text from Vayikra provides a powerful example of how a Jewish religious authority might think “slow” before they make a ruling with important implications.
By emphasizing the various ways in which a Kohen must “look” at a person afflicted with tza’raat, our parasha is teaching us something essential about what it means to make judgments about other people. In our parasha, it would be easy to assume that the Kohen should simply take a quick look at a person, and make a cut-and-dry decision as to whether or not they are afflicted with tza’raat, yet, in reality, our parasha demands that the Kohen take the slow approach to pronouncing affliction. Similarly, in our relationships with one another, most us make snap judgments that affect our entire attitude towards other people when we meet them, taking the “fast” approach, when, in reality, we must be “slow” to look at another person, trying to understand the entire person before we judge them. By extension, as we raise our children to become caring, kind human beings, we must embrace the challenge of helping them look slowly at other people, see the whole person, and use that as a means to find the good them. May we embrace our parasha’s call for us to make evaluations based on everything we see, and not just from a snapshot of what think we see.
Shabbat Shalom!
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