Miller's Musings Parshas Metzora: Whiter Than White

 

בס''ד

 

Colours have connotations that can be difficult to discard from our consciousness.  Red is most commonly associated with blood, black with concepts of impurity and white with notions of unblemished purity.  The Torah is replete with examples of the implications that white conveys, for example the garb of the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur.  Yet the colour of tzara’as, this spiritually produced skin disorder, that is most definitively a sign of negativity and leads to impurity, is white!  Why would this colour be chosen to signify such a grave status of spiritual decline?

Let us consider carefully the frame of mind of a person who speaks ill of one’s fellow man, the cause of tzara’as, a divine manifestation of one’s shortcomings.  To speak Loshon Horah (evil talk) about another human being displays a level of self-righteousness and disdain towards another that comes with the feeling that to some extent one is above that other person.  This is turn can only be due to a perception of being faultless oneself or more likely believing oneself as being beyond reproach in the eyes of all around us.  For if one clearly recognised one’s own failings as exposed to all, how could one so brazenly point out the inadequacies of another?  Perhaps the whiteness of this affliction is to point out that no matter what impression we may try to portray to others, we must be cognizant of this whiteness being only ‘skin-deep’ and belying the true deficiencies we harbour within, made emphatically clear by the tzara’as.

One of the most widespread ills of this generation is the propensity to act one way in public as a façade to one’s true conduct behind closed doors.  This is living a life of falsehood which comes with its own clear dangers, both for ourselves and for our families, who will always feel and be effected by this deception.  There is no question that we all want others to respect us and may try to conceal our own flaws.  This is natural but to some degree will always be an interposition to our life’s purpose if we do not we recognise it for what it is, a mask that we wear that is not truly us, and try to ensure the pretence becomes the reality.  Perhaps the greatest danger lies in believing in the act that we present to the world, and falling for the deceit ourselves.  Self-knowledge is pivotal to our ability to actualise our potential.  If we accept our own false image, we can never rid ourselves of the flaws that stunt our growth and never become the person we would in essence clearly like to be.  

May the self-reflection of Shabbos reveal to us our true selves.

 

לעילוי נשמת לאה בת אברהם