The following text is not meant for perfect people who go through life at ease; rather, it is intended for people who are somewhat traumatized, wounded, sporting here and there a scar or some emotional pain.
How do you react when something that you wanted very much didn’t happen?
I’m talking about the small stuff.
Let’s say you planned to go on vacation, and the hotel you chose was not what it looked like in the brochure. How do you react?
You know what? Not how you react, but what and how do you feel?
And if the rented car is no good and not what you wanted, to what extent do the feelings of disappointment, failure, or having been taken advantage of, prevent you from enjoying the sense of rest that this vacation was supposed to provide you with?
Let’s say, even, that due to a mistake on your part – or not – you ended up paying much more than you had planned to. To what extent does it stop you from moving on?
And if it doesn’t really stop you practically speaking, because you do pull yourself together, how much energy is devoted to overcoming these feelings of disappointment and failure?
Personally, this is the type of thing that I cope with frequently, and it’s not easy. In recent years I have found a “tool” that helps me cope with it excellently, and not only a one-time, temporary basis, but rather as a slow and profound fixing of that part of me that gets angry or disappointed when things get stuck.
This tool is called “Tazria-Metzora”.
I once learned a talk of the Rebbe for parashat Tazria-Metzora (section 22), in which the Rebbe asks why most of the details regarding the laws of the metzora appear in parashat Tazria? And remember – right after it there is a parasha named Metzora. Why this disorder?
The talk is long, deep and fascinating, and touches on several levels in the life of a person and the nation as a whole, but I received personal illumination when I learned the Rebbe’s explanation that Tazria expresses the beginning of new life – be it plant, animal or human. All life begins with planting. The moment of planting is not yet a new life, but it is the beginning of one.
A metzora is someone who is afflicted with tzara’at (ordinarily translated as leprosy), the goal of which is really to signal to him to change his ways. Usually it’s a matter of lashon hara (harmful speech) that needs attention.
The laws of the metzora appear in parashat Tazriato tell you: Don’t see the tzara’at as an independent affliction, disconnected from the past and the future; this tzara’at can turn very quickly into the planting of a new life. If you just stop and think what this tzara’at is coming to teach you, you will see the glimmer of a new life.
At the moment that I experience disappointment and failure or any other similar feeling, I attempt to stop the flow of feelings building up inside me (and it’s not at all easy at that moment) and say to myself: “Tazria Metzora” – what is this event coming to teach me? What lesson is there in it for me? It must be that I need some further cleansing, because this story is more one of Tazria than of Metzora.
And there is another thing that the Rebbe brings there from Likutei Torah ofBa’al Hatanya – no less profound. It says in the Torah “Adam - a person – who has in the skin of his flesh” – remember that when you have tzara’at you are still an adam – a person, which is your highest definition. And the tzara’at is only “in the skin of the flesh” – not inside. Inside, you are clean, pure and healthy. Your blemish is external, in the skin. True, sometimes it seems that it’s internal, but that is not the truth. Really, you are clean, pure, good and worthy.
Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov,
Rabbi Zalmen Wishedski