Leading Idea: Tzara’at and its implications
Some helpful conceptual distinctions raised by the exercises and secondary sources that are worth keeping in mind when exploring this theme are:
Isolation
- to protect others from you (contagious diseases),
- to protect you from them (Leukemia, whereyou might fall sick from being in touch with others),
- to enable you to get better (spending time ‘away’ in a psychiatric hospital where you can then get the care and help you need, or spending on a spiritual retreat).
You can also look at the difference between different kinds of isolation:
- loneliness and solitude (in solitude I can keep myself company and be happy about it, when I am lonely i can’t even keep myself company)
- Being alone by choice or being alone by circumstance, or being alone by force.
This can lead nicely into the text on lashon hara as a spiritual disease, and to also to think about the kind of isolation Miriam ‘s isolation was.
Punishment
- Punishment other people inflict on you
- Punishment that you inflict on yourself through self- neglect (not looking after yourself)
- Punishment you inflict upon yourself as a result of a psychological condition (feeling guilty, anorexia, depression).
- Punishment that is deserved v’s punishment that is undeserved
- Punishment that ‘matches’ the crime (is relevant to what was done) v’s punishment that simply inflicts pain/punitive measure