A.
Our double parasha very largely focuses on the issues of nega‘im, specific manifestations of a malaise more generally called tzora‘ath. Often quite erroneously translated “leprosy,” tzora‘ath is not Hanson’s Disease, as a careful review of the symptoms reported in our text will show. Tzora‘ath is a physical manifestation of spiritual or metaphysical disorders, the best known of which is lashon ha-ra‘. Also, entirely unlike any natural disease known to the medical arts, tzora‘ath can afflict inanimate objects, such as clothing (cf. XIII, 16-59) and houses, the subject of this essay.
כי תבאו אל ארץ כנען אשר אני נתן לכם לאחזה ונתתי נגע צרעת בבית ארץ אחזתכם: ובא אשר לו הבית והגיד לכהן לאמר כנגע נראה לי בבית: (“For you will come to the land of Canaan which I am giving you for a freehold; and I shall place a nega‘ tzora‘ath on the house of your freehold. And the one who has the house will come and tell the kohén, saying, Like a nega‘ [k’nega‘] has appeared to me in the house”; XIV, 34-35).
Like every other possible nega‘, this one requires the professional diagnosis of a kohén before it can be pronounced actual tzora‘ath. Hence, Chazal seize upon the term k’nega‘ to stress: ואפילו ת"ח ויודע ודאי שהוא נגע לא יגזור ויאמר "נגע" אלא "כנגע" (“And even [if the householder] is a scholar and knows certainly that it is a nega‘, he should not decide the issue and say nega‘ but rather k’nega‘”; נגעים פי"ב מ"ה).
Fair enough, but this applies equally to every manifestation of a nega‘, not only one which appears in a house, and yet in the other discussions of manifestations on the bodies of people we see no prescribed formula of what to say to the kohén in our parasha, merely that it be brought to a kohén for examination and diagnosis. Indeed, in the case of a manifestation on one’s clothing, we find: והי' הנגע ירקרק או אדמדם בבגד או בעור או בשתי או בערב או בכל כלי עור נגע צרעת הוא והראה את הכהן (“And [if] the nega‘ be greenish or reddish in the garment or in the leather, or in the warp or in the woof or in any article of leather, it is a nega‘ tzora‘ath and shall be shown the kohén”; XIII, 49), which certainly sounds as though one is permitted to diagnose oneself and seek confirmation from the kohén.
If we add to this the fact that the verb nir’a in v. 35 above also has the connotation "seem,” such that our householder would be understood by the kohén to be saying, “It seems to me that there is a nega‘” even without the comparative prefix k-, we appear justified in attached some additional meaning to the prefix. Indeed, Chazal apparently perceived such a meaning, and Rashi agreed, since along with the mishna cited above, he also mentions the following midrash: בשורה היא להם שהנגעים באים עליהם לפי שהטמינו אמוריים מטמוניות של זהב בקירות בתיהם ארבעים שנה שהיו ישראל במדבר וע"י הנגע נותץ הבית ומוצאן (“It is good news [besora] to them that the nega‘im befall them, because the Emoriyyim hid golden treasures in the walls of their houses the entire forty years that Israel were in the desert, and by means of the nega‘ the house was demolished and one found them”).
In other words, it was not a nega‘, a genuine affliction reflecting some sore deficiency in the householder, but rather “like” a nega‘, which in fact was interpreted as good news (at least, once the first few hoards of gold were found).
But these surely all occurred during the first year or two after the conquest of the Holy Land. Since the Torah’s message is timeless, what does this rather arcane story of tzora‘ath afflicting a house have to tell us in our age?
B.
The Talmud tells us: תנא משמי' דרבי עקיבא לעולם יהא אדם רגיל לומר כל דעביד רחמנא לטב עביד (“It was taught in Rabbi ‘Aqiva’s name, A person should always be accustomed to say, 'Everything the Merciful One does, He does for good'”; ברכות ס: ולהלכה מובא בשו"ע או"ח סי' ר"ל סע' ה'). Elsewhere, we find an account of Rabbi Nachum ish gam zo, whose watchwords were always גם זו לטובה (“Even this is for good”; תענית כ"א.).
At first glance, both aphorisms appear roughly equivalent, but some thought reveals a crucial difference. Rabbi ‘Aqiva’s statement is rather passive. It implies that one is to believe that G-d runs the world, and that everything which He brings about in it is for the good, regardless of how it is perceived by a human witness. Things may seem black, he tells us, utterly devoid of any discernible positive content; nonetheless, we are halachically mandated to believe that G-d knows what He is doing, and that everything will come out all right in the end. Rabbi Nachum ish gam zo is on quite a different level. He was capable of seeing mill’chat’chilla, “from the beginning” that whatever occurs is in fact good. With R’ Nachum, there was no negative perception in the first place; rather, what others might view as a negative development, he was able to grasp in its fullness and see immediately the good in it.
Rabbi ‘Aqiva’s formulation was for his students, regardless of their attainments; it is brought down l’halacha because it is the minimum requirement of emuna pshuţa, of simple faith in Ha-Shem, that everything will come out right. Rabbi Nachum illustrates the personal capabilities of a mature talmid chacham.
And this, I think, is what Rashi and the midrash see in our verse. K’nega‘ nir’a li, says our wise householder; a thing which to everyone else seems like a nega‘, but to me is a besora, has appeared in my house. This is the sort of faith engendered by the realization that ד' הוא האלקים אין עוד מלבדו (“Ha-Shem is the G-d [i.e. the true origo et fons of every force or function perceived in the world around us], there is nothing else beside Him”; Deuteronomy IV, 39; ע"ע נפש החיים ש"ג פ"ג).
C.
There remains, however, the question of why G-d should choose this particular form for the besora that golden treasure. Whilst, as perusal of the rest of the passage makes clear, this would surely guarantee that the householder would tear down the house and thereby find the treasure, one cannot help but think that He could have got the message across in some other way which did not necessarily suggest a spiritual deficiency in our erudite householder; as we have seen, the Torah appears at pains to suggest that such a person could be a scholar and tzaddiq of the lofty attainments of Nachum ish gam zo.
One must remember that the Emoriyyim were one of the seven Canaanite tribes. The Canaanites in general, and the Emoriyyim in particular, bore an apparently well-deserved reputation as sharp and unscrupulous traders (they were known to the Greeks as “Phoenicians”, because amongst their wares was cloth dyed with the blood of the phoinix, a shellfish, and to the Romans subsequently as Puni, with whom they fought the Punic Wars, largely over trade issues). Indeed, in later biblical Hebrew, the very word Kna‘ani came to mean a merchant, especially a sharp one (cf. e.g. Proverbs XXXI, 24; Isaiah XXIII, 8; and especially Zechariah CIV, 21).
What plots, what gloating and boasting did the walls of those Emori houses witness concerning the way in which that gold was gained? What crooked deals and practices were celebrated within them?
The spiritual deficiency being indicated, then, was that of the houses’ original owners, not the new ones, and the indication was a clear warning to the new occupants and their neighbors who were of course aware of Emori business ethics, not to follow the same path in their own deals. וכמעשה ארץ כנען כו' לא תעשו ובחקתיהם לא תלכו, “And according to the practices of the land of Canaan... you shall not act, nor shall you go in their laws”; Leviticus XIX, 2) does not necessarily only refer to their disgustingly licentious idolatrous rites. The ‘avon ha-Emori which had not yet fully matured in Avraham’s day (cf. Genesis XV, 16, Rashi ad loc.) covered a full range of activities.
D.
From all of the above, then, we see that at a minimum we are obligated to accept that every cloud has a silver lining, even if we are unable to perceive it in the immediate circumstances. This is the halacha, applicable to and attainable by everyone.
However, we are also able to strive for the higher and more sublime level which Rabbi Nachum had achieved, such that, with the spiritual “x-ray vision” afforded the talmid chacham by da‘ath Torah, through his complete immersion and suffusion with the Torah’s outlook, we are in fact able to pierce the grey veil from the cloud’s first appearance on the horizon, and see the silver lining for ourselves.
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