A D’var Torah for Tazria-Metzora and Yom HaShoah
I’ve been holding my breath for the last six months waiting to see what comes of the Elon Musk-Twitter saga. It has been like watching a car crash in slow motion, and I can’t look away. Perhaps some billionaire Schadenfreude motivates my intrigue.
Amidst all the current controversy, though, let’s not lose sight of the very real social good that Twitter has also enabled. Twitter is the unsung hero that catalyzed the effectiveness of the Arab spring in 2012. It is thanks to the breakneck speed of hashtag adoption that North Africa saw the most political upheaval since the decolonization wave of the 1950s. Twitter gave rise to grassroots efficacy like never before.
Sometimes Twitter can be ugly. When people find themselves behind a screen, the outside world may be warped. A negative feedback loop can detach us from reality and can cause one to defang a non-existent oppressor. It is unhealthy to stay in our own social media echo chambers. Twitter is therefore most effective when it exposes us to a wide set of perspectives. Only then do we reap the benefits of a flattened hierarchy, where power is given to the people and when people are truly seen in their full three-dimensionality.
In this week’s parshah, we read about the Metzora, the individual afflicted with the skin disease tzara’at for (according to later rabbinic interpretation) slandering another individual. Rashi asks why the Metzora is healed by a sacrifice of two wild, pure birds. Usually the levitical procedures are specifically delineated with very little room for variance. In this instance, however, the Torah does not specify which bird to use in the purification ritual for the Metzora, the Torah instead employs the general language of “tzipor,” bird.
Find more commentaries on Parshat Tazria-Metzora.
Rashi responds by saying that it is because birds “tweet,” and the person who perpetrated a slanderous rumor did so in the manner of a bird (perhaps, it is fitting then that the modern equivalent is met with a Twitter suspension). The implied answer is that, by speaking about birds as a class instead of specifying a type of bird, the Torah is directing our attention to their general “blabbermouth” nature.
Rashi’s response seems to evoke the historic understanding of the relationship between a sovereign and their constituents. In ages past, mobs could be controlled through game theory tactics. The individual’s voice was muted; what mattered was overcoming that activation energy to engage or coerce the actions of the masses.
Social media sets forth a new dynamic in which eye witness accounts dictate the narrative. On Twitter the mob is no longer anonymous; it has a name and a face. It can be George Floyd, Malala Yousafzai, Tawakkol Karman. Sharing our perspectives returns the power to the people. When the boogeyman of the mob is demystified, we have the humanity to look even our enemy in the face as a real, breathing human soul.
Though Rashi’s response fit the pre-Twitter era, I think it needs to be remodeled to fit the current world in which we live, to move from class back into case. The paradigmatic case of lashon hara [slanderous or evil speech] found in the Torah is when Miriam describes Moses’ wife derogatorily as a Black woman, an Isha Kushit. (Numbers 12:1) God punishes Miriam with tzara’at, ironically making her own skin white. This is no hypothetical. The rabbis rationalize Miriam’s choice to speak lashon hara and use it as an opportunity to unpack her relationship with her brother Moses. But meanwhile, what do we make of the treatment of this woman who is not even given a name? This woman who is the subject of racial abuse and caught in the crossfire of a larger point Miriam is trying to make?
Find more commentaries on Yom HaShoah.
This woman does have a name. Her name is Tzipora. She has two sons, Eliezer and Gershom. She grew up in Midian in the limelight in her priestly household. This is why the healing for the Metzora uses the term Tziporim, birds. It is in fact not because we are speaking in vague terms at all; it is precisely to give a face and a name to the victim of lashon hara itself.
Today we commemorate the six million faceless casualties of the Holocaust. Let us use our Twitter platforms to honor at least one. Today I remember my great grandmother Teri Lok, whose life was taken in the flames of Auschwitz.
Dvir Cahana is a third year Rabbinical student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and founder of The Amen Institute — a creative sandbox for art and Torah “creation”. Dvir has always danced between the worlds of art and Jewish education. His 10 studio albums show a love of Yiddishkeit and wordplay. He has performed on stages across North America including Sababa Fest and End of the Weak World MC Challenge. Dvir was a recipient of the Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” award and sat on Moishe House’s regional advisory board as the founder of the Montreal house. He was a T’ruah Summer Fellow in 2022. He lives with his wife Shalhevet in Washington Heights.