What we do know is that it was a condition that was obvious to everyone and that it was not life-long or terminal: It was possible to recover from leprosy, and Jesus was able to cure many lepers by his touch and his words of healing.
The terms "leprosy" and "leper" have often been used metaphorically: In our own day, HIV/AIDS continue to be modern-day leprosy: Those afflicted have been shunned, quarantined and morally judged. Families disown their children; religious orders expel their members; employers fired loyal, productive workers ---all because of a diagnosis of HIV. This week's news include the depressing stories of the cholera epidemic currently battering Haiti, a country that previously suffered under the burden of its high rate of HIV infection. Some commentators "blamed" the 2010 earthquake as God's punishment for HIV. To confront these Biblical passages is to confront our prejudices about illness, sexuality, and our prejudices against those who are ill or disabled.
The rabbinic scholars who wrote Biblical commentary 1500 years ago were troubled by the disease described in Leviticus. Although the Biblical author may have blamed the leper, the rabbis of the Talmud did not, although they didn't have an answer about the disease itself. Instead, they changed the metaphor: They redefined the Hebrew word for leprosy [METZORA] as an acronym {MOTZEI SHEM RA} for slanderous speech: Leprosy was described notas a skin disease but as a disease of purposefully hurtful or slanderous speech: They took the literal meaning of the text and transformed through a discussion of those who "infect" themselves through the injurious speech they inflict on others. This metaphor of "leprous speech" is an apt one for our time, when internet messages or YouTube videos are said to "go viral" when they are sent electronically to vast networks of people in a split-second, often without regard to the veracity of a communication or the hurtful nature of its content.
In one of the Confirmation classes at the parish where I work, we had a lengthy discussion of the recent "viral" video of a Chicago student being beaten up by four other youth, several of whom were also his classmates at a Catholic high school. The victim and the perpetrators were all male, but it was a young woman who shot the video of the beating and posted it on YouTube, where it was viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, including enough family and neighbors to positively identify the participants, whose names, addresses and contact information was also posted on-line.
The students were all shocked by the video, whether they had actually seen it or not, and what they recognized and shared with us adults is that we live in an age where some people are so hungry for fame and recognition that they will even physically injure others and risk arrest and punishment to somehow "prove" that they are newsworthy. In discussing the religious commandments against "bearing false witness" or "coveting" our neighbor's possessions, in our day we have to include not only person-to-person speech, but the speech that travels ---often anonymously-over the Internet and on social media sites such as Facebook. We may have conquered Hansen's Disease through modern antibiotics, but we still don't have a cure for leprous speech, and for that, we still seek a spiritual remedy to make our culture clean.
Kate Kinser is an interfaith educator and immigrant advocate who happily schleps 20 miles to Ascension from her home in Rogers Park.
