ב"ה
צרעת
הבית – "Leprosy of the House"
Just
what "leprosy of the house" is is a matter
of age-old
discussion.
Evidently
the phenomenon was never clear because when one discovered what they thought was
clearly צרעת הבית in their house during the
time that
the כהנים treated the affliction, they had to go to the כהן and say that it seemed to them that there was a plague in
the
house.
As we learn: In Parshat Metzora
(Lev. 14:35) we read with regard to the affliction of Tzara'at Habayit ("leprosy of the house") the following
modus operandi: He to whom the building belongs shall come and tell the Priest, saying 'like an
affliction appears
in my house.' Rashi there seizes on the anomalous "like"
phrasing and explicates: "Even if he is a scholar who knows it certainly
to be an affliction [of leprosy], he should not determine the matter
unequivocally to say [simply] 'an affliction, rather, 'like an affliction appears.' "
Some
might think that it is merely a figurative, reifying
description
of a spiritual plague that sets into a home when its inhabitants sinned,
particularly engaged in slander.
Some
might think that the phenomenon once existed but no longer does.
Some
might think that it is a matter beyond our current ability to understand.
I am not
a כהן and it is certainly not my place to make a diagnosis, but
when I saw the article below I said to myself: That might be
what צרעת הבית
("leprosy of the house") is.
It may
be a species of צרעת הבית that does not have to be diagnosed by
a כהן, but which is an undeniable signal that something is very, very
spiritually wrong that we can all see for ourselves.
http://tinyurl.com/cbugh
Doreen
Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat,
[email protected]