TZARA’AT — It’s dermatological! It’s bad! It’s treatable (sometimes)! It’s idiopathic! It’s in this week’s Torah reading!

Like so many other commentators — ancient to modern — Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks elaborates on the construct of tzara’at, an unidentified skin ailment, as recompense for evil speech, lashon hara. Long-ago rabbinic wordplay connected tzara’at to words, speech, that can be hurtful. Aside from a clever acronymic derivation, why would the sages have focused on speech?

Rabbi Sacks: “Judaism is less a religion of holy people and holy places than it is a religion of holy words.” Words — our sacred texts, rituals, blessings. God creates through words; with their words, the ten scouts doom a generation to die in the wilderness….

Sacks continues, “Evil speech generates negative energies. Within a group it sows distrust and envy.” Directed outside the group, it can be devastatingly destructive.

We have seen what evil speech from others can do to us — including mis- or disinformation about Israel and Jews. Within for us? What we say about one another, and sometimes about Israel, is not always helpful, respectful or kind.

To the sages, lashon hara can kill the compassion or conscience of the speaker and the listener, and it can literally kill the subject of malicious words, as in driving the vulnerable to depths that can include suicide. Even a whole country is not immune to damage — perhaps even death — from evil speech.

May we all mind our words — what we say and to whom we speak. As always, we must speak up for Israel, which was a miraculous achievement in ancient times, בַּיָמִים הַהֵם, bayyamim ha-heim, and, to our great fortune, miraculous again in our day, וּבַזְמַן הַזֶה, u-vaz’man ha-zeh.

Shabbat shalom / chag sameiach!