Pestilence: Leprosy vs. Black Goo - Metzorah - Mythic Torah

Welcome back to Mythic Torah, my regular article investigating monsters, heroes and gods in the weekly Torah reading. This week's reading is Metzorah, the 5th reading of the book of Leviticus, that deals with purity/impurity laws surrounding leprosy in people and houses, as well as menstruation.

The Venom Symbiote, Spider-man 3

There's a common science-fiction trope in which a black, viscous substance infects people and takes over their bodies. X-files, Helix, Prometheus and Spider-man all feature a threatening Black Goo that corrupts and spreads with a reason and purpose we can't really comprehend.

The black oil functions as disease given corporeal form, a physical manifestation of our greatest fears about illness, as human beings get infected and lose control of our bodies. This ichor can't be reasoned with or spoken to, it is a faceless, relentless force that can never be entirely gotten rid of.

Magic: the Gathering has its own example of this trope that is particularly relevant for our Torah portion of Metzorah - the Phyrexian oil. Magic's Phyrexians are an infectious, invasive force that consumes and compleats people, animals, plants and whole worlds and environments. It is a living, intelligent disease that corrupts not only living beings but rocks and planets, and as long as a single drop survives Phyrexia can be reborn.

Metzorah stands in interesting contrast with this trope. Our Torah reading is concerned about illness, and in particular Tzara'at (translated as leprosy but certainly not our modern disease that has the same name) that can infect both people and houses, rendering both impure and requiring various diagnoses and rituals to remove the problem.

And yet we never get a sense that the Tzara'at is a being, or is caused by a being, acting with intention. Where the Black Goo acts as if it has intelligence, one that may be beyond our comprehension, Tzara'at is presented without personality or a sense of purpose - it just happens.

This might strike you as obvious - and indeed it may fit well with our modern sense of disease - but it is not the only way that sickness is presented in the Bible.

Let me introduce you to Resheph, the god/demon of disease.

Purim, Wine & Dionysus - Shemini - Mythic Torah

The Talmud (Megillah 7b) tells a great story about two rabbis that get drunk together on Purim:

Rabbah and Rav Zeira made a Purim feast together. They got drunk, and Rabbah stood up and killed Rav Zeira. On the morrow, Rabbah prayed for him and he came back to life!

The following year, Rabbah said to him: ‘Come, let's celebrate the Purim feast together again!’ Rav Zeira replied: ‘No thanks, miracles don't happen every day.’

Now that it's a few days after Purim, I hope you've recovered from any ill-effects from over-indulging, though I suspect your hangovers may not compare with Rav Zeira being murdered by his friend, only to be resurrected the next morning - now that's a hangover.

While I suspect that this story is meant to be something of a joke, it highlights a tension in Judaism about wine and alcohol - one the one hand these two rabbis celebrate the festival of Purim together by getting drunk, fulfilling Rava's teaching that you are supposed to get drunk on Purim until "you don't know the difference between 'Blessed be Mordechai' and 'Cursed be Haman'".

On the other hand we see here the potential for drinking, even in the context of religious celebration, to lead to out of control, violent behaviour.

Jews are permitted to drink alcohol, and we use wine as a central part of our most important rituals - shabbat, festivals, marriage and so on - and yet we know how dangerous alcohol can be.

So what is the place of wine and alcohol in Jewish mythology and ritual?

In Shemini, our parasha this week, two of Aaron's sons, Nadav and Avihu, are consumed by divine fire as they bring an offering to the Tabernacle, a topic that we will investigate more thoroughly in a few weeks when we reach Acharei Mot.

This is followed by rules that are to bind Priests in their work, including an important regulation about drinking wine (Lev 10:8-11):

8] Then the Lord said to Aaron, 9] ‘You and your sons are not to drink wine or other fermented drink whenever you go into the tent of meeting, or you will die. This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, 10] so that you can distinguish between the holy and the profane, between the impure and the pure, 11] and so you can teach the Israelites all the decrees the Lord has given them through Moses.’


This rule is placed so close to the story of the death of Nadav and Avihu that, beginning with Rabbi Ishmael in Vayikra Rabba, their deaths have been attributed to being drunk when they entered the sanctuary.

Why is this rule given? What's the problem with a priest working in the Tabernacle after having drunk wine or strong drinks?

Sleeping Giants - Reflections on Parashat Shelach Lecha

Gigantomachy, war of the giants, is my new favourite word.

Originating from Greek mythology, the idea that in primeval days great battles were fought against Titans and Giants is common to both Classical and Norse myth - but it also occurs in the Biblical tradition.

The Bible has a three-fold tension with giants, recurring at three key moments in the history of Israel - Gen 6 that discusses the Prediluvian Giants (pre-flood and another of my favourite words), Numbers - Deuteronomy, that deals with the giants of the land, and the story of King David and his followers in Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, that show his great warriors slaying the last of these foes.

But there is a key difference between our wars with the giants and those of other mythologies. The Greek Titans were defeated by Zeus, the Frost Giants were constantly fought by Thor and Odin. Yet in our stories, the giants are fought by normal human beings.

Or were they also giants?
 

Take two doses of humility - Reflections on Tazria-Metzora

    A patient once went to see the doctor, complaining that she hadn’t been feeling well for several days. The doctor examined her, went away and came back with three large jars of pills.

    "Take the green pill with a big glass of water first thing in the morning,” the doctor said. “Then the blue pill with a big glass of water after lunch. Just before bed, take the red pill with another big glass of water."

    The patient was upset that she had to take so many pills, and nervously she asked “Doctor, what’s my problem?”

    The doctor replied, "You're not drinking enough water."


    In this week’s double parasha we learn about how to deal with the condition known as tzara’at, often translated as leprosy. While we may think of illnesses as needing physical cures, the torah considers such a condition to require a spiritual solution:

Leviathan - the Sea Monster of the Soul

"What are you writing your paper on?"

It doesn't really matter which class we're talking about, but whenever anyone asks me this question they can usually predict the answer before I open my mouth.

"Sea monsters," I say, and the other person nods their head. "Obviously," they respond, because I always write about sea monsters.

Whether it's a Bible class (Job 40-1), Talmud (Baba Batra 73a-75a) or Zohar (Zohar II: 34a-b), when given a free range of topics, my first thought is to find the sea monsters and write about them.

Luckily for me, despite what you may think about the presence of such creatures in modern, normative Judaism, they lurk all over our tradition, in some places hiding beneath the surface of the waves, in others rearing their many heads over the waters.

As you may have guessed, I have a lot to say about sea monsters, Biblical, pre-Biblical and post-Biblical, but today I want to take a leaf out of the book 'Religion and its Monsters' by Timothy Beal (which I recommend as an interesting easy read, though I disagree with many points he makes) and compare Psalm 74 to Psalm 104, for two accounts of the Biblical sea monsters that are drastically opposed to each other. And from these texts, to learn about balance in a person's mind and soul.