Tazria/M’tzora has arrived. It is gruesome. It is cringy. It is alienating. From the biblical perspective, humans constantly vacillate back and forth between states of ritual purity and impurity, which dictates one’s spiritual fitness or readiness to approach the Mishkan, the sanctuary. But why are there any limitations upon who can approach God and God’s holy places at all? It is no secret that the Levitical text is devoted to a centralization of power through the priesthood. The entire book is organized through this binary frame of who and what is pure, or “in,” and who and what is impure, or “out,” even if only temporarily. Does God really need such categorizations? Of course not!
The Levites already have the most direct access to the central source of power, i.e. God. The Levites are wholly supported by donations from all of the other tribes. The Levites are set apart and they, ultimately, are the ones who can make these diagnoses of “pure,” and “impure.” What we see here are the building blocks of systematized exclusion versus inclusion. We see it throughout the Tanach; a constant concern over who is part of the community and who is not. Here, in Tazria/M’tzora, we see it enacted through control over access to the holy spaces based on the most intimate of human bodily functions. This and other texts in Leviticus have been used for centuries to disempower and disenfranchise. That Leviticus has so continuously been weaponized is a testament to the fact that it is the most human of all the books of Torah, for how could a benevolent God reject the gifts and presence of any one of us?