A Disease that Walls Get? Decoding Tzaraat and Facing Our Fears
It's time for all Leviticus fans to haul out their decoder rings! In Leviticus 13 and 14, we encounter a strange disease called tzaraat, which can be contracted by human beings, walls, stones, or cloth. Tzaraat has been translated variously as "'scale disease,' 'scaly disease,' 'eruption,' and (erroneously) 'leprosy' " ( The Women's Torah Commentary, ed. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Andrea L. Weiss [New York: URJ Press, 2008] p. 659).