Said to Myself

My dad was an officer and a lawyer in the US Navy. Some of my earliest memories are of him dressing up and for reserve duty.  Growing up we would always take family trips on sail boats. I cherish those memories. There was something very special about all being together and moving at the same time. My dad would often quip, ” What is the difference between owning a house and owning a boat? A house is a hole in the ground that your pour money into, where a boat is a hole in the water that you pour money into.” Now a quarter century later as a home owner myself I see what he was saying. While it gives us a lot of joy to have a home of our own, there are huge ongoing and unexpected expenses in owning a home.

I was thinking about this when reading Metzora, this week’s Torah portion. The parasha deals with ritual impurities ranging from skin disease (צָּרַעַת, tzara’at), to houses with an eruptive plague, to male genital discharges, and to  menstruation. There we read:

When you are come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession, and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession; then someone who owns a house shall come and tell the priest, saying: ‘There seems to me to be as it were a plague in the house.’  And the priest shall command that they empty the house, before the priest go in to see the plague, that all that is in the house be not made unclean; and afterward the priest shall go in to see the house.  (Leviticus 14:34-36)

This brings up two questions. The first question is how could our houses have the same issues as our persons. The second one, why is this plague limited to “when you come into the land”. I think the answer to both are connected to my father’s comment about boats. The comfort we take in permanence of our buildings and bodies is illusory. The notion that we own anything in life is misguided. Tzara’at reminds us that we are but tenants for a short time in our homes and even in our bodies. At best they are like boats bringing us closer to the ones we love: moving us further in life’s journey.