Shabbos Parashas Tazria - 5779

Shabbos Parashas Tazria - 5779

Rabbi Hal Miller

Then he shall shave himself, but he shall not shave the nesek. [Vayikra 13:33]

We know from elsewhere that a man should not shave the corners of his beard. Exactly what that

means is discussed at length, but not relevant here. In our verse, as in a few other places, the

Torah commands us to shave under certain conditions, but those commands do not, on the surface,

seem clear regarding what it means to shave. What does our verse command?

The first word of our verse, v'hit'galach, translates as "and he shall be shaved". The gimel in the

middle is the first of the three 'root' letters of the word, thus the actual beginning of the word. It is

written in the Torah scroll in a much larger size than the rest of the letters. When this is done,

commentators usually rush to explain other things we can learn, however here, most are silent. Some

note that this verse is the 'middle' of the verses of the entire Torah, although since the Torah is written

without any punctuation, Rav Yosef in Kiddushin [30a] says that we do not know for certain how to

break verses down, thus cannot say with certainty that our verse is in the first half, in the second half,

or stands alone between the two halves.

Ba'al HaTurim does mention the gimel, and says it tells us that there are three who need this kind of

shaving, the metzora (our verse), the nazir, and the Levites when they are first inaugurated. But this is

difficult as there are more than three, for example the "beautiful captive" that a soldier wishes to keep

as a bride.

The shaving done for each of these instances is not the same. For a nazir, it is only his head, as is

the case of the captive woman. The Levites had their entire bodies shaved. The metzora, in our case,

had more than his head, but less than his entire body, since the Torah specifies not to shave around

the "leprous" mark itself. There is disagreement whether all the rest of the body is shaved, or only

the surrounding area. Given that the Torah gives us a purpose, to see whether the mark spreads, it

does not require full body shaving to accomplish this, yet nothing is specified either way.

Perhaps most confusing is the reflexive form of the word. Onkelos points out that it reads "he should

be shaved", but that it ought to read "he shall shave himself". Rav Hirsch says that this allows any

person to do the shaving, but that the wording in Vayikra [14:9] (next week) is that a kohen is

required to do it in that instance, which is the end of the process. Rashi follows Onkelos and interprets

"he shall shave himself". Torah Temimah has a novel view, that our verse does not refer to who is

doing the shaving, rather what tool is used, thus a nazir and the Levites are supposed to "pass a razor

over" themselves, but our verse allows any other kind of shaving as well.

As always, "these and those" are the words of the Divine Torah.