Parashat Metzoraפָּרָשַׁת מְצֹרָע

Metzora opens by describing the purification process and accompanying sacrifices for one infected with tzaraat, a discoloration condition on the skin. It then describes the process of treating a house infected with tzaraat and the ritual impurity generated by certain bodily discharges. Metzora completes the tzaraat laws begun in the preceding portion, Tazria, shifting the focus from diagnosis to purification and the restoration of ritual purity. Its central concern is how someone or something afflicted is brought back into the community: the rite for a healed person, the treatment of tzaraat that appears on the walls of a house, and the impurity that arises from various bodily discharges. A major thematic thread in rabbinic interpretation reads tzaraat not as an ordinary illness but as a physical consequence of moral failings, especially lashon hara (evil or slanderous speech). The portion thus connects bodily purity, the integrity of the home, and ethical conduct under a single framework of becoming "clean" again.

The standard haftarah for Metzora is 2 Kings 7:3-20, the account of four men afflicted with tzaraat sitting outside the gate of besieged Samaria during an Aramean siege and famine; it is read the same way in most Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities. The thematic link is the leper as outcast: the portion requires a person with tzaraat to dwell outside the camp until healed, and in the haftarah the four excluded lepers are the first to discover that the enemy army has fled, becoming the unlikely bearers of communal deliverance. In most common (non-leap) years Metzora is joined with Tazria as a double portion, and this same haftarah is read. When Metzora coincides with a special Sabbath, the haftarah is overridden: Shabbat HaGadol uses Malachi 3:4-24, and Shabbat Rosh Chodesh Iyar, which only the combined Tazria-Metzora meets, uses Isaiah 66:1-24. In Israel only, the combined Tazria-Metzora can also fall on the 29th of Nisan, the day before Rosh Chodesh Iyar, and the haftarah is then Machar Chodesh, 1 Samuel 20:18-42.

Metzora is closely associated with lashon hara through a well-known wordplay that reads metzora as motzi shem ra, "one who spreads a bad name." Rabbinic tradition lists several sins, headed by slander, said to bring on tzaraat, and points to Miriam's affliction after speaking against Moses (Numbers 12) as the classic example. The two-bird purification rite of Leviticus 14:4-7, using two birds, cedar wood, a crimson thread, and hyssop performed outside the camp, is a frequently studied passage, as is the law of tzaraat in a house, with its priestly inspection, removal of stones, and possible demolition. The lepers' line in the haftarah, "this day is a day of good news" (2 Kings 7:9), is often quoted. Metzora also frequently falls on or near Shabbat HaGadol, the Great Sabbath before Passover.