Talmud Class: A Leprous Home, Elizabeth Strout, and Your Passover Seders

"Something like a plague has appeared upon my house." Leviticus 14:35.

With these words, the troubled homeowner in ancient Israel gives voice to a truth that is universal. Homes, like human beings, are living things. Organic. Alive. Just like a human being can have healthy or not healthy practices, so too a home, and our home life, can have healthy or not healthy practices. Just like a human being can change it up and become more healthy, so too a home life can get better. Just like a human being can be overcome by illness and leave the world, some homes cannot survive their painful dysfunction. All of these truths are in our portion this week, parshat metzora.

When the Talmud encountered the case of the leprous house, it insisted that we not take these passages literally. That we interpret the leprous house as a metaphor and ask: what are the forces that strengthen home life? What are the forces that undermine home life? Can a bad home life be made good? Is that even possible?

Please read the attached short story from Elizabeth Strout, The End of the Civil War Days. Her story is a literary expression of the leprous house. It is also funny and risqué, and it raises the all-important question: can the patterns in our home life that are not serving us change? (I am sending the teaser early so that you will have the opportunity to read and enjoy this short and wonderful story.)

Finally, with the Passover seders around the corner (April 15-16), we will consider passages from the Haggadah that invite us to be mindful of the patterns that work at creating the home life we want to create; and the patterns that need to change so that if a plague appears on our house, we can exercise some agency and make it go away.