Today’s Torah portion is long and it is a double portion. Don’t worry. It won’t be a double sermon.

On the surface, it doesn’t seem to have much to teach us. But that’s when you need to go deeper. Who has driven by the spray painted sign on Irving Park Road that simply says, “You are beautiful.” Go do it. Or who has heard the expression “Beauty is only skin deep.” Or maybe you have seen the commercials or the specials for Dove. Choose Beautiful. Which would you choose? To go through a door marked average or one marked beautiful. http://www.dove.us/Our-Mission/Real-Beauty/default.aspx

Most women choose the average door. And when they stop to think about it and go through the beautiful door, even the woman in the wheelchair, they are empowered. Their self-esteem improves.

So let’s start with some basics. My father, who was balding, used to say that bald was a four letter word. The correct term would be sparse. How many of you have been uncomfortable because you might be balding? How many of you see yourselves as beautiful?

The Torah this morning teaches that someone who is bald is tahor. Now tahor is a difficult word to translate. Sometimes it gets translated as pure or clean. Mayyim Hayyim, the mikveh, the ritual bath in Boston translates it as ritually ready. But whether you think being bald is beautiful or not, no one in this room would see it as a reason that you cannot be part of the community.

Then the parsha goes further and explains all the rules and regulations for curing leprosy. Or some other skin disease because it is not clear that the scaly, white flakes are really leprosy although that is how we usually translate it. Maybe it is eczema, or psoriasis or dandruff, or fungus. Maybe what it actually was doesn’t matter. If there were a Bar Mitzvah this week, the student’s first response to this parsha would be revulsion. That’s gross. We don’t usually talk about skin diseases. And while it was the priest’s job to cure it, it is not the rabbi’s job. I will refer you to a dermatologist.

But remember, whatever this disease is, it is only skin deep. Everyone is created in the image of G-d. Everyone. Even the one with the skin disease. And so after a period of being ritually unprepared, and staying outside the camp, the person is brought back in, welcomed back in and made tahor again, ritually ready.

There is a ritual to help them, and the community prepare. And part of it involves mayyim hayyim, living waters. The washing in living waters helps marks that transition between being tamei, ritually unready and tahor, ritually ready.

This parsha has a lot to teach us about how we welcome people back.

Are there modern day lepers today? People that make us so uncomfortable, or who are so uncomfortable themselves that they are “outside the camp” for a period of time?

We brainstormed a list. People who have removed themselves from the community but want to rejoin. People who have served their time in jail and are trying to re-integrate into society. People who have had some kind of illness. Big ones like AIDS or Ebola that get shunned in the paper. Cancer. Illnesses that are not explainable or curable.

But wait, someone said, Jews don’t put people outside the camp. It is not like we excommunicate. Or do we. We talked about Spinoza. We talked about the chief rabbi in Israel who excommunicated another chief rabbi. We talked about Rabbi Everett Gendler and the other rabbis who were excommunicated after signing a letter in the New York Times.

We added to the list. In some parts of the world, women and girls who have their periods. People in the LGBT community. People who are developmentally delayed. People who have a mental illness. People who are financially challenged. People who lost a job. Or a divorcee. A single mother. An unwed mother. Someone who chose to marry someone not Jewish. Someone who doesn’t believe in G-d.

Each of these feel that somehow they are outside the camp. Maybe they themselves think they are not worthy to be inside the synagogue. I would tell them unequivocally, “No. You do belong. There is space for you inside this tent. Inside this house of meeting. Right here at Congregation Kneseth Israel.”

How do we welcome them back in?

First let’s be careful with our language. It is not an us and them. Maybe all of us spend sometime during our lives outside the camp—for a variety of reasons. Maybe it is more like the wicked son at Passover who separates himself from the community. Part of the message of the wicked son, the wicked child, is that we should not separate ourselves from the community. And yet, we are also told that each of us is each of the children. Sometimes wise, sometimes wicked, sometimes simple and sometimes too young to ask the questions.

Second, let’s be careful to meet someone where they are. Someone coming back from an illness maybe happy to be back. Maybe grateful to have survived. Maybe glad to see friends again. Maybe relieved to return to a certain normalcy. Or maybe afraid. Could this happen again? What if the community has forgotten about me? What if everything has changed? Or maybe angry. Why did this happen to me? Why did I suffer and my friends did not? Where were my friends when I needed them most? Where was G-d?

Thirdly, we could find ways to publicly acknowledge someone’s return. Our tradition has ways of welcoming someone back. Birkat Hagomel, the blessing of thanksgiving for deliverance is one such way. Typically recited after surviving a danger: a flight over an ocean, a journey through the desert, major illness, release from prison, childbirth. And I learned in preparing this that a woman is obligated to recite it! When I first learned Birkat hagomel I was uncomfortable with it. At the insistence of our rabbi, Simon recited it after he fell off the loading dock at UPS. I did after a serious car accident. Both incidents required hospitalizations. But in my case, I wasn’t sure that G-d had dealt kindly with me. And while I was grateful to survive, I was conscious of all those who do not survive tragedies. Why did I survive when so many perished in the Holocaust, in the Twin Towers, in war? Until this year, surviving a trans-Atlantic flight seemed like no big deal. But maybe it is and it should be acknowledged. And so despite my own reservations, I frequently have people up to the bimah who are returning to the community in order to publicly acknowledge them.

People who recite Birkat HaGomel are encouraged to do two other things. Give tzedakah and sponsor a celebratory meal. Here at CKI we could host an oneg Shabbat or Kiddush in gratitude or in someone else’s honor. Giving to CKI is always appropriate. As are other charitable organizations—American Cancer Society, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, various hospices. One vision I have is CKI sponsoring a road race where half the proceeds go to CKI and half to some other organization.

Mayyim Hayyim’s commitment to using mikveh at times of transitions is another way. Starting chemotherapy, ending chemotherapy, before surgery, after surgery, after shiva or shloshim, or a year of mourning, after losing a job or finding one or retiring, after ending an abusive relationship. And while mikveh itself is a very private moment, it can be marked alone or with friends. It is a way to acknowledge coming back. And if you are that person sitting there, that feels “outside the camp”, Mayyim Hayyim’s book, Blessings for the Journey, may help. While the subtitle is a Jewish Healing Guide for Women with Cancer, I find it to be one of the best treatments for acknowledging anger. It comes with practical suggestions for the individual wanting to get back in. Journaling, meditation, yoga, and yes, mikveh. That same Mayyim Hayyim our portion will discuss, updated and modern.

Sometimes welcoming someone back in doesn’t work well. I am reminded of the book Ladies Auxiliary, where an unconventional Orthodox widow from New York arrives in Memphis with her 5 year old daughter. She becomes the scapegoat for all that is bad in the community. She is a convert. She likes to sing loudly at shul. She wears flowing clothes which show off her figure. She even goes to the mikveh even though she no longer has a husband. She is talked about behind her back. She is gossiped about. She is blamed for the community unravelling.

This is when we have to go even deeper with this text this morning. Because what the rabbis say is that this text is not about skin disease at all. It is powerfully about community. This text is about another scourge. It suggests that our very words are the source of the contagion. It begs us to ask as the book Text Messages suggests, what if our words become contagious. What if this text is really about gossip?

Hard to see the connection? You have to learn to pun in Hebrew. Metzora comes from two words. Motzei, who brings forth, like the blessing for bread, and ra, bad. Who brings forth bad. That bad is gossip. The rabbis teach a lot about lashon hara, evil speech, or gossip. I am not going to sit here and read you this whole book, Guard Your Tongue, but preventing gossip is exactly what the Chofetz Chayyim was attempting to do. In fact, there are more references to sins in the AL Cheyt that have to do with speech than with any other category of sin. Most of us don’t commit murder. But it is easy, too easy to commit slander, or shade the truth, or gossip. Today it is even easier to allow that gossip to slip into bullying and cyberbullying. And once it is out in cyberspace, on our walls and Facebook pages it is almost impossible to get it back. And it spreads like a virus and just as quickly. No Purel or Dove soap will prevent its malicious spread.

We have to go back a little bit. Miriam, for whom I was named and so I always identify with her, didn’t like the woman Moses married. The Cushite woman, the black Ethiopian, the other. She speaks out about it. Rails against her and is struck with leprosy, those white scales. Oh the irony. Doesn’t like the black woman, speaks out, her skin becomes even whiter. Not a pretty scene! So she is put outside the camp. But our tradition gives us another explanation. Miriam and Aaron did speak out—not against Moses marrying Zipporah but against him not returning to her after receiving the law at Sinai. Miriam was worried that Moses was not performing his marital duties. So you see how easy it is to spread gossip. By telling these two stories about Moses, you could argue we just did it here.

Moses’ response to Miriam’s illness is quick and certain. In very simple language, he prays for her recovery. El na refana La. G-d, Please. Heal her.

So that is my prayer. El na refana lehem. G-d Please. Heal us. Please heal us from this scourge of leprosy, of gossip. Of hitting the send button on an email too quickly. Of reposting something on Facebook that doesn’t belong there. Of spreading rumors without checking facts. Of talking behind someone’s back. Grant us the ability to think before we speak. Or not speaking at all. Of walking away when gossiping starts. Or, as the rabbis suggested, turning our earlobes up as earplugs when gossip begins. And once the gossip happens, because it always does, I pray that like G-d, we learn to forgive, ourselves and others, and welcome the gossiper back in.

Then, when we welcome people back into our community, we will be able to build the community. And the beauty will be more than skin deep.