The Skin of the Metzora and the Heart of the Messiah

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"The Skin of the Metzora and the Heart of the Messiah." TheTorah.com. Accessed November 4, 2026. https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-skin-of-the-metzora-and-the-heart-of-the-messiah.

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"The Skin of the Metzora and the Heart of the Messiah" (n.d.). TheTorah.com. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-skin-of-the-metzora-and-the-heart-of-the-messiah

Prof. Rabbi Wendy Zierler
The Skin of the Metzora and the Heart of the Messiah

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Published April 19, 2015

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Last Updated September 7, 2026

  1. [1] Rachel Adler, “Those Who Turn Away Their Faces,” in Healing Through the Jewish Imagination, William Cutter ed (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2007), p. 145.

  2. She is best known by biblical scholars for her essay on forbidden foods, “The Abominations of Leviticus,” first published in her Purity and Danger (1966), and frequently discussed and critiqued in the subsequent half century.

  3. Mary Douglas, Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999), pp. 53-54.

  4. Author’s translation.

  5. Note that the action in this story, as in the case of the story of the four lepers in II Kings occurs at linal place, an opening/gateway.

Prof. Rabbi Wendy Zierler is the Sigmund Falk Professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies at HUC-JIR. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from Princeton University, her MFA in Fiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, her B.A.… Read More
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