The opening mishnah of this tractate mentioned marks of tzaraat, a biblical disease which is usually translated as leprosy. But unlike leprosy, which is today identified with Hansen’s disease, the biblical tzaraat seems to have a spiritual dimension, not only a physical one. Plus, it doesn’t just afflict people — it also strikes objects and homes.
So what exactly is tzaraat and why do people or their belongings come down with it? The Torah offers multiple perspectives. In Numbers 12, Miriam is afflicted with tzaraat after criticizing Moses. In this context, tzaraat functions as a spiritual punishment. However, as Joel Baden and Candida Moss have argued, in the Book of Leviticus, tzaraat is not presented as a punishment for sin at all. Rather, tzaraat is one of many bodily experiences that render a person impure — meaning unable to enter into the Temple and bring an offering. Impurity can also result from contact with a corpse (even to afford it proper burial), childbirth and genital discharges. And just as Leviticus does not present childbirth as a sin (the opposite!), so too it presents tzaraat as a morally neutral state of impurity that human bodies can sometimes experience.
Later commentators often read the discussion in Leviticus in light of the story of Miriam in Numbers, and assume that just as Miriam’s experience of tzaraat was a consequence of sin, so too all experiences of tzaraat are punishments for transgression (see for example, Leviticus Rabbah 17). But the Talmud today offers us a different approach.
On today’s daf, the Talmud is in the process of determining exactly which sins are atoned for by the blood of the goat sacrificed on Yom Kippur. Here’s what the Talmud says about tzaraat:
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Shall we say that the Yom Kippur goat’s blood atones for a person with tzaraat? Rav Hoshaya said: The verse about the Yom Kippur goat sacrifice states, “For all their sins” (Leviticus 16:16) and not: For all their impurities.
According to Rav Hoshaya, the person experiencing tzaraat is impure, but not necessarily a sinner. And since they are not a sinner, they do not need a Yom Kippur sin-offering to effect atonement for them — at least not on account of their tzaraat. But the Talmud continues:
But according to Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahmani, who says: “Marks of tzaraat come for seven matters,” what is there to say? There, it is his mark that atones for him.
Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahmani, in contrast to Rav Hoshaya, holds that tzaraat is inflicted as punishment for seven different sins, an idea that is fleshed out in tractate Arakhin 16a. But he also holds that the punishment for these sins is the tzaraat itself, and so the sin-offering of Yom Kippur is not needed for atonement.
Where many other rabbis over the last 2,000 years have sought to harmonize the two perspectives on tzaraat in the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud today presents both opinions without either harmonizing or taking a stand on which is right. And perhaps that multiplicity of perspective is itself an answer: Sometimes, particular bodily states might be a punishment (or at least, might feel like a punishment), and at other times, they are just part of the natural course of human experience.
Read all of Shevuot 8 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on May 9, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
