Even in our tradition, Karma is a … TB Yoma 11 Part Two

 Just last Shabbat we read parashat Tazria-Metzora which describes in detail the disease tzara’at and the reintegration of the metzora, the one who had this disease, once he is deemed healed. Tzara’at is mistranslated as leprosy. The way the Torah describes it we have to come to the conclusion that tzara’at is not Hansen’s disease. Besides the Torah declares that even clothing and buildings can come down with tzara’at! Today’s daf TB Yoma 11 provides a moral lesson why a house is stricken with tzara’at.

“And say it is indeed so that a woman’s house and a jointly owned house are excluded from the impurity of leprosy. The Gemara responds that the verse states: “In a house of the land of your possession” (Leviticus 14:34). The word your is written in the plural form to teach that all houses in Eretz Yisrael are subject to this impurity. The Gemara asks: Rather, why do I need the emphasis of the term: His, if every house is subject to the impurity of leprosy? The Gemara answers that the term does not teach a halakha but reveals why a house might be afflicted with leprosy. The house belonging to one who dedicates his house to himself alone, who refuses to lend his vessels to others and says that he does not have them, will be punished. The Holy One, Blessed be He, publicizes his possessions for all to see when he is forced to empty them from his house due to leprosy. This excludes one who lends his vessels to others; his house is not afflicted with leprosy.” (Sefaria.org translation)

“The appearance of tzara’at in stones of the house was a mysterious event. Some Sages doubted it ever happened, and others consigned it to a distant past. Commentators consider the afflicted house to be a moral warning rather than a natural occurrence, even more emphatically than they considered cases of skin disease to be a moral warning… [‘the owner of the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, “Something like a plague has appeared upon my house.”’ (Leviticus 14:35)] Literarily, ‘one whose house it is,’ leading the Sages to conclude that the owner sinned by saying, ‘the house and everything in it are mine and I don’t have to share it with anybody else’ BT Yoma 11b) As punishment, the house is torn down. The Midrash pictures such owners claiming that they cannot help the poor because they are poor themselves. Where houses are dismantled, all will see what they were hoarding (Lev. R. 17:2)” (Etz Hayim commentary below the line, page 664)

 Even in our tradition, karma is a…