See?! - CHRONICLE Online/The WORD 04/16/26

Weekly On-line Rabbi's D'var-Torah

April 16, 2026

29 Nisan 5786

Tazria-Metzora

Rosh Chodesh

We’re having some work done in our backyard today. We’ve been dealing with some drainage issues. So, at one point I stepped outside to check in with the head of the crew and see how things were going.

In the course of our conversation, he asked what I do. I told him I’m a rabbi. Without missing a beat, he told me that he had lived in Israel for two years doing construction—and that he loves Israel. He spoke about how much he’d like to go back, but how the war makes that difficult. We even got into how challenging it is to read Hebrew. Needless to say, it was not the conversation I was expecting.

He then shared an experience he had with one of his Arab co-workers while he was living there during the Second Intifada. Wanting to understand, he asked his co-worker to explain what was happening. The answer he got was that it was the only way to get the world’s attention. My new friend responded simply: if Arabs blow up a bus that he’s on, they will not win his heart—or the hearts of his family.

If only he could explain that to the rest of the world.

But the truth is, what makes his perspective different isn’t just what he said—it’s what he saw. He saw Israel. He saw Jews and Arabs working alongside each other, getting along with one another. He saw how small the country really is, how human and interconnected it all feels up close.

In this week’s Torah portion, we encounter a topic that seems, at first glance, entirely unrelated: the mysterious affliction known as tzara’at. Often translated as leprosy—though it clearly refers to something else—the Torah goes into painstaking detail about how it is diagnosed and treated.

What’s striking is that in just 17 verses describing this condition, the Torah tells us 10 separate times that the priest saw the afflicted person. Repetition in the Torah is never incidental; it’s there to teach us something. The priest cannot diagnose or declare someone healed without seeing them with his own eyes.

The same is true when it comes to Israel. Many of its loudest critics have never actually seen it. They have not witnessed its complexity, its diversity, its humanity. Accusations like genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid are accepted as fact, without ever being tested against reality. There is an assumption that NGOs and media organizations are above bias, incapable of being influenced by antisemitism.

And so the responsibility falls to us.

We have to help others see. To open eyes. To share not just arguments, but reality—to put truth directly in front of people who have only encountered distortion. Because real understanding doesn’t come from a distance. It comes from seeing.

And only through that kind of honest, eye-opening encounter can there ever be the possibility of true healing.

Shalom,

RAF.