Two Birds In a Field

When someone afflicted with tzaraat — a mysterious, possibly supernatural skin disease which causes ritual impurity — finds themselves healed, the Torah establishes a process whereby they begin to be assimilated back into the community. Initially, the priest joins them outside the camp — the afflicted person being required to remain outside the camp for the duration of their affliction — and performs a ritual involving two birds:

The priest shall order one of the birds slaughtered over fresh water in an earthen vessel; and he shall take the live bird, along with the cedar wood, the crimson fabric, and the hyssop, and dip them together with the live bird in the blood of the bird that was slaughtered over the fresh water. He shall then prinkle it seven times on the one who is to be cleansed of the tzaraat and cleanse them; and he shall set the live bird free in the open country. (Leviticus 14:5-7)

In a way, these two birds are like an emblem of the person who has just emerged out of a time of trouble, illness or severe danger. It is as if there are two of me, the one who escaped, and the one who did not. And the problem is that it is very difficult to know, to really know in my bones, which of those two people I actually am, the one who escaped… or the one who did not. That other self, the one who did not escape (or is it the one who did?) remains right there with me — sometimes standing a ways off, sometimes standing just a little to one side, sometimes right there in front of me casting a shadow between me and the rest of the world.

This ritual in the fields can be compared to the gomel blessing, which is to be uttered before the Torah by someone who has just recovered from a severe illness, escaped a dangerous situation or come home after a long journey:

Blessed are you, Adonai our God, ruler of the universe, who rewards the undeserving (in fact, the word chayavim feels much more forceful than that — the ones condemned to die) with goodness, and who has rewarded me with all good.

The rituals are not at all the same in form, but they are similar in function, forcing a separation between those two people — the one condemned to death and the one inexplicably rewarded with life — reminding us who we are, that we are the one who got away, the one still standing on this side of the gateway between life and death.

And the fact that the blood of the bird who did die acts as an agent of purification — isn’t this like a sign of forgiveness from that other self, a sign that that person, the one we aren’t but could be, somehow loves us and wants to be happy that this person, the one we are, made it through alive?