OU TORAH YU TORAH and NAALEH.COM Peddler’s Preaching By Shira Smiles

Adapted by Channie Koplowitz Stein Although Tzoraas is a dreaded disease, the Torah provides “doctor”/priest and the physical ritual necessary necessary to enable its cure. But a medrash provides the method for avoiding this disease entirely and indeed for prolonging one’s life. The Medrash relates that a peddler, while hawking his wares near Tzippori, was shouting, “Who wants to buy an elixir of life?” Rabbi Yannai, an Amora (expounder of Talmudic text, 200-500 C.E.) approached and asked to buy such an elixir. The peddler refused, explaining that Rabbi Yannai had no need of this elixir. After Rabbi Yannai persisted, the peddler took out a Tehillim and pointed to the verse, “Who is the man who desires life, who loves days of seeing good? Guard your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit (34:13-14).Rabbi Yannai seemed to be awestricken by this interpretation, saying, “All my life I read this verse and I did not understand how to interpret it until this peddler came along and informed me that it refers to a person who desires life.”