The nachash, the snake, makes two appearances in the parsha. Actually, one is better described as a conspicuous non-appearance and the other is one where it is described in words but not by name. And that latter reference includes something unique in the Torah: a graphic representation.

The eight “creeping creatures” – the shemonah sheratzim – convey tum’ah, ritual impurity, when their corpses contact a person, a food, vessel or garment. The particular identities of each of the eight are not clear but what is clear is that the nachash, strangely, despite it being the animal-world representation of evil (as evident from the account of the first snake, in parshas Beraishis), is not among them. Vayikra 29:30

We do find the snake referenced, though, among creatures forbidden to be consumed (ibid 11:42), in the phrase “all that travel on the belly.” And the letter vav in the Hebrew word for “belly” – gachon – is written enlarged in a sefer Torah. It is also, the mesorah teaches, the Torah’s middle letter. It might be said that the Torah pivots on how we deal with what the snake represents – evil, and its manifestation, the yetzer hora. And a vav resembles a snake.

Paralleling the oddity of the nachash not being one of the “abominable eight” is the fact that, in the following parsha, Tazria, we are taught that, while a white patch of skin on a person is a sign of the tum’ah attending tzora’as, if the patch spreads to cover a person’s entire body, he is considered free of tum’ah (ibid 13:12-13).

How to explain those two seeming paradoxes, a tahor snake and super-tzora’as? 

What occurs is that, while in the world in which we live, evil and tum’ah exist, and we must deal with them, they are ultimately phantasms. When one would expect them to be most ascendant, they dissolve into nothingness, like popped soap bubbles.

In the end, in ultimate reality, ein od mil’vado: “ there is nothing but Him” – divine Goodness. 

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran