By Alexander Poltorak

Abstract

This essay explores the profound connections between the biblical laws of tzaraath (Leviticus 13-14) and modern concepts of entropy and the holographic principle in physics. Tzaraath, often misunderstood as mere leprosy, is interpreted as a physical manifestation of underlying spiritual and social disorder and discord, particularly linked to destructive speech (lashon hara). The essay argues that the elaborate rituals of diagnosis, isolation, and purification for tzaraath function to contain and reduce this spiritual/social entropy, restoring social order and inner harmony. Parallels are drawn to Jacob Bekenstein’s discovery that black hole entropy is proportional to its surface area, and the subsequent idea that the information content of a spatial volume might be encoded on its boundary—the holographic principle. It is suggested that a spiritual analog of Beckenstein-Hawking entropy expressing the measure  of internal disharmony and social discord manifests itself on the body’s surface (or garment, or the house walls) as tzaraath lesions. The link between entropy and information suggests the causal connection between evil speech (lashon hara) and tzaraath. By examining the emphasis on surfaces (skin, garments, house walls) in the laws of tzaraath and boundaries (event horizons, spatial surfaces) in physics, the essay proposes that both biblical wisdom and modern cosmology point to the critical role of boundaries in reflecting, containing, and managing the fundamental disorder or information within a system, whether cosmic or human.

I. The Philosophy of Disfiguration and Restoration: Insights from the Laws of Tzaraath

The biblical laws concerning tzaraath, detailed extensively in Leviticus chapters 13 and 14, are often misleadingly translated as “leprosy” and present far more than a medical or hygienic protocol for dealing with a contagious skin disease. Instead, these chapters unveil a profound philosophical system concerning purity, consequence, isolation, and the intricate path back to integration within the sacred community. Tzaraath, manifesting as disfigurations on human skin, clothing, and even the walls of houses, serves as a potent physical symbol of an underlying spiritual or ethical malaise, requiring a designated priest, the Kohen, to act as an arbiter between the affected individual (or object) and the divine order.

According to all classical commentators, Tzaraath, as described in Leviticus, is a spiritual plague, not a physical disease. At its core, the phenomenon of tzaraath forces a confrontation with the nature of appearance versus inner state. The visible lesion, the discoloration, the spreading patch, or the decaying stone is not merely a biological anomaly; it is a visible symptom, a tangible manifestation of an unseen spiritual impurity that disrupts the harmony between the individual, their environment, and the divine presence dwelling within the Israelite camp. Gossip and malicious speech (lashon hara) generate distrust and discord, fracturing relationships, spoiling friendships, and ruining marriages. Since order, whether physical or social, depends fundamentally on stable relationships, damaging them inevitably increases disorder and thus entropy—a measure of disorder and chaos in a system—the greater the disorder and the more ways the system can be internally rearranged without changing its outward state, the higher the entropy.

The elaborate diagnostic process described in Leviticus 13, involving careful examination by the Kohen, periods of quarantine, and re-evaluation based on the lesion’s appearance and behavior (such as spreading or remaining contained), underscores the idea that discerning this state requires spiritual insight, not just empirical observation (Leviticus 13:2-8, 13:47-52, 14:34-38). The Kohen’s declaration of tamei (“impure”) or tahor (“pure”) holds the power to separate or reintegrate, highlighting the theological dimension of this affliction.

The immediate consequence of being declared tamei with tzaraath is separation and isolation. The afflicted person is required to live outside the camp or city, isolated from the community (Leviticus 13:46). Their clothes are torn, their hair disheveled, their lip covered, and they must call out “Tamei! Tamei!” (Leviticus 13:45). This physical distancing reflects a spiritual alienation. Traditional interpretations link tzaraath particularly to lashon hara, malicious speech, which fractures social bonds and creates separation between people. The isolation imposed by tzaraath can thus be philosophically understood as the externalization of the internal rift caused by such behavior, providing a harsh but perhaps necessary period of introspection away from the very community one’s actions have harmed. The impurity is not merely personal; it is disruptive to the collective unity and the social bonds of the camp, necessitating the removal of the disrupting element.

The path back from tzaraath is detailed in the equally complex rituals of purification found in Leviticus 14. This process is not a simple “all clear” but a staged, multi-faceted journey of return. It begins with symbolic acts performed outside the camp, involving two birds, cedarwood, scarlet thread, and hyssop (Leviticus 14:4-7). One bird is slaughtered, its blood used in conjunction with the other items, while the second bird is set free into the open field.7 This ritual encapsulates themes of life and death, confinement and freedom, and the cleansing power of blood and natural elements. This is followed by physical cleansing—washing clothes, shaving off all hair (Leviticus 14:8-9)—a complete stripping away of the old, impure state. The subsequent stages involve a gradual return to the camp, culminating in a series of sacrifices (sin offering, guilt offering, burnt offering, meal offering) brought to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting on the eighth day (Leviticus 14:10-20). This progression signifies that restoration involves not only physical and symbolic cleansing but also atonement and the re-establishment of a right relationship with the divine, essential for full reintegration into the sacred space and community life. The complexity of the well-choreographed purification rituals begs a question: why such an elaborate process?

Furthermore, the extension of tzaraath to clothing and houses reveals a holistic worldview where spiritual disharmony is not confined to the body but can permeate the material world and the spaces people inhabit. A house afflicted with tzaraath undergoes examination, scraping, and replastering; if the plague returns, the house must be demolished (Leviticus 14:33-45). On a simple level, this suggests that environments can become imbued with impurity, requiring radical measures for purification or complete eradication if the contamination is deep-seated. It highlights the interconnectedness of the physical, the spiritual, and the communal. The presence of tzaraath in a house impacts the family and requires the Kohen’s intervention, making the affliction a communal concern requiring communal attention and ritual.

However, a more careful examination of this text reveals a puzzling commonality between different types of impurity discussed therein—they all seem to afflict various surfaces: human skin, a garment, house walls. Why the surfaces?

At the same time, the biblical narrative raises profound questions. Why does tzaraath afflict only the surface of things? Why a skin disease is reflective of the social discord manifested in talebearing? Why does a spiritual malady manifest in an infectious disease? The answer to these questions comes from one of the most unexpected places—black holes.

II. Cosmic Boundaries and the Information Within—Bekenstein’s Black Hole Entropy

Expanding our inquiry into the relationship between outward manifestations and hidden states, we turn from the ancient, ritualistic laws of tzaraath to a startling revelation from modern theoretical physics concerning the most enigmatic objects in the cosmos: black holes. Jacob Bekenstein’s groundbreaking work in the 1970s uncovered a property of black holes that challenges our intuitive understanding of space, information, and the fundamental nature of reality, suggesting a profound connection between the contents of a region and the nature of its boundary.

For decades after their theoretical prediction, black holes were largely considered objects of pure absorption—cosmic drains from which nothing, not even light, could escape once it crossed the event horizon, the point of no return. This presented a significant puzzle regarding one of the most fundamental laws of the universe: the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law states that the total entropy—a measure of disorder or the number of ways a system can be arranged on a microscopic level—of an isolated system can only increase over time, never decrease. If one were to throw a mug, a book, or even a complex living organism—all possessing a certain amount of entropy—into a black hole, that entropy would seemingly vanish from the observable universe. This apparent violation of the Second Law prompted physicists, including Bekenstein, to reconsider the nature of black holes.

Bekenstein’s radical proposal was that black holes themselves must possess entropy (Bekenstein, 1973). This entropy wouldn’t represent the mere sum of the entropies of everything that ever fell in, but rather an intrinsic property of the black hole itself. The challenge then became: where could this entropy reside? Unlike ordinary objects whose entropy scales with their volume (more “stuff” in a larger space means more possible arrangements and thus more entropy), a black hole’s defining characteristic isn’t its internal volume (which, according to classical relativity, collapses to a singularity) but its boundary—the event horizon.

Drawing a connection to thermodynamics, Bekenstein hypothesized that the entropy of a black hole is not proportional to its volume but to the surface area of its event horizon. This was an astonishing idea. It suggested that the measure of disorder or the amount of “information” swallowed by a black hole isn’t hidden deep within its core but is somehow encoded on its two-dimensional boundary. Subsequent work by Stephen Hawking, incorporating quantum mechanics, provided crucial support for Bekenstein’s hypothesis and precisely calculated the proportionality constant, linking black hole entropy (now known as Bekenstein-Hawking entropy) to fundamental physical constants like Planck’s constant, the speed of light, Newton’s gravitational constant, and Boltzmann’s constant (Hawking, 1974). This solidified the notion that the event horizon, the boundary surface, holds the key to understanding the black hole’s internal state of disorder or complexity.

The philosophical implications of this discovery extend far beyond black holes. The idea that the maximum entropy (and thus, information) contained within a region of space is proportional to the area of its boundary surface, not its volume, has given rise to what is known as the Holographic Principle (Susskind, 1995; Bekenstein J. D., 2003). This principle, still an active area of research and debate, suggests that the description of a volume of space might be encoded on its boundary surface, much like a three-dimensional image is encoded on a two-dimensional hologram. Our seemingly three-dimensional universe, with all its complex contents and interactions, might, at a fundamental level, be a projection of information residing on a distant, two-dimensional surface.

This perspective offers a profound shift. It challenges our intuitive, everyday experience where the complexity and information content of a space scale with how much “room” there is inside. Instead, it posits that the boundary, the edge, the surface area, imposes a fundamental limit on the amount of information that can exist within the enclosed volume. This perspective sheds new light on tzaraath—a mysterious disease that reflects the inner state of the person, but manifests on the surfaces (skin, garment, or walls).

III. Tzaraath and Entropy – a Disorder Phenomenon

We have explored the ancient understanding of tzaraath as a visible sign of unseen impurity and the modern physical concept of entropy as a measure of fundamental disorder, constrained by the very boundaries that define a system. It is compelling to consider these seemingly disparate ideas through a unified philosophical lens, viewing tzaraath not merely as a ritualistic or even ethical consequence, but as a manifestation of spiritual and social entropy—a state of increasing disorder and disharmony within the human sphere that finds expression in physical disfiguration.

In thermodynamics, entropy quantifies the number of microscopic arrangements corresponding to a macroscopic state; a system with high entropy is highly disordered; its components are in a state of randomness and lack of predictable structure. Analogously, the human condition can be viewed as a complex system, with spiritual, emotional, and social components striving for a state of order, harmony, and alignment with a higher purpose or communal good and the divine purpose. Tzaraath, as described in Leviticus 13-14, presents itself as a physical symptom arising when this internal or relational system descends into a state of significant disorder (Leviticus 13). The spreading skin lesions, the decaying fabric of a garment, and the crumbling stone of the house walls are the outward signs of an escalating, internal entropy that disrupts the intended ordered state of the person, their possessions, and even their dwelling. Just as entropy in physics manifests disorder at the boundaries of a system, such as the event horizon of a black hole, the biblical narrative of tzaraath similarly portrays spiritual and social disorder visibly manifesting on physical boundaries, specifically surfaces like skin, garments, and house walls.

Traditional Jewish thought profoundly connects tzaraath to the sin of lashon hara, or malicious speech – gossip, slander, and harmful talk. From the perspective of spiritual and social entropy, lashon hara acts as a powerful generator of disorder. Speech, intended as a tool for connection, understanding, and building, becomes a force of disintegration. It introduces “noise” and falsehoods into the delicate information network of a community, breaking down trust, creating divisions, and increasing the number of chaotic, unpredictable “microstates” within interpersonal relationships. It is a direct assault on social harmony, transforming potential order into tangible disorder. The physical manifestation of tzaraath can thus be seen as the ultimate, unavoidable signal that this destructive, entropy-generating force has reached a critical level, spilling out from the unseen spiritual and social realm into the physical world.

The requirement for the individual afflicted with tzaraath to be isolated “outside the camp” (Leviticus 13:46) takes on added significance when considered alongside the principles of entropy and boundaries. Just as a physical boundary, like a black hole’s event horizon or the surface in the holographic principle, seems to be crucial in containing (or constraining) the entropy within a volume (Bekenstein J. D., 1973); (Hawking, 1974), the boundaries of a Jew—skin, garments, or house walls—serve to contain the spiritual and social entropy manifested by tzaraath. The disorder generated by the underlying discord (e.g., lashon hara) is not permitted to spread unchecked and increase the overall entropy—the spiritual disharmony and vulnerability—of the entire community. The physical separation creates a necessary boundary—an event horizon, as it were—to protect the collective order and sanctity of the camp from the localized but virulent disorder.

The elaborate purification process in Leviticus 14 then represents the arduous, multi-step journey of reducing this spiritual and social entropy and restoring order. The elaborate rituals of cleansing, the shedding of the old (shaving), the choreographed acts of transition, and the bringing of sacrifices, are all aimed at repairing the damage, atoning for the source of the disorder, and, critically, bringing order into chaos and recalibrating the individual’s state towards mental and spiritual order and emotional harmony. It is a process of actively working against the natural tendency towards increasing entropy, requiring conscious effort, prescribed actions, and divine intervention (mediated by the Kohen and the sacrificial system) to restore the ordered state necessary for reintegration into the sacred community.

Now we can also understand why tzaraath is considered an infectious disease—something we would not expect from a spiritual malady. The answer lies in thermodynamics. According to the laws of thermodynamics, two bodies in contact with each other exchange energy and enter into a state of equilibrium. In other words, an ordered system that comes into contact with a highly disordered system (with high entropy) will get disordered. The entropy (disorder) is contagious. This fact of thermodynamics is symbolically expressed in painting tzaraath as a contagious disease. This comes to teach us that thermodynamics, one of the most fundamental theories of physics, is valid across many domains, including the spiritual domain.

I. Speech as a Generator of Disorder

While in Leviticus, the connection between tzaraath and lashon harah is not explicitly stated, commentators derive it from an earlier biblical narrative where Miriam speaks against Moses and is immediately afflicted with tzaraath (Numbers 12). Furthermore, the Torah commands the Israelites to “Remember what the Lord your G‑d did to Miriam on the way as you came out of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 24:9). This verse is often understood as a perpetual reminder of the sin of lashon hara.

The Talmud directly states that the term metzora (one afflicted with tzaraath) is a contraction of motzi shem ra (one who spreads falsehood, giving people a “bad name”—speaks evil speech). The Talmud here lists lashon hara as a primary cause of tzaraath and elaborates on its severity, equating it to other cardinal sins. It explains that the isolation of the metzora is a fitting punishment measure-for-measure, because the slanderer caused separation between people with their words (Arachin 15b-16a).

In Mishneh Torah, Maimonides explicitly states that the change affecting skin, garments, and houses described as tzaraath is not a natural phenomenon but a “sign and a wonder” sent to warn the Jewish people against lashon hara (Yad, Sefer Taharah, Hilchot Tumat Tzara’at, Chapter 16, Halakha 10).

In Kabbalah, speech is seen as one of three garments (levushim) of the soul (the other two being thoughts and actions) (see Tanya, Likutei Amarim, ch. 4). Accordingly, evil speech (soiled garment of the soul) causes lesions on the skin (the “garment” of the body), a garment, or on the house walls (the outer “garment”).

Having established the concept of tzaraath as a manifestation of spiritual and social entropy – an outward sign of increasing disorder within the human system – we can now directly address a connection that might, at first blush, seem counterintuitive: the link between tzaraath and lashon hara, malicious speech. This connection becomes clearer when we explore the fundamental relationship between information and entropy and consider how speech functions within this framework.

Entropy, in thermodynamics, typically refers to disorder or randomness in a system. In information theory, entropy refers to the uncertainty or randomness in a data set. Shannon entropy is a measure from information theory that quantifies the amount of uncertainty, randomness, or unpredictability in a set of data or a message. Information often relies on patterns, structure, or relationships between elements. When entropy is high, these patterns are disrupted, making it harder to extract meaningful information. A system with low entropy is highly ordered and predictable; it contains a large amount of accessible information about the state of its components. Conversely, a system with high entropy is disordered and random; the information about its precise microstate is effectively lost or inaccessible. High entropy corresponds to a lack of order, which is equivalent to a lack of useful information about the system’s specific configuration. When a system becomes more disordered (entropy increases), information about its initial, more ordered state is dissipated.

Human speech is a primary vehicle for conveying information. It builds relationships, transmits knowledge, and establishes social structures. It is, in essence, the carrier wave of social order and connection. However, lashon hara—slander, gossip, and harmful talk—corrupts this vehicle. It introduces false or damaging information, distorts the truth, and operates destructively within the social fabric. From an information theory perspective applied to the social sphere, lashon hara generates “bad” information or, perhaps more accurately, injects noise and disinformation into the system, actively dismantling the ordered patterns of trust and relationship.

Consider the human psyche and social environment as systems capable of holding spiritual and emotional “information” in the form of beliefs, intentions, trusts, and connections. Harmonious states correspond to coherent, ordered information structures. Lashon hara disrupts this structure, increasing the number of disordered, conflicted, and unpredictable “microstates” within the individual’s soul and the collective social structure. It is a direct process of corrupting information leading to increased entropy: the harmful information conveyed through speech generates disorder in the spiritual and social systems.

The manifestation of tzaraath can then be understood as the physical endpoint of this causal chain: bad information expressed in speech—lashon hara—leads to an increase in entropy (spiritual/social disorder), which in turn, causes tzaraath—the physical manifestation of entropy increase. The outward disfiguration of the skin, garment, or house walls is the tangible, visible signal that the internal and relational systems have accumulated a critical level of entropy, generated precisely by the destructive use of information through speech—lashon hara. The body (or garment, or dwelling) becomes a holographic image reflecting on the surface the internal disorder. It is a physical symptom of a disorder emanating from a system whose entropy has dangerously increased due to the corrosive power of misapplied information via speech.

Conclusion

Viewing tzaraath through the lens of entropy offers a compelling philosophical parallel that bridges biblical spiritual insight and modern physics. Both domains suggest that disorder, whether in a physical system or in the spiritual and social fabric woven by human interaction, has tangible consequences that must be addressed. The laws of tzaraath provide a theological framework wherein spiritual and social entropy physically manifests and requires a rigorous, boundary-focused process for its reduction and the restoration of harmony. This remarkably echoes the modern physical principles concerning the nature, containment, and management of entropy within the cosmos, particularly the insight that the complexity or information of a region is fundamentally linked to its bounding surface. Thus, the emphasis on skin, garments, and house walls in Leviticus resonates with the cosmic significance of event horizons and spatial boundaries. The edge is not merely a limit, but potentially where the essence and state of the interior are reflected or encoded. By drawing this parallel, we gain a glimpse into a potentially profound and counterintuitive relationship between space, information, physical reality, and spirituality, suggesting that the principles governing order and disorder may operate across vastly different scales and dimensions of existence.

Recognizing the entropy-tzaraath connection provides a novel philosophical lens through which we can better appreciate biblical teachings on purity, speech ethics, and community integrity, highlighting how managing spiritual and social entropy through mindful communication and clear communal boundaries remains deeply relevant to contemporary spiritual practice.

Glossary

Physics Terms:

Entropy: A measure of disorder or randomness within a physical or informational system; higher entropy means greater disorder and uncertainty.

Shannon Entropy: A concept from information theory that quantifies the uncertainty, randomness, or unpredictability in data or a message.

Black Hole: A region in space with gravitational pull so intense that nothing—not even light—can escape from it once crossing its boundary (the event horizon).

Event Horizon: The boundary surrounding a black hole, beyond which no information or matter can escape back into the observable universe.

Holographic Principle: A theoretical idea in physics proposing that all the information contained within a three-dimensional space can be encoded entirely on its two-dimensional boundary.

Hebrew Terms:

Tzaraath (צָרַעַת): A spiritual affliction described in Leviticus, traditionally mistranslated as “leprosy,” viewed as a physical manifestation of moral or spiritual disorder, particularly associated with malicious speech, lashon hara.

Lashon Hara (לָשׁוֹן הָרָע): Literally “evil tongue,” it refers to gossip, slander, or malicious speech that disrupts relationships and social harmony.

Tamei (טָמֵא): Ritually impure or spiritually unfit to enter the Tabernacle (or Temple) or to eat sacred food, requiring separation from sacred community activities.

Tahor (טָהוֹר): Ritually pure, spiritually suitable for entering the Tabernacle (or Temple) participation in sacred rituals and communal life.

Kohen (כֹּהֵן): A priest from the priestly class responsible for offering sacrifices and conducting sacred  services in the Tabernacle (or Temple) rituals, diagnosing spiritual afflictions, and declaring states of purity or impurity.

References

The Torah: The Five Books of Moses, the New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text. (1992). Jewish Publication Society; 3rd edition.

Babylonian Talmud, Arachin 15b-16a.

Bekenstein, J. D. (1973). Black holes and entropy. Physical Review D, 7(8), 2333-2346.7. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.7.2333.

Bekenstein, J. D. (August 2003). Information in the Holographic Universe – Theoretical results about black holes suggest that the universe could be like a gigantic hologram. Scientific American, 59.

Hawking, S. W. (1974). Black hole explosions? Nature, 248(5443), 30-31. doi:10.1038/248030a0.

Susskind, Leonard. (1995). “The World as a Hologram,” Journal of Mathematical Physics, 36(11), 6377–6396.

© 2025 Alexander Poltorak. All rights reserved.

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