When Elisha punishes Gehazi by declaring, “וּצָרַעַת נַעֲמָן תִּדְבַּק בְּךָ וּבְזַרְעֲךָ לְעוֹלָם” – “the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and to your descendants forever” – he is not simply cursing him with a disease, but identifying Gehazi’s inner state with that of Naaman before his transformation. In this chapter, Naaman undergoes a complete reversal – from pagan to monotheist, from leper to pure. Gehazi, through his deceit and materialism, reveals himself to be Naaman #1 – the old Naaman – before he met the God of Israel. Naaman had lived a life of duplicity – publicly a man of valor and stature, privately afflicted and conflicted. His leprosy exposed the dissonance between his outer image and inner reality. When he came to recognize God, that duplicity inverted: inwardly monotheistic and sincere, he still had to function outwardly in a pagan world. In contrast, Gehazi appeared outwardly respectable – Elisha’s attendant, popular, even powerful – but inwardly, he was plagued by frustration and insecurity. His chase after Naaman’s gifts was an attempt to fill that void, and in doing so, he revealed that his soul mirrored the old Naaman – aggressive, vain, and hollow. Thus, he inherited not just leprosy, but Naaman’s leprosy. The Torah's spiritual psychology here is profound. In truth, very few people live lives in which their outer and inner worlds align. Society, by nature, demands masks – the Latin word persona means mask – and this is not necessarily hypocrisy, but a social and psychological reality. True freedom, however, is when the soul can shine through the mask – when the inner life is more refined than the outer, and not the reverse. The Rabbis famously taught: אל תקרי חָרוּת אלא חֵרוּת – true freedom is the engraved Torah, internalized. When a person’s external image exceeds the reality of their inner life – when the public persona outpaces the private integrity – that is spiritual tzara’at, a condition of inner exile and separation. As Rashi explains, ואספתו מצרעתו refers …