5771 פרשת מצורע

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah describes to us the laws that relate to a house upon which is found what might be Tzara’as. The Torah tells us that before the Kohein enters into the house to check to see if the lesions are actually Tzaraas the Torah commands them to empty the house of all the vessels.

 The commentaries ask why it is that it is necessary for the house to be emptied out before the Kohein checks the lesions to see if they are Tzara’as.

 Rashi explains that the reason is that God has mercy on the money of Bnei Yisroel and if the house had Tzara’as it would become Tamei and then all the vessels would become Tamei and the Halacha is that any earthenware vessel that becomes Tamei must be broken. In order to prevent the potential loss of a considerable amount of a person’s household objects the Torah tells us to empty the house before the Kohein comes in to check.

 The Siforno, on the other hand, gives a different reason why the house must be emptied before the Kohein comes in to check the lesions. He explains that from the language of the Pasuk which says “and they should empty out” teaches us that the owner of the house is not the one who should remove the vessels from the house but rather it must be other people. The process of removing the vessels from the house is a time consuming effort and during that time the owner of the house should involve himself in repentance and prayer and the Kohein who was called should also be praying for the home owner during this time.

 If we look at this Siforno a little more closely we can ask the following question. Why is it that in this particular type of Tzara’as – the one of the house we take actions that give the home owners time to repent while regarding the other types of Tzara’as of garments and the body we do not find that the Torah gives additional time to the people involved to repent and pray before the Kohein came to look at the lesions?

 The answer could be that before a person gets the full punishment God desires to give him a chance to repent so that the punishment does not have to be given. This is why by the Tzara’as of the home God gives a person extra time so that once he sees that a potential punishment is coming to repent and prevent it. On the other hand, once a person ignored his first chance to prevent the punishment and then received the punishment and still did not repent God will no longer give the person a grace period before bringing the next punishment which will hopefully be enough to cause him to repent..     

 In our lives we need to be attuned to the occurrences in our lives. Many times God gives us hints through small difficulties to get us to rectify our deeds and become closer to Him. If we ignore those small difficulties then in order to help us repent God may give us bigger difficulties. Even though everything that happens to us is for our good, however it is worthwhile to constantly examine our deeds and what is happening in our lives so we can correct any mistakes we made and truly become close to God.

פרשת מצורע 5768

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah describes the purification process required for the different types of leprosy. One of the types of leprosy the Torah describes is leprosy of a person’s house. When a person finds signs of leprosy in a house the first thing that must be done is to remove the stones with the ”Nega” on them from the house and replace them with other stones. When describing this process, the Torah says:

 The Kohein commanded and they removed the stones.

 The Midrash explains why the Torah uses the plural of the word remove instead of the singular when describing who has to remove the stones the following way:

It teaches us that two people have to take out the stones … from here they say, “Woe is to the Rasha and woe is to his neighbor.”

 On the surface, this Midrash seems very difficult to understand. The typical situation where we use the concept of “Woe is to the Rasha and woe is to his neighbor” is brought down by Rashi in Parshas Korach. Rashi explains why most of the people who joined Korach in his fight with Moshe Rabbeinu were from the tribe of Reuvein, was that the tribe of Reuvein camped next to the families of Kehas of which Korach was a member. Since they camped near Korach, they were influenced by him and sinned with him, hence the concept of “Woe is to the Rasha and woe is to his neighbor.”

 However, our case does not seem to be comparable. We know that leprosy comes about because of specific sins. If a person does these sins, he is punished with leprosy and if he does not have leprosy it is a sign he did not transgress one of these particular sins. The neighbor whom the Torah requires to help in removing the stones from the house does not have leprosy at all, which is a sign that he was not influenced to do these sins by his neighbor. If this is the case, how can the Midrash explain that the reason the neighbor has to help remove the stones from the house is “Woe to the Rasha and woe to his neighbor”, he didn’t act like his neighbor?

 The answer is that everybody is influenced somewhat by the actions that are done by the people around him. Even though this person has not yet transgressed the sins that bring on the punishment of leprosy, nevertheless on some level he is losing some of his sensitivity to the sins that he saw his neighbor transgress.

 This being the case, another question arises. This neighbor, who could very well be a Tzadik and could very well have never thought of transgressing these sins, is told to assist in removing the stone filled with leprosy from the house. This action is supposed to help strengthen his resolve to never transgress this sin. How does this work? When the person is helping him, he would never be thinking, I better be careful or this can happen to my house, just the opposite, he would be thinking I am always careful about this sin, it will never happen to me.

 The answer is that actions can impact the subconscious even without a person actively thinking about them. Just as seeing the person transgress a sin can have an impact on weakening a person’s sensitivity to that particular sin even without him actively realizing it, so to can a person’s own actions have an impact on him for the good. When a person is told to help his neighbor remove the stones filled with leprosy, deep down his sensitivity to that sin is being strengthened.

 From this Midrash, we can learn two very important ideas. The first is to realize that the actions of those around us are always influencing us. Even if we don’t feel it on the surface, deep down we are being influenced. We need to constantly be aware of our surroundings and to do our best to surround ourselves with people whose actions are worth emulating. However, since in many aspects of our lives, we are not always in control over who we are with on a daily basis, we should strive to take an action to try to counter some of the bad traits we see in other people. If we see people being lax in the trait of truthfulness, we should try to do actions that strengthen our trait of truthfulness. This could be something as simple as learning some ideas from Chazal about the importance of truth to ensuring that for one hour everything we say is true. This applies to all manner of traits and sins that we see people do on a daily basis. It is these small actions that will always keep us sensitized to sins which will prevent us from transgressing any of the sins we know are wrong. If we can do this, we should merit that this should be our last Pesach in exile and we should merit the redemption in our days.