5771 פרשת תזריע

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah describes to us all about Tzara’as. The Torah tells us that any person who sees anything that might be considered Tzara’as should show it to the Kohein who will then tell him if it is truly Tzara’as making him Tamei or if it is something else which will not cause the Tumeh.

 The Siforno asked the following question. Why is it that only the Kohanim were able to check the lesions on a person to see if they were Tzara’as and not any other qualified person?  

 The Siforno gives two answers. The first answer is that the Kohein will teach the person who had Tzara’as to check his actions and repent and pray for his own cure as well as have the Kohein pray for him to be cured.

 The second answer is that the more times a person sees the different lesions he will become an expert in the field and be able to more easily give a correct diagnosis and to know which lesions create impurity and which do not.

 Let us focus on the second answer of the Siforno. If we look at the second answer we can ask the following question. Why is this situation any different from any other Halachah that doesn’t require specifically the Kohanim to be the ones to decide the Halacha? For example the Halachos of the Lulav and Esrog, anyone who learns the Halacha and learns what the Lulav and Esrog are supposed to look like can pasken on a question that relates to the Lulav or Esrog. This is true regarding basically all the Mitzvos except seemingly this one.

 The answer could be that there is a major difference between this Halacha and other Halachos. In this case when a person is declared to be a Metzorah they have to leave all three camps of Bnei Yisroel and live apart from the rest of Bnei Yisroel. One of the most important aspects of Bnei Yisroel is achdus – being together as one. In this case it is imperative that the people that will pasken on these lesions be the biggest possible experts. The way to do that is by having only the Kohanim eligible to pasken the questions on the lesions as the fewer amount of people who can pasken on the lesions the more experience they will have.

 We can learn a very important lesson from this Siforno. The Torah goes out of its way to prohibit anyone except the Kohanim from paskening on the lesions to give the Kohanim the most experience possible in order to minimize any mistakes. This is true even though if other learned people had also been able to pasken, the chance of mistakes happening would not have been so much greater. This is in order to prevent there being any unnecessary divisiveness amongst Bnei Yisroel. If the Torah goes so far to keep achdus we have to work on ourselves all the more to make sure we have achdus with all the members of Bnei Yisroel.

5770 פרשת תזריע – מצורע

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah describes the laws that relate to the Metzorah . The Torah describes three different types of Tzaras. The first one the Torah describes is one that appears on the body of a person – either on the skin or the hair of the beard. The second type is one that is found on the clothing of a person and the third is one that is found on the stones of a person’s home. For each one of these different types of Tzaras there are different stages of how it becomes impure and a different procedure to go through to make that object or person pure again. 

 When describing the process of having someone’s garment getting tzaras, the Torah says that the Kohein should see the discoloration and even if it was a tzaras he set it aside for a period of seven days at the end of which he would check it again and if the discoloration of the tzaras expanded the garment would have to be burned and if not we go through a similar process for another seven days and at that time to make a final decision on the garment which was dependent on the spreading and discoloration that remained on the garment at the end of the second week.

 The Ohr Hachayim asks why is it that the laws regarding the declaring of a person to be afflicted with tzaras are different than that of garments. When the Kohein sees a person who has a discoloration that is definitely a tzaras in the eyes of the Kohein, we do not wait and we declare him to be a metzorah immediately. However, by a garment even if the Kohein recognizes that the discoloration of the garment is surely a sign of tzaras, he is not allowed to declare the clothing impure due to tzaras and instead has to wait a week before declaring a garment to be impure from tzaras.

 The Ohr Hachayim explains that the reason is that God always wants to give a person the chance to repent and put himself back in the situation he was in before he sinned. Regarding a person who has tzaras on his body, even if the Kohein declares him to be impure right away, through the repenting process he will be able to remove the tzaras and return to living in the camp of Bnei Yisroel. A garment, on the other hand, once it is declared to be impure must be burned. God does not want to cause even a sinner a monetary loss without first giving him the chance to repent. It is for this reason why even if the Kohein sees what to his eyes is certainly impure he is not allowed to confirm that fact verbally which would cause the garment to be burned but instead must wait a week to allow the person to repent.

 If we look at this Ohr Hachayim more closely we can ask the following question. Chazal tell us that the way tzaras starts is always in a person’s home, then it moves to their clothes and only in the end to the person himself. The reason given is to allow the person to realize his sin and repent while the punishment is still far away from him physically and only impacting his home. This being the case, the person the Torah is discussing had already gone through having tzaras on his house and having to go through all the steps to get his house pure  including throwing out the stones, etc. and now that same person received tzaras on his garment. He is inherently not repenting his actions so why is the Torah so specific to not allow the kohein to declare his garments impure in order for him to repent.

The answer is that we don’t appreciate how much God loves us and wants us to have good. Even if a person sinned and did not repent, God will give him chance after chance to repent.

 5769 פרשת תזריע – מצורע

 As we have mentioned several times in the past, the fact that certain parshios in the Torah frequently fall out in the period around specific Chagim, many times are due to a connection that can be found between an aspect in a particular parsha to the specific chag that it falls out around.

 Let us see if we can find one idea that punctuates both the chag of Pesach and the Parsha of Tazria. The major focus of the Parsha is the different types of Negaim that a person can receive. There are times that a person will get the Negaim on their clothing, there are times they can get them on their houses and there are times that they appear on the body of a person.

 Towards the end of the Parsha, the Torah, when describing the laws relating to the Negaim that are found on clothing, in a span of a few Pasukim repeats the different types a material being affected by the Negaim 3 times.

 The Rabbeinu Bechai is bothered by why the Torah has to repeat the types of material over and over again; the Torah could mention it once and then just refer to them by using the word “them” or “those”.

 The Rabbeinu Bechai explains and quotes his Rebbe, the Ramban that the repetition is due to the fact that the Torah wants people to realize that even though the Negaim can be explained away naturally, they must realize that they are truly a miracle directly from God. The Rabbeinu Bechai then explains that God brings the Negaim so people will be cognizant of the fact that they sinned and do Teshuva.

 This idea is also a main idea in the chag of Pesach. The Ramban explains that the reason God brings about miracles that are so clearly the Hand of God like the 10 plagues and the splitting of the sea is so that people should realize that the entire world from the rising and setting sun on down the line is also only from the Hand of God. This concept is the same idea that we found in Parshas Tazria.

 As we are going from Pesach to Shavuot and the time of Kabbalas Hatorah we should try to focus on seeing the Hand of God in our life and recognizing all the good that we are constantly getting from God. With this realization we will be able to grow in our love of God and be able to reaccept upon ourselves the yoke of Torah with a knowledge that God is always with us in every aspect of our lives.

פרשת תזריע5768   

In this week’s Parsha the Torah describes to us the different types of Negaim that a person can get of which some cause the person to be impure while others do not. In order for a person to know if the Nega he has is one that would make him impure, he must have the Kohein check the nega. The Pasuk when describing the actions of the Kohein when he checks the Nega says the following:

 The Kohein will see the nega on the skin …. The Kohein should see it and declare him to be impure.

 The Meshech Chachma explains why the Pasuk says that the Kohein should see the nega two times in the Pasuk the following way:

 This is to teach us that even though the Kohein saw signs of impurity in the nega he must look at the situation of the person if it is actually a time for him to be declared as impure. For example if he was a bridegroom the Kohein will not declare him impure until after his Sheva Berachos. This is so that his joy will not be ruined by being declared impure.

 On the surface this explanation seems difficult to understand. We know that a person only receives leprosy as a result of his sins. The sin that the punishment of leprosy is most often given for is the sin of Lashon Hara. The purpose of the punishment is that a person who used his mouth to cause divisiveness amongst Bnei Yisroel should be declared impure and forced to stay outside the camp of Bnei Yisroel for a week. If this is the case, why does the Torah command the Kohein to not declare the person impure just because he is in the middle of a joyous situation?

The answer is that the way God deals with us is with absolute justice. This means that the punishment for a sin is never more or less than what is required. This person was meant to be separated from Bnei Yisroel for a week due to his sin; however the additional “suffering” he will feel by not being able to enjoy his joyous event to the fullest is not part of the punishment. This is why the Kohein must take into account the person’s entire situation before he takes the step of declaring him to be impure.

 From this explanation we can learn two very important lessons. The first one is that as we know everything that happens to us from the hand of God. We must realize that when things happen to us, we should never feel that they are too difficult or that we are not deserving of them. Whether “bad” things happen to us as a test or a punishment, they will always be exactly what we need and can handle nothing more and nothing less. This can help us to deal with the adverse situations that we find ourselves facing in our lives.

 The second one is that we know that we must try to emulate the traits of God like Chazal tell us “just like God is merciful so must we be merciful.” In our lives we are constantly dealing with many different people. What might be a perfectly fine way to act or speak with one person might not be appropriate to speak to another person. When we deal with people we should always try to understand the situation that they are presently in so that we can tailor our actions to fit the needs of the particular person we are dealing with. If we can do this we will keep ourselves away from potentially hurting people.

 If we can begin to work on ourselves, we should merit that this Pesach we should see the final redemption with the coming of mashiach.

פרשת תזריע – מצורע 5767

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah discusses the lepers. There are 2 statements of Chazal that when looked at together can teach us a great lesson.

First, there is a Gemara that explains the Pasuk which says:

You should call him impure.

The Gemara says the following:

 To teach us that you need to make his suffering known to the people and the people will ask mercy for him.

There is another Gemara that explains the words that say

 The leper when he was impure had to stay alone.

 The Gemara says the following:

 Why is the leper different from all other types of impurity that they have to sit alone away from people with other types of impurity? The answer is since he made splits between husbands and wives and friends he must sit apart from everyone else.

Now let us examine these 2 Gemoros. The Gemara tells us that the reason the leper has to stay alone is that through his sin of lashon hara he caused divisiveness between spouses and friends. However, the other Gemara also tells us that he should show his suffering  to the people so they should ask mercy for the leper.

The question then arises, that if someone is sick then if people know about it then of course they will daven for them as we see all the time. However, in this case when the people see the leper sitting alone they know it is because he spoke lashon hara. Not only did the leper cause friction between people he caused himself to get leprosy, so why would people ask for mercy for the leper?

 In order to answer this question, we should try to understand the trait of mercy a little better. Chazal teach us that when it comes to character traits we should emulate God as Chazal have taught us  just like God is merciful so we should be merciful. This being the case our mercy should emulate the mercy of God.

 One of the greatest manifestations of the mercy of God is Teshuvah. When a person does sins he should technically be punished right away, nevertheless God waits for a person to do Teshuvah before punishing him. This is just one aspect of the mercy of God.

Let us see what lessons we can take from looking as this manifestation of the trait of mercy of God when we try to see how we should be acting towards others.

Many times when a person does a sin he knows that he is doing something wrong and he also knows that there is a punishment that relates to that sin, (even though he doesn’t know what it is), you would think in that case the punishment should come right away and only when the sin is a true accident would there be a temporary reprieve given.

However, just the opposite is true. The mercy of God is so great that even if a person does sins on purpose with full knowledge God does not want him to suffer and will give him chance after chance to do Teshuvah.

This is exactly how God wants us to act to our fellow man. No matter what the situation a person is in – no matter how he got there it is our job only to look at his situation now. Is he suffering? If the answer is yes then we have to feel for him and daven to God to ease his plight.

If we can try to feel the suffering of Bnei Yisroel a little bit more deeply and open our hearts and daven to God with a little bit more feeling on their behalf, we should merit to see our prayers answered and the suffering of all of Bnei Yisroel relieved with the coming of mashiach in our lifetime.