Rashi explains: “’Emor v’amarta’ (say and you shall say), (this double expression comes to admonish the adult Kohanim to be responsible for the youngsters.”
Sefer Emunas Moshe (Alexander) explains these words with a story involving Rav Mordechai Rakower zt”l, the “court badchan” of the Chozeh of Lublin zy”a. Rav Mordechai understood that the tzadik hador, who brought down an abundance of Heavenly goodness to the world, needed to be joyful in order to perform such feats; therefore, he would raise the Rebbe’s spirits with his humorous words.
Every day, R’ Mordechai would ask the Rebbe, “What’s cooking today?” One day, the Chozeh was very busy with his holy work and when R’ Mordechai asked his standard question, he replied, “As far as I’m concerned, you can cook stones!”
R’ Mordechai jokingly replied, “That’s for the Rebbe. But what is for the chasidim?”
His intent was that tzadikim are able to manage with very little and suffer through affliction, but the general public cannot. They need Hashem to help them. The Emunas Moshe uses this idea to explain the Gemara (Brachos 50B) that says that when morning came, the wise men of Yisroel approached Dovid Hamelech and said, “Our master, the king, your nation, Yisroel, needs parnassah...” It seems from the Gemara that they said this every morning and received the same answer. What is the meaning of this? He answers that the wise men understood Dovid’s greatness, and knew that he got greater and greater every day. Every day, he was one step further removed from the physical world. Therefore, they were afraid that the day would come when he would forget about the physical needs of the public, who were not on his level. That is why they reminded him of their needs every day.
Accordingly, Rashi is saying that the gedolim have to be warned about the ketanim, meaning that the great men of the generation have to be reminded to worry about the small people, who are not on their level, and to be concerned about their physical and economic state.
After the Holocaust, the Belzer Rebbe zy”a, who had moved to Eretz Yisroel, expressed a desire to open a yeshiva for the surviving bochurim. It was suggested that a certain distinguished talmid chochom should serve as the Rosh Yeshiva, but the Rebbe rejected this idea because this individual was known to be very strict. He said, “Klal Yisroel has had enough pepper. What we need now is a lot of sugar.” In other words, the bochurim needed kindness and love, not strictness.
