This week’s parshah describes the process of purification for someone stricken with tzara’as. The Divrei Yisrael quotes his grandfather, the Rebbe R’ Yechezkel of Kuzmir ztz”l, who explains what appears to be a puzzling aspect of the purification process with the help of a passuk from Yeshaya: I [Hashem] erased your sins like a thick cloud, and like a cloud have I erased your sins; return to Me [do teshuvah] for I have redeemed you.”
If Hashem has already erased our sins, asks R’ Yechezkel, why do we still need to do teshuvah? The answer he gives is one that we can apply so often in our own lives.
While we are entrenched in our sins, the yetzer hara blinds us as to what’s really going on; so much so, that we don’t even realize how far we have strayed and how badly we need to do teshuvah. It’s only when Hashem redeems us from the yetzer hara that the blindfold comes off and we suddenly realize how terribly we behaved and how much mending we need to do — and then, we can truly do teshuvah.
Chazal say, “A person cannot see his own imperfections.” Of course, we can see other people’s imperfections all too well; just not our own. For the same reason, there’s no reason to get angry when other people don’t realize what they’re doing wrong. It’s only natural that they don’t realize their mistake. That doesn’t mean that they can’t change — of course they can, and should. But when we look at others, we need to first understand that they can’t see what we can — and we must acknowledge the same thing about our shortsightedness in regard to our own imperfections.
