When a man will have in the skin of his flesh a swelling, a patch or a bright spot, and it will become, in the skin of his flesh, a plague of tzara’as, he shall be brought to Aharon Hakohen, or to one of his sons the kohanim. (Vayikra 13:2)
The main subject of this parshah, the laws of tzara’as, used to be in practice back when the Jewish people were at their peak and dwelled in Eretz Yisrael. The fact that tzara’as would afflict them, and the way it was treated, showed Hashem’s great love for them.
If someone would speak lashon hara, he would contract the serious disease of tzara’as, and would be declared impure. He would then have to dwell outside the city. But first he would need to go to a kohen, who usually was a talmid chacham and a tzaddik. If the kohen, after examining him, saw that he indeed has tzara’as, he would reprove him for his sin, causing the person to do teshuvah and consequently be healed.
This was a very fortunate and desirable state of affairs for the Jewish people. Hashem was close to His people and would reprove them for every sin and lead them on the right path.
Nowadays we are shrouded in darkness. We speak as we please and no one stops us. Although we don’t have the awesome reminder of tzara’as anymore, we still have its parshah in the Torah, and we can study it, and learn from it how to stay away from lashon hara and machlokes.
Three kinds of tzara’as are stated in the Torah. There is שאת ספחת ובהרת – a swelling, a patch and a bright spot. Chazal explain that these three are really two main kinds: שאת ובהרת – a swelling and a bright spot. The “bright spot” is white as snow, and the “swelling” is as white as the lime that was used to paint the Heichal.
So what is ספחת, the “patch”? It teaches us that there is a secondary color of tzara’as that is “attached” – נספח – to the two primary ones. The “swelling” has a secondary color, and the “bright spot” also has a secondary color. Both the primary and the secondary colors are considered full-fledged tzara’as.
Sefer Taam v’Daas says that the two primary colors allude to lashon hara and machlokes having two main causes. There is “swelling,” which indicates that a person swells up and inflates his own worth by speaking lashon hara about his neighbor. And there is “bright spot,” which indicates that everything is bright and clear to the speaker of lashon hara; he knows exactly what is going on with his neighbor, he knows what his neighbor did, and what he should have done but didn’t.
Then there is the “patch,” the ספחת, who is “attached” to either of the two types of lashon hara speakers. He patches himself onto them. This person does not actually speak lashon hara himself, at least at first. He just attaches himself to an individual or a group who are speaking lashon hara. He sits there together with the lashon hara speakers, and he doesn’t have the inner strength to go against the “swelling,” the lashon hara speaker who is swelled up and self-important. Neither does he have the fortitude to go against the “bright spot,” the clever lashon hara speaker to whom everything is so bright and clear, who knows it all. So the person who just sitting there will get pulled in, too, and will speak lashon hara along with them.
The Torah says that they are all impure. They are all tzara’as.
So what should he do? “He shall be brought to Aharon Hakohen, or to one of his sons the kohanim.” Instead of sitting and shooting off his mouth with them, a person should join with learners of Torah, which people of yiras Shamayim, who bring purity to the world.
So it says in Sefer Taam v’Daas.
We could add to this explanation that the verse alludes also to “the kohen who will be in those days,” to the great kohen of our times, the Chofetz Chaim. A person shall be brought to the wonderful sefarim that he composed on the subject of lashon hara. Someone who comes to his books and learns them will surely attain purity.
Tzara’as is usually white. And the whiter it is, the more serious a type of tzara’as it is. This can be taken as an allusion to the fact that lashon hara speakers usually claim that they mean well by what they say. They defend what they are doing with statements such as, “It isn’t lashon hara; I’m saying it for a good purpose. It’s a mitzvah.”
This is what the “white” color of tzara’as alludes to. If you see someone flaunting himself as being “white” and having only the purest of intentions, who claims that he just wants to improve the whole world, don’t “attach” yourself to him. Instead, you should practice, “He shall be brought to the kohen.” You should go and learn the books of the Chofetz Chaim, and study what may be said and what may not, until you are thoroughly familiar with the halachos. This will bring purity and redemption to the Jewish people.
