Tazria: Tzaras Tinted Glasses

By Yoni Laub

If a Kohen finds that someone has tzaraas on their body, the Kohen declares him Tamei. So intuitively, if a person would have Tzaraas on their entire body, they would be VERY Tamei. Yet surprisingly, the Torah tells us that if the tzaraas spreads over the whole body, the Kohen should actually declare this person to be Tahor. Why would someone who is partially covered in tzaraas be considered Tamei while someone who is fully covered in tzaraas be deemed Tahor?

​The Netziv explains, based on the Ramban and Rambam, that if a person is 100% covered with tzaraas, there’s essentially no value in declaring that he has this disease, because he won’t learn anything from it. If he hasn’t heeded all of the Teshuva warning until so much so that the situation has spiraled to the point that he has become completely filled with tzaraas, getting assigned as Tamei from the Kohen probably won’t inspire this person to change.

​I want to present an alternative perspective to this question. Maybe the reason that this person who is fully covered in tzaraas is considered to be Tahor is because if the Kohen sees someone as completely impure, it reflects more on the lens through which he is looking at othersthan on those he’s looking at. If a Kohen looks at a member of Klal Yisrael and only sees impurity without an inch of purity, it’s possible that he isn’t properly examining the individual. There’s some level of subjectivity within the tzaraas process in that it’s up to the Kohen todecide if the subject is Tamei or Tahor and he even uses his own judgment at times in terms ofthe timing of his Psak. The Kohen walks out of the house before rendering the house or personhe’s examining impure so that he isn’t in the house and won’t become Tamei as well. Moreover, Rashi quotes that the Kohen דוקא should not render a Chassan impure during his Sheva Brachos (maybe he only got it because there was Lashon Hara at the aufruf or Sheva Brachos). To some extent, tzaraas is determined by the Kohen and not just an objective metric. But maybe if the Kohen examines someone and sees them as 100% impure, it reflects on him not being able to see any positive attributes or purity in this person, who while flawed, still has some redeeming qualities and traits.

​Moreover, tzaraas is a response and punishment to someone speaking Lashon Hara. When someone speaks Lashon Hara, they fail to see the positive in a person. Even if the Lashon Hara is true and the victim of the Lashon Hara does something that is legitimately wrong or has a trait that is genuinely negative, the Lashon Hara solely focuses on the bad, neglecting to notice the positive in that person and the complexity of man in general. So just as a person fails when he speaks Lashon Hara in part because he only highlights the negative in a person, so too if the Kohen is not able to see any purity in the person he’s examining, even this person who is overall impure and deserving of punishment, it says more about the perspective of the examiner than on the reality of the examined.