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OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home APRIL 15, 2021 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
From the Fire Parshas Tazria-Metzorah
Setting Speech Free By Rav Moshe Weinberger Adapted for publication by Binyomin Wolf
W
e must understand why the metzorah, one afflicted with the skin condition called tzara’as, is treated so much more harshly than any other impure person. The Torah says, “He shall dwell alone, he shall reside outside the camp” (Vayikra 13:46). He must not only stay away from the Mishkan and the camp of the Levi’im but must also stay away from any Jewish settlement. He must even stay away from other impure individuals! Why is the metzorah treated even more severely than one who has come into contact with a dead body, whose impurity is even stronger? Why does the metzorah have no place in any Jewish community? We can begin to understand this by studying a teaching of the Sfas Emes based on the Zohar in Parshas Tazria (46b): Just like a person is punished for evil speech, so, too, he is punished for failing to use positive speech in which he could have engaged but did not do so. [This is] because he has damaged his spirit of speech which was given to him in order for him to speak elevated [words of prayer] and lower [words of kindness to other people], all with holiness. How much the more so if the nation is going in a crooked path and he has the ability to speak with them and rebuke them, but he is silent and does not speak. The following verse applies to him (Tehillim 39:3): “I was mute with silence. I held my peace. I had no comfort and my pain was stirred up.” The Sfas Emes explains, based on this quote from the Zohar, that Hashem sends a person tzara’as not only for misusing his power of speech but also for his failure to use his power
of speech for the good, by speaking words of guidance and encouragement to other people. Such a person makes himself mute and cuts himself off from others. The Sfas Emes also explains that in order to rectify the words the metzorah should not have said, as well as the good words he left unsaid, he must bring two live, pure birds to the Mishkan (Vayikra 14:4). The kohein slaughters one bird and sets the other one free (ibid. 5, 7). Rashi explains that the metzorah offers birds because it is the nature of birds to chirp and chatter, and the metzorah must atone for his inappropriate chatter. But the Sfas Emes takes this idea a step further and teaches that the slaughtered bird corresponds to the inappropriate chatter which we must eliminate from our lives. We must slaughter words of gossip and idle criticism. We must slaughter the habit of speaking in shul. We must slaughter hurtful words toward those in our family, subordinates at work, and friends. And the live bird, which is set free,
corresponds to the words of kindness, prayer, Torah, and encouragement that the metzorah had bottled up inside but which he should have set free, lest he find himself at the end of his days looking back on a life of “I was mute with silence…” Rather, if one sees another person who could use some encouragement, who would feel more connected to Yiddishkeit if he heard a Torah idea, or if one is tired but his or her spouse could use a kind word, one should let those positive words fly. He must give them free expression and not hold them back. It is very easy to make a mistake and think that slaughtering negative speech means that one should be silent. Many people believe that the Chofetz Chaim, zt”l, who wrote the classic sefer on the laws of lashon hara, must have been a very quiet person. After all, when one has learned all of the halachos, it is hard to imagine what he is permitted to speak about! But the Sfas Emes teaches us that the opposite is the case. We must empty our mouths of negative, hurtful speech in order to make room for the
mouth’s true purpose, as a vessel for words of prayer, Torah, and encouragement. I have met people who have seen the Chofetz Chaim, zt”l and they have testified, as is often quoted in seforim, that the Chofetz Chaim was a very gregarious person. He was very friendly and enjoyed talking with people. Slaughtering bad speech does not mean being silent. To the contrary, by emptying our mouths from the bad, we make room for the good. The word for the skin affliction of tzara’as in Aramaic according to Targum Unkolus and the Zohar is sagiru, which literally means “closed off.” The seforim hakedoshim explain that the essence of a person is expressed through his power of speech. That is why when G-d breathed into Adam’s nostrils “the breath of life,” Onkolus translates that phrase as “a speaking spirit” (Bereishis 2:7). The pasuk also says, “My soul went out with his speech” (Shir Hashirim 5:6). The soul is expressed through speech. As long as a person’s soul is closed off behind the iron curtain of the body’s and the evil inclination’s rule, it is extremely difficult to speak words of Torah, prayer, generosity, and kindness. Such words are like maror in the person’s mouth. The good inside the person’s soul is “closed off” and finds no expression. His words of kindness and encouragement are not set free. All such a person can say are forbidden words of smallness, nonsense, negativity and cynicism. The seforim hakedoshim teach that the essence of the Egyptian experience was that speech was in exile. That is why it was only after the king of Egypt died did the pasuk say, “The Jewish people groaned from the labor and cried out, and their cry ascended
