Reply To: Short & Sweet

Tazria: An Honest Eye

One of the cryptic rules of tzaras is that although even a small white spot can be considered tzaras, a person who turns entirety white without a single spot of healthy skin must be declared Tahor by the Kohen. It is also interesting to note that the Torah conveys this idea not by referring to a person who has become entirely white, but by saying that כל מראה עיני הכהן, “every [part of the person] that meets the Kohen’s eye” seems to be a problematic shade.

There is a fascinating rule that binds a Beis Din when deciding cases of capital punishment; if the accused is unanimously found to be guilty, he may not be put to death. If an opinion is unanimous, we are concerned that not enough effort has gone towards looking at the other side of things; we cannot kill the man.

Perhaps there is a similar lesson to learnt from the Kohen: if every single thing that somebody does seems problematic to our eyes, we cannot convict them. It is almost inconceivable that there can be nothing good about any individual or group. If the only thing we see are the problems, there’s a very good chance that the problem lies not with them, but with the way that we view them.

לע״נ דוד חיים בן ישראל דוב הכהן
לע״נ ר׳ חיים דוב בן ר׳ בןציון שלום