Welcome to KOE's Dvar Torah project, dt@koe. Thank you to Stephen Wind for contributing this week's Dvar Torah. If you would like to participate in this project through writng or receiving Divrei Torah, please contact Jason Herman at dt@koe.org. Shabbat shalom.

Rabeinu Yonah begins his book, Sh'arey Teshuva (The Gates of Repentance) by declaring that "the best favor that God ever bestowed upon His creations was to prepare the way for them to elevate from their lowest of actions and to rise from their worst sins." I think it is important to keep this in mind when we learn this week's parshiot, Tazria-Metzora. In them, we are taught about the infliction of tzara'at, which serves as the divine retribution for committing certain sins. In some sense, this can be looked at as a punishment: the victim is publicly shown to be a sinner, and he must leave the camp and remain in isolation until the kohen declares him to be pure once again. However, we have good reason to interpret otherwise.

The Kli Yakar makes a beautiful point in his commentary. He teaches that there are three major sins that deserve tzara'at as punishment: (1) lashon hara (harmful or derogatory speech) (2) gasut ha'ru'ach (arrogance) and (3) khemdat ha'mamon (greedy pursuit of money). This being the case, the kohanim were chosen to serve as the purification official because kohanim do not display any of these negative elements-in fact, they have the exact opposite traits. (1) They share the same values as their ancestor Aharon, the first kohen gadol, about whom it is written "he loved peace and pursued peace," which has the opposite effect of lashon hara. (2) Aharon was also known for his absolute modesty even when compared to Avraham Avinu. Avraham said, "I am like dust" (Genesis 18:27), but Moshe and Aharon said, "who are we?" (Exodus 16:8), implying that they were not even dust-indeed very modest. (3) Furthermore, the kohanim had no inheritance in the land of Israel, nor had they any means of supporting themselves. Rather, they were dependent solely on the tithes and contributions from the rest of the nation. Hence, they did not practice any occupation that would lead to a greedy pursuit of money. Thus, the Kli Yakar concludes, each kohen was worthy to serve as the purification official for the sinners inflicted with tzara'at. Not only was a kohen holier than the sinner was, he was also qualified to be a good influence on him because he did not possess any of the negative characteristics that the sinner did.

Based on this commentary, it seems to me that tzara'at was more of a blessing than a curse. A person who was not following the proper path was forced to acknowledge this fact and was also sentenced to spend at least seven days away from the community to contemplate his actions and to spend time in self-introspection. More importantly, the Torah commands that he be assigned a positive role model to help him change his behavior. The end result was that the sinner was granted an excellent opportunity to return to the path of Hashem. Today, as our sages teach, we are not on a high enough spiritual level to merit such overt divine intervention in our lives. However, what a wonderful gift it would be for all of our flaws to be pointed out by someone, not to embarrass us or to put us down, but to help us correct them. Indeed, this would be "the best favor that God ever bestowed upon His creations".