Sips From the Well by Rabbi Dovid Sipper - Tazria, 5768

"When a person will be afflicted with tzara'as, he will bring it to the Cohen" (Vayikra 13:9). There's a Mishna in Tractate Nega'im (2:5; which deals with afflictions of tzara'as and the accompanying laws) which introduces a very interesting lesson learned from this verse in the Torah. That Mishna explains that even if a Cohen will find a suspicious mark on his own body, he too must take it to a Cohen. This seems slightly difficult, though. Every Cohen is trained in detecting this type of spot on other people, and thus all this Cohen should need to do is to look in the mirror and be his own Cohen. Why must he go and call someone else in to inspect him when he himself can look at his own affliction? Just as a judge cannot sentence himself for his own crimes, the Cohen would be very happy to find any possible way to excuse himself from having tzara'as. Therefore, as our Sages have expounded, "all nega'im (afflictions) a person can detect except his own," and this Cohen wouldn't be objective about his own affliction, even with the stringency of a Torah commandment weighed against him. Thus, we learn from this Mishna how careful we must be about our own character and our own egos. Surely we can pinpoint the direct faults in all of our neighbors, but rarely can we even find the smallest blemish in our reflection when we look in our mirrors. Therefore, even as the Cohen needs to be reminded to ask an objective other to assist him in determining what's wrong with him, so must we. That Mishna also expounds on a different point. There is an additional Torah commandment to give the first-born animal of every mother animal to a Cohen. One is exempt from this donation, though, if the animal has a blemish and would be unfit for a korban (an offering to Hashem), whereby it then remains with its original owner. Therefore, in every situation, the Mishna teaches, a person must bring his first-borns to a Cohen for inspection, even if can see that the blemish in the animal is pretty obvious. With this further teaching, the Mishna is adding to the lesson it first delivered. Like schoolchildren on the morning of a test, we sometimes conjure up illnesses of our own in order to exempt ourselves from obligation when no such deficiency is present. The hard-working farmer would very much want find any small problem with his animal to be able to eat this calf himself, and thus the Mishna commands that since we can't always be objective enough to admit when we capable of what we are asked, we need to ask someone else. So too must we be sure that those excuses we make to get us out of our personal obligations to be nice to others or to be honest and fair aren't falsified for our own benefit. How often do we negate our responsibilities to others because of our laziness or because we're too busy? Instead, we must remember to remove our own false humility and instead step up to task when we are called to duty. Good Shabbos! (Written by Binyamin Lieb as heard from Rabbi Dovid Sipper)