Thursday, April 23, 2015

Thursday's Parsha Tidbits - Parshios Tazria-Metzorah

The following is a brief summary of some of the thoughts said over by R' Frand on the parsha this evening. I have attempted to reproduce these vorts to the best of my ability. Any perceived inconsistency is the result of my efforts to transcribe the shiur and should not be attributed to R' Frand.

Rabbi Frand began tonight's parsha vort by quoting from the rules which apply to a metzorah. The afflicted person must tear his clothes, not take a hair cut and must sit with his with his cloak pulled down over his head almost to his mustache.

Rabbi Frand observed that the rules for a metzorah are very similar to those for an aveil, and asked why are the two classes of people given similar halachos. He hypothesized that it could be due to the fact that a metzorah is compared to a dead person, but if that was correct, the metzorah's family should be observing these rules, not the metzorah himself.

Rabbi Frand answered this question by quoting from R Shach ztl who in turn repeated something in the name of R' Issur Zalman. In Megillas Esther, we read about how the Jews fasted, cried and had eulogies. It is understandable why the Jews fasted and cried out - this is what is normally done during a time of fast when Jews are praying for forgiveness and doing teshuva. But why were they conducting eulogies?

R' Shach answered in the name of R' Issur Zalman that when a person does teshuva he needs to consider his life and analyze which aspects of his life were less than productive. Once he has made this review, he can move forward and make changes.

R' Frand opined that this also might be the reason that the metzorah sits outside the camp and others say "tamei tamei" when he passes by. This is done so that others can pray for him, because he is incapable of praying for himself as he is compared to being dead. He sits outside the camp and mourns for the poor choices that he has made and contemplated improvement.

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