Due to this being the last Thursday Night shiur before Pesach, R' Frand did not deliver his live shiur. However R' Frand did post a pre-recorded Parsha vort on OU Torah which I have summarized here. This week's vort can be found at https://outorah.org/p/12907, but I have attempted to reproduce the vort to the best of my ability in this post. Any perceived inconsistency is the result of my efforts to transcribe the shiur and should not be attributed to the maggid shiur.
R' Frand began by stating that Tzara'as is not leprosy as that is a physical ailment and this is spiritual. R' Frand first quoted a pasuk from last week's Parsha (Vayikra 13:2) in which the Torah states that if a person has one of the nega'im he should go to Aharon or one of his sons. R' Frand quipped that a person with Tzara'as does not go to the dermatologist, he goes to a Kohain.
Rashi explains the pasuk as teaching that only a Kohain can pasken, even if he is the greatest scholar. Only a Kohain can make the determination. R' Frand then quoted the Rambam who stated that if there is a Kohain who was not the biggest Talmid Chacham and did not know the status of what he was looking at, he must find a Talmid Chacham to tell him what to do. If the Talmid Chacham says "pure" the Kohain must repeat it. Similarly with being masgir or saying tamei. And even if the Kohain is a Shoteh or Katan, he must parrot the words of the Talmid Chacham and the psak is done.
R' Frand quoted the Minchas Chinuch who theorized about a blind Kohain and stated that since he is merely repeating the words of the Talmid Chacham he should be able to give "psak" even if he cannot see. Although the Mei'ri disagrees, R' Frand asked why should he not be able to just repeat it?
R' Frand quoted the Tolner Rebbi who said that sight is required. He noted that the pesukim in Megillas Eicha are alphabetical and that in the alphabet the Ayin goes before the Peh. But in the third and fifth perakim of Eicha they are inverted. Why? The Gemara in Sanhedrin writes that the spies told their lies about the Land of Israel on Tisha B'av, and in so doing they put their mouth (peh) before what they saw (ayin). This is what Tisha B'av is about, speaking bad without seeing and the Megillah hints to that.
R' Frand said we can now understand why a Kohain Shoteh can say Tamei or Tahor but not a blind Kohain. Because before saying something about someone, you need to see him first. And before jumping to conclusions about a person, you should see him. You need to see the full story, thus a blind Kohain cannot pasken about Tzara'as, because he cannot see what happened.
R' Frand closed by saying if we just restricted what we spoke about to what we saw, the amount of Loshson Hara would be cut down immensely.
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