14 Apr TAZRIA: HOW TO CRITICIZE YOUR LOVED ONES IF YOU DON’T LOVE ME, DON’T EXPEL ME

Where Is G-d?
A couple had two
little mischievous
boys, ages 8 and
10. They were
always getting into
trouble, and their
parents knew that if any mischief
occurred in their town, their sons would
get the blame.
The boys’ mother heard that a rabbi in
town had been successful in disciplining
children, so she asked if he would speak
with her boys. The rabbi agreed and
asked to see them individually.
So, the mother sent her 8-year-old first,
in the morning, with the older boy to see
the rabbi in the afternoon.
The rabbi, a huge man with a booming
voice, sat the younger boy down and
asked him sternly, “Where is G-d?”
The boy’s mouth dropped open, but he
made no response, sitting there with his
mouth hanging open.
The rabbi repeated the question. “Where
is G-d?”
Again, the boy made no attempt to
answer.
So, the rabbi raised his voice some more
and shook his finger in the boy’s face and
bellowed, “Where is G-d!?”
The boy screamed and bolted from the
room. He ran directly home and dove
into his closet, slamming the door behind
him.
When his older brother found him in the
closet, he asked, “What happened?”
The younger brother, gasping for breath,
replied: “We are in real big trouble this
time! G-d is missing, and they think we
did it!”
The Ignorant Kohen
Parshat Tazria, in Sefer Vayikra, discusses
the laws of tzaraat, an unusual illness,
identified by a white patch appearing on
the skin of a person, that was symptomatic
of a profound emotional and spiritual
blemish within this individual. This, plus
several secondary symptoms, determined
the person as being temporarily “impure,”
and required him or her to separate from
the community and undergo an intense
program of introspection and healing.
The Torah states that only a Kohen, a
descendant of Aaron, the Kohen Gadol of
Shevet Levi, was authorized to diagnose

a tzaraat and pronounce the malady as
such. Even in a case where all the
symptoms of the illness are present and a
multitude of scholars recognize it as
tzaraat, the person cannot be diagnosed
as possessing this malady unless a Kohen
states so explicitly.
The ramifications of this biblical law are
far-reaching. For example, even if the
only Kohen present is a child so that he is
unable to examine the person in question,
a trustworthy scholar needs to report his
findings to the Kohen, and it is only the

Kohen who may pronounce the white-
patched person as impure. Even if the

only Kohen around is an imbecile
(“shoteh”), lacking the knowledge and
understanding required to give a
diagnosis, it is only he who is entitled to
make the verbal pronouncement under
the instruction and guidance of an adult
scholar.
Why was the Kohen so indispensable to
this process? Shouldn’t the scholar, who
is intricately familiar with the symptoms
of this malady, be trusted more than a
child-Kohen who can do nothing more
than utter a diagnosis determined by
someone else? What is needed here is an
expert in these illnesses and symptoms,
not a Kohen!
Conduits of Blessing
More than three millennia ago, the
Kohanim were charged with the mission
of blessing the Jewish people. To this
day, in the Holy Land, there is an interval
during every morning service, at which
the Kohanim spread out their hands and
extend Divine blessings on their Jewish
brethren. Among Diaspora Jewry, this
tradition is practiced only on holidays.
The Kabbalah explains that the reason
the Kohanim were designated to be the
conduits for Divine blessings is because
their souls evolve from the celestial
chamber of love, granting them a unique
ability to cultivate compassion and
kindness toward others and hence making
them uniquely suitable conduits for G-d’s
love and grace.
This is the reason for the Jewish law
which states that a Kohen who is disliked
by the congregation or dislikes the
congregation is forbidden to bless the
people, because the negative energy that
surrounds this man may obstruct the flow
of the blessings. Indeed, the blessing
recited by the Kohanim before Birkat
Kohanim states: “He (G-d) commanded
us to bless his people Israel with love.”

The Zohar, the basic text of the Kabbalah,
explains that this is also the reason for
the tradition that an unmarried Kohen
could not serve as an agent of the Jewish
people performing the services in the
Beit Hamikdash in Yerushalayim.
For the Kohen to be worthy of this
extraordinary position, he needed to fully
develop his innate capacity for love and
selflessness, and it is only through
marriage, in which one learns to share
one’s life with another human being, that
a person is challenged to bring out his
full potential for caring and affection.
When you are unmarried, you may be
extremely kind and sensitive, but at the
end of the day, you have the luxury of
retreating to your hub and doing things
your own way.
Ultimately, you need not answer but to
yourself, which is why so many people
today opt for the single life. It is only in
the institution of marriage that you are
consistently called upon to take another
person and their needs and feelings
seriously. For a marriage to work and
blossom, you can’t be selfish. That is
why it was only the married Kohen who
was charged with the responsibility of
serving G-d in the Beit HaMikdash in
Yerushalayim.
Prerequisite for Criticism
Now we will understand why the Torah
allows no one but the Kohen to diagnose
another Jew as suffering from an illness
that renders him or her severely impure
and requires them to separate from the
community. The Torah is imparting to us
a critical lesson: Before you diagnose
another person as being spiritually ill and
deserving of temporary isolation, you
must make sure that your heart is filled
with love and affection toward this
person. For it is only then that we are
certain that your diagnosis is not coming
from your own biases or lack of
refinement, but it is objectively true and
thus productive and beneficial. This also
assures us that you will no doubt search
for every possible way to rehabilitate this
wounded soul.
As parents, educators, spouses,
employers, and colleagues, we often feel
the need to denounce, criticize, and
sometimes penalize. Yet all too often,
these are done more as an outlet for our
own anger and frustration rather than as a
tool to help these people become the best
version of themselves. We may call it
discipline and justice, but if it is not

based on kindness and the desire to help
the other person, it may end up being
more destructive than constructive.
Principals and teachers at times feel the
need to expel a student from the
institution, just as, during biblical times,
the leper was dismissed from the
community. Comes the Torah and
declares: If you are not a Kohen, you are
forbidden from issuing forth such a
verdict! If you do not genuinely care for
this youngster, you have no right to expel
them! If you will not lose sleep over the
fact that you had no choice but to dismiss
a student, then it might be you who
should be dismissed from your position.
It is easy to define somebody as “impure”
if you do not understand their pain, but it
is unethical. Before you punish, you must
first learn how to be a Kohen, how to
really care about others. When criticism,
punishment, and even dismissal are
motivated by concern for the person
rather than your rage or incompetence, it
will have a different effect on the person
you are punishing. Your criticism will
build, rather than destroy, this person’s
character. What is equally important, you
will not cease to labor that the situation is
reversed and the individual returns to his
or her potential glory.
So next time, before you criticize your
spouse, stop and ask yourself if you are
doing it as a “Kohen,” out of concern and
care for them, or because of your stress
or anger. If that is the case, you ought to
remain silent until you can transcend
your self-absorption and enter into the
world of another human being.