Tazria Metzorah 5786

In Parshas [clears throat] Metzora, we have a very, very unique thing. We have an anomaly that it comes to carbonas. We know that a person who speaks loshon hora and has tzaraas, so when he's cured from his tzaraas has to go through a process and part of that process is he has to bring certain certain certain type of carbonas. And the carbon for a metzora is he has to bring states tziporim twice. He has to bring two two birds. What we do with these two birds? Every single carbon that there is, a carbon is by definition, except for carbon mincha, which isn't a live animal. But every carbon that involves a live animal, the a carbon means the animals eventually slaughtered, shechted. Shechted on his bayis or near them his bayis, etc. etc. The carbon of the metzora, he has to bring these two birds is the exception to that rule. First of all, why why birds? Zocher Rashi, lefi shahan negoyim boyim al loshon hora, because negai metzora comes as a result of speaking loshon hora, but tziporim piputen koyel and birds chatter all the time. They chirp they chirp they chatter. So therefore, this person who is speaking who spoke loshon hora, he speaks too much. He chatters too much. And therefore he goes ahead and has to bring these two birds. But why do you go ahead you shecht one of the birds and you take the second bird, you don't shecht it, you dip it in the blood and then you send it away, which is I say unique. There's no carbon of an animal that is not shechted. Why do you send it away? So the Sfas Emes in Parshas Metzora writes, hatziporim boyim lesaken bayis hachotoyim, cuz these two birds are there to go ahead and to give a kapara for two sins. Hashchuta levayer velifrosh etzem atzmi midvorim beteilim mikoshkei loshon hora. The bird the bird that is slaughtered is killed is going ahead to go ahead and to be mechaper and to kill speech, to kill loshon hora, to kill dvorim beteilim, to kill all those aveiros that have to do with speech. You kill you kill it. That's why you kill that bird. That bird that chatters too much, you kill it. As a kapara, you should know that you have to go ahead and kill that speech. V'hamshulachas, but the bird that's sent away, lehochin al peh, al loshon laheitzis bohem divrei Torah. V'lochen ashchuta asura v'hamshulachas muteres. K'mo she'omar Chazal, says the Sfas Emes based on the Zohar, that that bird that's kept alive is to be mesaken the speech which we did not give. Meaning to say, she'reimeis al hadibur hatohor she'zeh ikar ha'adam lenefesh chaya leruach memalela. What the Sfas Emes is saying, what really the Zohar is saying is, that of course we should not speak bad. We should not speak evil. We shouldn't speak loshon hora. So this is a kapara on loshon hora and you go ahead and you kill the bird. You kill the loshon hora. But sometimes we don't speak enough. What does that mean? We don't give compliments where they're deserved. We don't go ahead and use the gift of speech to go ahead and to uplift a person, to be mechazek a person, a person who's down and to give him encouragement. For the lack of speaking, the good speech, which the Zohar in fact calls is the there's mila bain al mila bisha v'al mila tovah. There are good words and there are bad words. The the bird that we shecht is for the bad speech. Kill it. Get rid of it. The bird that we sent away is to go ahead to remind us that we didn't speak enough when it was necessary to speak, when it was a mitzvah to speak. To say a thank you, to say a shkoyach, to be mechazek a person, to uplift somebody's spirits. And for not doing that, we need a kapara as well. And that's the second bird. The second bird that's kept alive to remind us that we have to go ahead and keep that type of speech alive as well. You know, when somebody does something in shul, he davens for the amud or he helps clean up something, give him a shkoyach. I always say, compliments is the biggest easiest chesed to do. It doesn't cost you a dime. It doesn't cost you very much time. A thank you, a shkoyach. Gee, that was a great davening. Oh, I was inspired. That was a good drasha. I was inspired. And certainly when a person is down on his down in the dumps, and go go ahead and to say something a nice word, it doesn't cost you nothing. And what this Chazal is saying, the Zohar is saying is that we'll be held accountable for those opportunities that we didn't that we didn't speak. We didn't say what we should have said. A long time ago a person went ahead and told me a story about a girl who was shopping before Pesach and uh she was sitting in her car and she saw this is a girl who already out of high school. I don't know what stage life she was in, but certainly not a teenager anymore. And she sees her her English teacher from the sixth grade walking down the street. And she really liked this teacher and the teacher was a great teacher. So she gets out of the car and she walks over to the woman and says, "You know, I want to tell you that uh you taught me you taught me English and you taught me how to write. And that when I applied for a high-end seminary, uh I had to write an essay and it was a beautiful essay and that essay got me into that seminary which changed my life and that's because you were such a good English teacher." You know, again, all that cost her is a couple minutes in getting out of the car. But there's an end of that story. That woman went ahead and wrote a letter to this girl's parents and said it was right before Pesach and the school that I was teaching in, where I had taught for 37 years, asked me whether I wanted to come back after Pesach. Excuse me, uh to next year. And I had to make a decision. In fact, the decision I had to make was on the day that that girl came over to me. You know, and I I I had decided, you know, 37 years is long enough. You know, uh as teachers get older, they get much much older than their students, you know. When I started saying shiur in yeshiva, it was a chabura that was I was about seven or eight years older than the people I was teaching. Now I'm a lot older than that. A lot older than that. So the woman felt that she wasn't relating to their to the girls anymore. And therefore she said, "You know what? I'm going to say that's it. I'm hanging them up and I'm not going to stop teaching." I got that letter and I came home and I said, "No. If I can do something for a girl like that, I have to keep it on doing." That's lishana tovah. That's good that's good talking. That's losh that's good loshon. And that's the loshon that we're going to be held accountable for being able to say such thing and not actually doing it. And therefore, not only we should stop from the loshon hora, the lishana bisha, and and kill the bird, we should go ahead and keep the other bird alive to remind us of the lishana tovah, the good speech. Mhm.