Negaim, Chapter 12, Mishnah 6. Our chapter deals with nigei batim, the tzora'as that appears on the walls of a house. The mishnah now opens the practical procedure with a question: "Keitzad re'iyas habayis?" How does the viewing of the house actually take place? How does the owner summon the kohen, and what happens once the kohen arrives?
The Owner's Careful Words
The mishnah's answer follows the script the Torah itself supplies: "Uva asher lo habayis vehigid lakohen leimor, kenega nireh li babayis." The householder goes to the kohen and words his report exactly as the verse dictates: it looks to me as though there is something resembling a nega on my wall. Observe that he declares no nega whatsoever; all he conveys is his own impression of what he saw.
The mishnah then drives the point further: "Afilu talmid chacham veyodei'a shehu nega vadai." Even where the owner happens to be an accomplished talmid chacham who has mastered the halachos of nega'im and recognizes beyond any doubt that this mark is genuine, he is barred from handing down a verdict ("lo yigzor") by announcing that a nega has broken out in his home. What must come out of his mouth is only this: "ela kenega nireh li babayis," something bearing the appearance of a nega.
Why Must Even the Expert Hold Back?
The Tosfos Yom Tov takes up this halachah at length. He first notes why the mishnah specifies a talmid chacham: someone who is not familiar with the subject of nega'im would have no way of asserting anything at all, so the whole ruling only has meaning for one who does know.
But then the question arises: why should the Torah forbid him from speaking plainly? After all, until the kohen declares "tamei," there is no tumah here whatsoever. Only the kohen's pronouncement generates the tumah of nega'im, as was established at the opening of chapter three. So what harm is there in the owner stating what he sees?
The Tosfos Yom Tov brings an answer in the name of Rabbi Eliyahu Mizrachi (the well known and richly detailed commentary on Rashi al haTorah), who cites it from his teachers: precisely because the owner's words have no power to determine anything, he should not express himself in definite, ruling-like language. This is an application of what Chazal always taught us: "Lameid leshoncha lomar eini yodei'a," train your tongue to say "I do not know." A person should never rush to speak with certainty where he may be mistaken. That is the lesson the Torah is impressing here even upon the scholar.
The Tosfos Yom Tov then offers explanations of his own. First, this is a matter of derech eretz in how one conducts himself with the kohen. Since the decision belongs to the kohen and he must come and render it, the owner should not phrase things in a way that diminishes the kohen's standing. Let the kohen come and rule. Second, there is a real concern that the owner's confident words will influence the kohen improperly, pushing him to declare the house tamei quickly and without proper grounds, where had he not heard such a declaration he might well have concluded that this is no tzora'as at all.
"Ufinu Es Habayis"
The mishnah continues with the Torah's next step: "Vetzivah hakohen ufinu es habayis." The kohen commands that the house be emptied out before he comes to look. And the mishnah adds: "Va'afilu chavilei eitzim, va'afilu chavilei kanim, divrei Rebbi Yehudah." Even bundles of wood, even bundles of reeds, must be removed. This is striking, because such items are not susceptible to tumah at all, and Rebbi Yehudah nevertheless learns from the Torah's wording that they must be cleared out. The householder is simply obligated to trouble himself and empty the house.
Rebbi Shimon replies with three words that Rashi and the Rav (the Bartenura) take as an expression of astonishment: "eisek hu lefinui" - can it be that the pasuk does nothing more than saddle the owner with a chore, obliging him to haul out objects that are incapable of contracting tumah in the first place? Such a reading cannot stand. Necessarily, then, the verse comes for the very purpose Rebbi Meir is about to lay out: the Torah spares the money of a Jew.
The Tiferes Yisroel's Reading
The Tiferes Yisroel offers a different and very creative approach here, and it is fair to say it is more of a chiddush than a simple reading. He understands Rebbi Yehudah to be saying something remarkable: yes, everywhere else in hilchos tumah v'taharah plain wooden items with no receptacle (pshutei klei eitz) and bundles of reeds cannot become tamei. But here, in nigei batim, it is a gezeiras hamelech that they do become tamei, and that is exactly why they must be taken out. And why should this surprise us? The house itself is attached to the ground, and anything mechubar lakarka is never susceptible to tumah anywhere else in the Torah, yet here the Torah declares the house tamei. So too these bundles.
On this reading, Rebbi Shimon's words are not a question at all but a disagreement. Rebbi Shimon holds that no tumah attaches to these items, exactly as everywhere else. Rather, the Holy One commanded that the owner busy himself and trouble himself to clear them out, and that is the gezeiras hamelech: to give him the labor.
It is worth noting that the two positions can be traded. Rebbi Yehudah could equally be understood the way the Tiferes Yisroel explains Rebbi Shimon, that no tumah is involved and it is simply a decree that the items be removed; and then Rebbi Shimon's words revert to being a question of astonishment, wondering what possible purpose such labor serves. The Tiferes Yisroel's innovation is to place the tumah in Rebbi Yehudah's mouth and the pure decree of exertion in Rebbi Shimon's.
Rebbi Meir: What Is the Torah Protecting?
"Amar Rebbi Meir, vechi mah mitamei lo?" Rebbi Meir asks: what is there in the house that stands to become tamei? If you say his wooden vessels (real vessels with a receptacle), his garments, or his metal utensils, all of these present no irreversible loss: "matbilan vehein tehorim," he immerses them in a mikveh and they are pure again.
"Al mah chasah haTorah? Al kli charso, ve'al pacho, ve'al tafuyav." Earthenware vessels are the cheapest things a person owns, and yet they alone cannot be restored through a mikveh. Once a kli cheres becomes tamei, it must be broken. So the Torah's concern is precisely for those items that could not be rescued afterward: his earthenware, his small jug, and his tafuyav. The Rav offers two readings of this last word. With a tav it is related to ofeh, a small portable stove on which he bakes and cooks his meals. And there are texts that read "tifayav" with a tes, an exceedingly small earthenware vessel whose mouth is so narrow that liquid emerges from it only tif tif, drop by drop. All of these have no path back to taharah through immersion.
The Famous Kal Vachomer
On this foundation Rebbi Meir erects the chain of inference that became the classic source for the teaching that the Torah is sparing with a Jew's money. Rung one: "Im kach chasah haTorah al mamono habazui," when Scripture troubles itself over a man's shabbiest and most worthless articles, then certainly, "kal vachomer al mamono hachaviv," it is concerned for the belongings he treasures. Rung two: if mere property earns such consideration, "kal vachomer al nefesh banav uvenosav," then how much more do the lives of children. Rung three: the man visited by this plague is a baal lashon hara, a rasha, and if even his possessions are handled so gently, then the property and the family of a tzaddik are surely watched over with greater care still.
The Rambam on the Message of Tzora'as
The Tosfos Yom Tov brings a beautiful passage from the Rambam here. Chazal taught that the tzora'as described in the Torah comes on account of lashon hara, speaking badly of another person even when what is said is true. Heaven's response is to separate the speaker from people and to distance them from the harm of his tongue.
And so the process begins with his house: "vayaschilu beveiso." If he takes the message to heart and repents, good. If not, the affliction moves to the items he lies upon, his bedding and the leather work of his household. If he repents, good. If not, it comes upon the woolen and linen garments he wears. And if he still has not repented, it comes upon his own body, upon the skin of his flesh.
The Rambam sums up the whole sequence: "Vezeh al derech hamusar vehatochachos." This graduated progression is Heaven's method of teaching and reproving. Look, he urges, at everything laid out in this masechta: none of it follows the course of nature, and none of these conditions is an illness in any ordinary sense. A garment or a wall is chomer domem, lifeless material. (Creation is arranged in four tiers: domem, the inanimate, such as stone and brick; tzomei'ach, plant life sprouting from the soil; chai, living creatures; and medaber, mankind, endowed with speech.) Lifeless material does not take sick. The Torah has merely assigned the phenomenon this name "bikri'as haTorah al hadimyon," on the strength of a resemblance.
The identical inversion shows up in nig'ei adam. The nesakim, the spots where the hair drops out, are classified by the Torah as tzora'as, though as an ailment this is what is known as choli hashu'al. And consider the halachah that a person is rendered tahor once the white has spread across the whole of his skin: medically speaking, that is the condition at its very peak, the most acute and overwhelming stage it can reach, and precisely there the Torah rules him pure. Nature would dictate the opposite verdict entirely. "Ve'ulam heim inyanim toriyim": these belong to the realm of Torah, not to the realm of medicine.
And this is the root of why our mishnah refers to the afflicted homeowner as a rasha: what has come upon his house is not misfortune but tochachah, a rebuke and a piece of musar from Heaven meant to bring him back to the right path.