Tazria

While last week the parsha dealt with the purity & impurity of the animals, our parsha begins with the laws of purity & impurity that come about from childbirth. אשה כי תזריע, when a woman conceives she becomes impure for a certain amount of time depending whether she had a boy or a girl. The rabbis tell us that the same way man was created after the animals, the laws of man's purity & impurity are given after the animals. One might ask why was man created after the animals, for if man were to sin, we are to tell him יתוש קדמך even the יתוש was created before you. 

Now, why the יתוש? Even more problematic is that it was only after Adam sinned, that Hashem cursed the ground with the words, ארורה האדמה בעבורך , which Chazal tell us meant ‎that the ground will bring up cursed things such as flies, fleas & mosquitos and gnats.  If that is true, then the creation of the יתוש came after the creation of man, so how are we telling the sinner that the יתוש came before him?

The sefer בן יהוידע explains that Chazal are trying to teach us something. The gemara tells us that everything was created for a purpose and then gives a few examples, one of them being that He created the יתוש because of the snake.  Rashi explains that if one were to get a snake bite, the remedy would be to crush up the  יתוש & put that on the wound which would heal it. Now, Hashem made it that a snake bite would get healed by the יתוש so that a person should realize that it was the snake that caused the יתוש to be created, for it was the sin of Adam that caused the earth to bring up all the accursed things.  

With this we can answer our questions. All the destruction a person does because of his sin, has its start with what the snake did to Adam & Chava. The righteous people who uphold the Torah heal this initial blemish that came from the first snake by turning the bad into good. 

This means that the sinner isn't helping cure the initial sin, but is rather furthering it. Therefore, the יתוש is considered to come before man,  for the good of the world, for it heals the snake bite, while the sinner makes it worse. That's why we say the יתוש came before man. 

What is so unique about the יתוש that it's the creature that is supposed to teach us a lesson about sin?

The gemara tells us something very unique about the יתוש.  It takes nourishment into its body but does not expel anything which is unlike all other living beings that take in & then separate & keep the good & expel the bad. In essence, then, it's whole being is refuse. 

On the other hand, the Tzaddik, who totally elevates himself over the animal, & more than that rids himself of any animal behavior, is totally removed from that behavior. 

There's a story told about ‎Rebbi Yehuda Ben Attar that, in his city in Morroco, there was an evil ruler who, during his rule of over fifty years, always made trouble for the Jews. Once, he levied a tax on them for which there was no possibility of payment, for he had taxed every last dollar they had. Since they couldn't come up with the money, the ruler’s guards took the rabbi & put him in jail until the people could come up with the money. 

When the deadline came & the people still didn't have the money, this wicked ruler ruled that they would throw the rabbi into the lion’s den. ‎They starved the lions for days before they put the rabbi in the den & expected to hear the lions tearing him apart. Imagine their surprise when they saw the rabbi sitting next to the lions with the lions not touching him. Day & night he sat there & came to no harm. 

When a person is totally pure with no animal spirit in him, then the animals have no power over him. 

Man's whole purpose in this world is to separate the good from the bad, to purify ourselves & remove any of the animal that's in us, to refine ourselves to be complete. When we sin, however, we are reminded of the יתוש who can't separate the bad from the good so that his whole essence is bad. We, on the other hand, have the ability to do that, to separate the good from the bad therefore when one sins we remind him of the יתוש to get the message accross that we must  remove the bad & purify our essence‎!