Tazria/Metzora

One of the laws that the Torah teaches us about צרעת is that if the צרעת spreads to the whole body of the person, he is considered not afflicted; he's pure. The wording of the posuk is וכסתה הצרעת את כל עור הנגע מראשו ועד רגליו, if the צרעת  covers from his head to his feet, לכל מראה עיני הכהן , as much as the kohen is able to see.

Rashi says לכל מראה עיני הכהןcomes to exclude a kohen who lost his eyesight.
Obviously Rashi felt those words were extra because it could only be what the kohen could see. However, Rashi's explanation is a little puzzling for if a kohen can't see the צרעת , how could he possibly be מטמא the person? What is Rashi really telling us here?

Later on in parshas Metzora where the Torah teaches us the purification process, one of the items the metzora has to bring is a קרבן אשם The Seforno says that the אשם is brought because the person was מעל בקדש took something that belonged to Hashem & used it for himself.
He took the power of speech & instead of using it in the service of Hashem, he used it to hurt someone.

Chazal say that you can't look at a נגע on a cloudy day. Included in that, says the גלילי זהב is that when it’s cloudy for the Jewish people, when misfortune falls upon them. אין רואים את הנגעים, we don't look at the sins of the Jewish people, rather we have to look at the cause of these sins & judge the people favorably. For this reason, it also says that a kohen who is blind in one eye can't look at נגעים, for the kohen has to look with both eyes, one to see the נגע & one to see what caused it. Someone who can only look at the effect & not at the cause can't look at נגעים because he can't help.

I heard a story this week told by Reb Yitzchok Shain who heard it from the person to whom it happened about his father, Rabbi Moshe Shain, when he was principal of RJJ Yeshiva.

It became known that one of the boys had stolen the regents. Reb Moshe, when all the boys were in the auditorium, came in & said "I know that one of you stole the regents. Whoever did it must come to my office right away" and walked right out. A few minutes later, the boy who stole it walked trembling into the office, hardly looking up and said, “I stole them” Reb Moshe looked up at him & said " not you! " & looked back down. The boy walked out of the office & thought to himself, “if my rebbi doesn't think that I could be the guy who stole the regents, if he thinks I'm better than that then maybe I am.”  

From that day on this boy did a complete turnaround. Even more, for the rest of his life when confronted with a challenge to do something that might not be right, he always had those words ringing in his ears "not you"

Perhaps this is what Rashi means when he tells us that the kohen has to be able to see, to see what the person needs to better himself, to know the right thing to say to someone. Not always should you look at what they did, rather what caused them to do it & be the one to make them feel that this is really "not you"!