By Rabbi Yosef Shemtov:
This week’s Torah portion, Tazria, mainly speaks about the special spiritual skin disease named Saraat. Torah describes in length regarding the ramifications of this disease and what this person needs to do, and the processes of purification. This person becomes impure and needs to reside alone, far from people. Just like we see by Miriam that she had to go outside the camp for one week when she said lashon hara about Moshe Rabbenue and then she got Saraat.
The Rabbis say the main reason for this disease is gossiping and putting people down. It is interesting to note that we don’t see any immediate punishment for any sin except for speaking lashon hara. Since someone who says gossip causes friction between people, he is commanded to be alone far from people to taste what he did to others.
Chafetz Chaim says if we had this disease in our time everyone would have had that disease because many of us are not careful with this dangerous sin. He says even though we don’t have actual skin disease, we do have a Neshama disease, meaning our neshamot become impure by saying gossip and angels don’t come near us. And that’s why unfortunately our prayers won’t be accepted because angels don’t come near us to take our prayers to the Almighty
May HaShem help us to be careful with our mouths and always say good things about others.