Combatting Contagious Diseases
D’var Torah for Parashat Tazria-M’tzora
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
Tazria-Metzora (Lev. 12:1—15:33), this week’s double Torah
portion, is the ultimate proof for why Torah has to be interpreted and not
simply taken as God’s immutable word. I
imagine that this extract from some proto-medical manual, with its intricate
descriptions of sores, rashes and other eruptive outbreaks, must have been as
baffling to its students as were the very conditions that they came to diagnose
and clarify.
Yet, to a primitive society
with little or no scientific knowledge, the instructions were critical.
The ailments and physical
failures that are described in these portions were disfiguring and, often,
deadly. The Black Death, the outbreak of
bubonic plague in medieval Europe, is reported to have killed a full third of
the continent’s population. Centuries
earlier, plagues were—and well into our own day, still are—just as
devastating. In every age, it has been
of vital importance for society to diagnose and isolate a deadly contagious
outbreak. What this week’s portion
represents is a system, a methodology, whose goal is understanding and
containing the disease. Just as
important is its teaching that requires the priest—the same one who had
diagnosed the illness—to go visit the sick person every seven days to ascertain
which way the disease was going.
What we have in these two
portions is the basis for medicine as a legitimate and desirable Jewish
profession.
But aside from that, the
instructions themselves are pretty much useless to us today. Thankfully, medicine has come a long way from
the year 1000 BCE.
The ancient rabbis of the
first millennium understood this fact very well. From early on, they started giving new
meanings to these portions and to the diseases and conditions they describe. Tzara’at,
the disease we came to call leprosy, was to the ancient mind a mysterious
infliction. Knowing little about
medicine and even less about viruses, they took the word tzara’at and redefined it by employing a verbal pun. They took another phrase, one that sounds
like m’tzora (“leper”), and made it
the reason and cause of the disease. Motzi-l’shon ra’—a
gossip—brings the conditions upon him- or herself by spreading a false and vile
rumor. The result of gossip, teach the
rabbis, is an eruption of ill will that is as disruptive of the well being of individuals
and society as any disfiguring and disabling plague. Tzara’at
is thus the original social disease.
Pun intended.
What makes this portion even
more prone to interpretation is that the physical ailments it describes aren’t
limited to the human body. The Torah
teaches that tzara’at can be found in
clothing as well as in the walls of one’s house. The analogy doesn’t lag far behind. Our deeds and words have a lasting effect on
everything around us, beginning with ourselves and spreading out in concentric
circles. We know that words can hurt as
much as any violent act. Rumors and lies
can destroy friendships, marriages, careers and lives. This truth is even more imperative today than
ever because of the much wider reach of our words. For all the wonder and excitement of
cyberspace, overuse, misuse and abuse of the social media has become an
unchecked plague of our own digital day, a tzara’at
that has brought harm and even grief to many.
In Tazria-Metzora, this week’s still vitally important Torah portion,
the follow-up instruction given to the priest is as important as the initial diagnosis
itself: Every seven days, he must go outside the camp, to where the
suspected carriers of the tzara’at contagion
are exiled, and reexamine them. This
continues until a definitive diagnosis can be made, or else until the person is
healed and is allowed to reenter the community.
Invested in the priest is the authority to make fundamental decisions
that bear on the wellbeing of the entire community.
Of course, today we have no priests. At least not in the Jewish religion. What are we to make of this? Obviously in health issues, we have doctors,
physicians, nurses and other caretakers who examine their patients and take
care of their physical ailments and conditions.
We also have contractors of every sort to do any housework that needs to
be done to eliminate pollution and contamination.
But who are the individuals whose role it is to monitor
cyberspace? How do we eliminate the kind
of taints that exist in this new world that we and our children have
discovered?
Censorship has never been the answer. But the Torah does have us assign shoftim v’shotrim, (“judges and
officials,” Deuteronomy 16:18) to enforce rulings and decisions. The job of the priest has always been to
instruct people about being holy—a state of being that results from a close
relationship with a holy God. As
parents, teachers and rabbis, it becomes our
role to be the priests, our role to be the shoftim
v’shotrim. It is essential that
along with a cell phone and iPads, we also give our children strict
instructions about the proper way to use these tools. Ultimately, we have to learn to trust our
kids, but until such time, they have to earn our trust and faith.
Today we know so much more about medicine. We know the causes of tzara’at (and the fact that it is barely contagious, and certainly
not fatal any more). Thanks to the
methodology we study about in this week’s portion, we have come to understand
so much more about the functions and failings of the human body. Science has taught us to eliminate many
diseases altogether and to find remedy for the symptoms of still others. Today we also know that viruses can be
transmitted not only by physical contact, but also by digital contact. The importance of Tazria-Metzora
is thus just as important today as when it was first written down some three thousand years ago. As a medical text, its words may be archaic,
but its meaning and teaching are as fundamental for us today as for our ancient
forebears some three thousand years ago.
© 2013 by Boaz D. Heilman
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