Apr 29/06 - Shabbat Tazria / Metzora: Putting the Edges of Wounds Together

Commentary by Rabbi Lawrence Pinsker

"God heals. I just put the edges of the wounds together."

– Ambrose Paré, French surgeon, 16th c.

These are the two most dreaded Torah portions for bar/bat mitzvah students – but it’s wise to get over initial squeamishness and take a good look at them because they are important. Tazri’a and Metzora describe treatment strategies for people in distress over various physical problems – suffering an eruption of a mysterious skin disease, experiencing discharges of various bodily fluids, or at risk because they have just given birth.

With our quick little scalpels, twenty-first-century readers of the text are adept at slicing up Biblical text as primitive, barbaric, sexist, and the like. To some extent this is true. And after all, what civilization could be as advanced and insightful as our own – just take a look at electronic entertainment like Grand Theft Auto and single-point shooter games like the venerable Doom and all its offspring?

But once you get past the fact that every society and every civilization thinks of itself as the pinnacle of creation, it’s possible to see these Torah portions not as guides to advanced (and Divine) medical care, but rather as expressions of concern about the social and psychological well-being of people who have been forced out of contact with others because of the vulnerabilities of physical bodies, which are prone to disease, suffer from wounds, and mark even miraculous events like birth with life-threatening loss of blood and other fluids and infections.

The two categories our ancestors used to describe the health of men and women are tameh (ritually impure) and tahar (ritually pure). The terms have nothing to do with physical cleanliness, but rather represent assessments of whether people can participate fully in the ritual-centred life of ancient Israel. As long as a person was experiencing fluid discharges from his or her body, he or she was considered “ritually impure” – and that meant being quarantined and excused from the daily routines of life. Whether the source of the flow, ooze, or discharge was a wound, an infection, or childbirth, the person exhibiting the symptoms was isolated. By isolating those experiencing these conditions, our ancestors believed that they could effect desirable change and restore them to active community involvement. Their message was that everyone could eventually be readmitted to the community after taking the appropriate steps. Each afflicted person was therefore valued and restored to the ritual life of the community as soon as possible.

Does this sound primitive to you, or does it make a lot of sense? Isolation and supervision of the ailing person seem pretty reasonable. During flu season, did you remember to wash your hands or remember to clean them after you shake someone’s hand, touch a doorknob or a handrail on a staircase, or wipe a child’s runny nose? The person who blithely ignores the importance of preventative hygiene is not only a menace to him/herself but to everyone with whom he or she may have contact – an unforgivable act of selfishness and irresponsible behaviour.

Our ancestors seemed to know (through observation?) that clotting factor in human blood reaches its peak on the eighth day after a baby’s birth; that is the day on which the Torah requires that the brit milah – ritual circumcision for males – takes place. Do you think they didn’t notice that many diseases were transmitted principally through physical contact and/or through proximity to people who were ill, or that there was an accompanying change in the hearts and minds of those who contracted illness and those who feared it – and that both aspects of human infirmity need to be addressed by the community?

God cautions our ancestors saying,

“You shall put the Israelites on guard against their impurity, lest they die through their impurity by defiling My Tabernacle which is among them.” (Leviticus 15:31)

– a warning that contagious disease may afflict the community indiscriminately – and with devastating consequences to its central social institution – if they do not pay close attention to how they respond to isolated outbreaks.

I remember well the months during which my congregation’s Torah procession was absent the customary handshaking, hugs and kisses that accompanied those joyful moments of ritual. In the light of our current efforts to limit the impact of HIV and other STDs, “bird flu,” and other lethal viruses like SARS, perhaps our ancestors were not so primitive after all? They may have lacked the technology to identify the specific causes of certain illnesses, but they seemed to have understood the human dimensions of disease and disability quite well.

The pioneering sixteenth-century French surgeon Ambrose Paré once said, “God heals. I just put the edges of the wounds together.” Of the ancient priesthood, whom God charges with responsibility for the ailing we may say something similar: God heals. The kohanim simply kept people wounded by fears and uncertainty from being driven out of their community forever.

Shabbat Shalom.