Good God: Faith for the Rest of Us

Radbam October 26th, 2009

Now that the president has declared the Swine Flu epidemic a national emergency, the hysteria of hype has let loose the dogs of lore.  Not an indictment of Obama, who did what any responsible leader should do, but rather the 24/7 chum-seeking media shark seeking justification for its existence at a cost to our reason and safety. It’s more of the same blameworthy behavior of the previous week, a lust for notoriety that both inspired and exploited the balloon boy daddy. But this circus maximus of overexposure feeds rumor and misinformation that can gravely worsen the innate panic over illness with which civilization has constantly struggled.

I am a card carrying (laminated and bacteria resistant) germiphobe and an idealistic devotee of the helping professions, and so the internal struggle pitting my irrational fears against my altruistic aspirations is microcosmic of the battle of compassion v.s. self-preservation writ large upon our culture.  And when the overoptimistic promise of sufficient vaccine meets the rationed reality of inadequate supply, the prospect of further descent into our more primal, insular allegiance to family and self threatens the fraying fabric of our social compact.

A recent Times op-ed piece on the Vote and Vax program, utilizing the polling system as template for vaccine distribution, offers some compelling and promising strategies. But perhaps a lesson from the Torah might offer solace if not solution, despite current skepticism of religion or the limited credibility of premodern views of disease.   In the Book of Leviticus, the most tedious and ritualistic amongst the Torah’s narrative and casuistic tomes, the chapters dealing with communal response to leprosy, the panic-inducing plague of its time, provide some intriguing approaches to our current outbreak.  Long the bane of Bnai Mitzvah students unable to find relevance in meticulous discussions of skin afflictions apart from their own struggle with acne, the portion became more instructive in recent decades as a series of highly publicized global infections captured our attention.

Though the worldview of the ancient Near East most often understood disease as divine punishment, and thus its prevention and treatment the purview of priests, the response of the early Israelites was distinct from that of surrounding cultures. While unqualified ostracism was the usual, draconian remedy, emerging Judaism sought to balance irrational fear and responsible public health concerns with essential compassion and the recognition of the spark of divinity residing within each person.

Though the leprous were banished outside the camp, their exclusion was not permanent. Judaism developed a system to constantly reevaluate the condition of the afflicted and, if healed, to reintegrate them into the community with full acceptance and status. Those whose symptoms never abated were most likely cast out forever, reflecting the Hobbesian standards of antiquity.  But many of the healed were fully embraced back into the fold both physically and spiritually through a ritual of cleansing that assuaged the irrational and volatile fears of the community.

In this way, the Israelites were affected but not defined by disease. They retained the capacity to transcend bodily affliction and base impulse with the power of the spirit and its moral demands in the world.  They met illness with ideals, fear with faith. The wisdom of the ages still possesses much to offer the immutable challenges of our limited but promising humanity.

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