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Tazria

Leviticus 12:1-13:59

II Kings 4:42-5:19

A few weeks ago, after leading a workshop on bikur cholim (the mitzvah of visiting the sick), I received the following bit of Internet humor from one of the workshop's participants.

"A short history of medicine:

I have an earache.

2000 BCE — Here, eat this root.

1000 C.E. — That root is heathen. Say this prayer.

1850 C.E. — That prayer is superstition. Drink this potion.

1940 C.E. — That potion is snake oil. Swallow this pill.

1985 C.E. — That pill is ineffective. Take this antibiotic.

2000 C.E. — That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root."

This caricature is funny, precisely because — though we may quibble with the historical details — we undoubtedly live in a transitional, even revolutionary, time in the history of medicine. Part of the transition has to do with a new skepticism about Western medicine, with noticing the risks of many Western medical treatments while acknowledging their enormous benefits.

Hence the return to natural and ancient treatments, e.g., the root.

Part of the transition, too, relates to an explosion of new interest in a very old issue: the relationship of spiritual well-being to illness. In fact, prior to teaching my bikkur holim workshop, I had read a book called "Prayer is Good Medicine" by Larry Dossey, a nationally renowned internist who has studied the medical efficacy of prayer.

I had found his work incredibly exciting, and so I spent a particularly enthusiastic session of the training workshop on prayer's role in the healing process. Thus, my "correspondent" updated the e-mail "history" with her own addition: "2000 C.E.: Eat this root — and pray!"

Oddly enough, the cute e-mail message resurfaced for me as a possible clue to decoding Parashat Tazria, unquestionably one of the hardest of all Torah portions to understand. Most of the parashah centers around a treatise on the diagnosis and treatment of mysterious skin diseases. In characteristically minute levitical detail, the Torah gives us an account of how the priest understands the disease, and then guides the sufferer back to health, defined here as taharah, a state of ritual purity.

We certainly don't need Leviticus as a dermatology textbook. For this, Western medicine has much more to offer us. But if we read this parashah with an eye to those questions about health and well-being that even the best of Western medicine cannot completely answer, we may learn something. What does the parashah prescribe?

First, the sufferer comes to the kohen (priest). The kohen sees the disorder in question, diagnoses it and declares the patient either tamei, impure or in "dis-ease," or tahor, pure or in a state of well-being. The kohen orders the patient to remain at home for a specified period of time and prescribes a cleansing process by which the patient may return to full participation in communal life when the disease has run its course.

While Leviticus cannot teach dermatology, it nonetheless speaks eloquently of what people need in order to move from illness to wellness. First, there is the relationship with the kohen, the holy person, the community's spiritual leader. In this view, illness is not simply a personal event. Suffering is placed in the broader context of the patient's relationship to others, to the community, to worldview, values and beliefs.

Strikingly, this is where the Israelite is to turn first.

Then, although we have no information on what happens when the patient and the kohen meet, we are told that the kohen sees the disorder. The kohen offers a diagnosis and prescribes a treatment that includes rest. The text tells us how the patient can, ritually, return to health and to a full role in the life of the community.

What would it mean if we had such rituals today to mark our transitions from illness, from suffering, from isolation and back to the fullness of life?

Thank God we have dermatologists and other medical specialists to guide us through our experiences of illness. Yet perhaps it is time we relearned what Torah has to teach about the care of the whole person in times of illness and suffering.