The Obligation to Heal — R' Steven Philp

Today's episode is a Shabbat Replay of our service on April 18th when Rabbi Steven gave a sermon on our tradition's treatment of those with so-called leprosy. At first glance, the Torah's attitude toward people with skin disease is exclusionary, but commentator have found deep wisdom about rest and healing under the epidermis.

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

This sermon was delivered at our April 18th service. You can listen to this drash on Contact Chai Podcast or watch it on our YouTube channel.
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Rabbi Brad Artson (a wonderful scholar that both R’Lizzi and I count among our teachers) describes Judaism as a “corporeal religion.” It does not see the body as something we must escape or subdue, but a sacred vessel – one that should be cared for, listened to, and treated kindly. Two thousand years ago, the sage Hillel compared caring for our bodies to how someone might maintain a statue of a monarch. “Bathing the body is an obligation,” he teaches, “Because we are created in the image of God, who is the ultimate sovereign.” And whether you ascribe it to God, or to evolutionary biology, our tradition acknowledges the complex miracle of our existence. There is a blessing, traditionally said after going to the bathroom, that states: “Blessed is the one who formed humankind with many openings and many closings. It is clear and it is known that if that which should be open was closed or that which should be closed was open – it would be impossible to survive.” We know this statement is true, some of us painfully so, because the body does not always work the way it is supposed to.

So what happens when the body does not function the way it should, when something that should be open is closed or something that should be closed is open? We open the Torah this week to a section that addresses this exact question – and while much maligned, especially when assigned to a b’mitzvah (yasher koach, Elsa), there is wisdom in these texts about how we navigate a world that strains our bodies and challenges our resilience.

A large portion of this text is concerned with the metzorah, or leper. It should be noted from the outset that “leper” is probably not the best translation of metzorah. But Rabbi David Kasher points out that this rendering, inherited from the King James Bible, gives us a “familiar historical point of comparison,” because like leprosy – whatever this condition was, it was something scary, potentially contagious, and not entirely understood by those who encountered it. And so the Torah prescribes what should be done when the metzorah is diagnosed by the priest: the person rends their clothes, they leave their hair disheveled, they place a covering over their mouths, and they walk from their home to the edge of the camp shouting “Tamei, tamei – impure, impure.” And there they stay, living outside of the community for as long as the disease is active.

https://youtu.be/teNVCvST-O0

The priest will visit the metzorah periodically, and once symptoms of the disease are no longer visible, he begins a mysterious ritual to reintegrate them into the camp (unfortunately at this time, priests were always male). The priest takes two birds, slaughtering one over an earthen vessel filled with fresh water. He takes the second bird, still alive, and dips it – together with cedar wood, some crimson stuff, and hyssop – in the vessel and sprinkles the mixture seven times over the metzorah. The metzorah then shaves all their hair, washes their clothes, and bathes in clean water before waiting an additional seven days – at which point, they are pronounced tahor, or pure. The living bird is released into the wilderness, possibly carrying the illness (and whatever caused it) with them.

Read through a critical lens, there is an apparent cruelty to this process – taking the metzorah from their home, displaying their shame to everyone in the camp, and then isolating them until they are well again. But this reading betrays our own understanding of illness as something we should hide, equating brokenness of the body to a rupture within the soul. The poet and mortician Thomas Lynch writes that the moral lens through which we view illness is a consequence of sanitization. Not so long ago, people were born, got injured, got sick, and died in our homes. We were intimately familiar with how the body changes (and sometimes fails) over time. But with the advent of modern medicine, and with it modern medical facilities, much of this has been moved – and for good reason – to hospitals. The problem is that disease and death now happen behind closed doors. In privatizing illness, we’ve learned the wrong lesson: that disease is a private matter, something to be kept out of the public eye. It is something embarrassing, it is shameful, it is “impure.”

But that’s also a problem: how we translate “pure” and “impure.” The terms tahor and tamei, as they appear in the Torah, have no moral valence. They are not the equivalent of “good” and “bad.” What they indicate is our ability (or inability) to participate in the ritual life of the mishkan, the place in the center of the camp where our ancestors interfaced with God through sacrifice and song. As one of my professors put it, purity is “god stuff”: the parts of the world, and the parts of ourselves, most like the divine – transcendent and eternal. On the other hand, impurity is “life stuff”: that is, all the things that come from being alive. Menstrual blood, seminal emissions, all the fluids of childbirth. Rashes, discharges, pus, and phlegm. Even death, and dead bodies. None of these things are bad. They’re just the stuff that is not like god, the aspects of human life connected to our mortality. As difficult and disappointing as they sometimes may be, our limitations as physical beings are not indicative of moral failing – it’s who we are, just as sacred and just as special as our souls. And so when our bodies are in need of attention, our tradition teaches, we stop what we are doing and care for them.

I want to reread the procedure of the metzorah with this in mind. The priest hears that someone is sick. He visits them in their home, offering his presence as much as his expertise. It becomes clear that they need some time to heal. And so the metzorah is declared impure; they are no longer obligated to participate in communal life, centered at the mishkan, but become solely responsible for taking care of their bodies. They leave their tent and walk through the camp. Their rent clothes and disheveled hair are not marks of shame, but a reminder – in the words of Dr. Rachel Anisfeld – that their energy should not be spent on satisfying social conventions, but doing what their body needs them to do (even if it means letting go of all that is expected of them). They walk through the camp, shouting tamei, tamei, and people emerge from their tents – loved ones, neighbors, strangers – to witness them. I imagine them saying, “Get better soon!” or “I’ll watch the dog while you’re away” or “Don’t worry, I’ll water the plants and check the mail.” And soon the metzorah finds themselves outside of the camp, perhaps alone but maybe with other folks who are in the process of healing. And they stay there, resting and drinking lots of fluids and taking deep breaths of the clean and wild air. The priest visits regularly, to make sure everyone has what they need – and when it’s time to come back into the camp, to reassume their roles and responsibilities, he leads the metzorah through a ritual that marks the end of their infirmity and reentry into communal life.

When we are sick, when our bodies are bent or broken, the Torah tells us that it is not only right and good to step away from life as usual – but a necessary, even sacred, obligation. By excusing the metzorah from communal life, our tradition places an exclamation point on the wisdom offered by Hillel: that our physical selves are precious, perhaps more precious than we realize, and should be treated as such. This isn’t always easy. I was raised in a household where the only time I was allowed to stay home from school was if I had a fever or was actively throwing up. I know I’m not the only one. But the terrible years of COVID, whose effects we still feel today, taught us that dismissing or downplaying illness is not only bad for our health – but dangerous for others. Caring for ourselves is not selfish. Often it is the best thing we can do for others. Self-care is both a personal necessity and a social responsibility.

The world is a hard place, especially right now. It taxes our bodies, even when we’re not grappling with disease or other challenges to our physical wellbeing. And so many of us are doing just that, all the time, trying to navigate spaces (both literal and metaphorical) that are not designed for people with chronic illness or disability. As if that isn’t enough, we live at a time that challenges our resilience and makes it hard to feel hopeful. I see it in so many of you, as we sit down over coffee and catch up on what’s been going on: a sense of resignation and despair, always worrying what bad news tomorrow will bring. This, alongside the pain that accumulates over the course of any life, can be overwhelming. Our hearts, although pliant and capacious, were never meant to hold this much tragedy.

And so when we have hit that breaking point – it’s okay to take a break. Like the metzorah leaving the camp, there are moments when we need to step away from everything to give ourselves the time and space to heal. It is a mitzvah, in both the sense of good deed and sacred obligation. And as with most mitzvot we don’t do it alone, but with each other’s support – the entire community coming out to wish us well along the way. This requires being honest, in ways that we are often not raised to do, telling those around us when we’ve reached capacity – and having the courage and humility to ask for help, so that we can dwell outside the camp for a bit. We don’t stay there forever. But we stay long enough, so that when we come back we’re a little more rested, a little more resilient, and a little more capable of facing the challenges that lie ahead of us. This is ancient wisdom, but needed today more than ever. And using it is going to take rewriting the script, looking at illness (whether of the body, mind, or spirit) through the lens of compassion rather than eyes clouded by judgement.

So what do we do, when we take some time for ourselves? The metzorah is described as dwelling outside the camp badad, alone. The Hasidic teacher Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav developed a practice he called hitbodedut, or self-imposed solitude (this word comes from the same root as badad). When he was feeling overwhelmed by the world, Reb Nachman would go walking in the woods alone and speak freely about what was on his heart. The key to hitbodedut, he taught, was setting aside judgement. You could talk about what was ailing you. You could talk about conflicts you hoped to resolve. You could talk about what happened to you that day. If you were having a hard time articulating your thoughts, you could talk about that. Even if all you can do is say “I don’t know what to say” over and over again, then do that. The purpose of hitbodedut is to allow yourself to be just as you are – no more, no less – and in being yourself, without demand or expectation, realize that who you are in that moment is enough.

We live in a world that tells us that we are not enough. And it’s easy to start believing that message, when we feel powerless to overcome the challenges in our lives – much less change the course of history. But there is power in refusing this lesson, and treating our bodies and our hearts as something special, sacred, and worth caring about – things that deserve our time and attention, especially when they are under strain. The rabbis describe the messiah, this mythic figure who will one day bring about universal redemption, as sitting among the metzorah dwelling outside the camp. Taking time for yourself is not just good for you, but I believe it can be redemptive – in how we show up for ourselves, in how we show up for our loved ones, and in how we show up for the world. Imagine what could happen if we all took the time we needed to heal.