Rabbi Philip Weintraub
Congregation Agudas Israel
4/29/17
Twenty years ago, I stood in front of Congregation Beth Shalom in Dunwoody, GA, with family and friends. I read from the Torah, led the services, and shared words of Torah. I suppose one might say not much has changed in the last twenty years! Standing on that bimah I spoke about Parshat Tazria, I still have not found my bar mitzvah speech. I wonder if I spoke to the dermatologists in the audience or focused on the rabbinic relation to motzi shem ra, to evil speech. I had two powerful experience this week relating to the parsha, that I would like to share with you all.
First is related to the parsha directly. I read from my friend and colleague, Rabbi Noah Farkas. He wrote in the LA Jewish Journal about how this parsha teaches empathy. (http://jewishjournal.com/culture/religion/torah_portion/218359/parshat-tazria-metzora-burden-gift-empathy/) He opened with a necessary theological apology. SPeaking of this rabbinic connection between behavior and illness, he wrote of how so many feel guilt, that they somehow deserve their illness, and argued that we must break this link. “When we graft morality too heavily onto purity and wellness, we cause more suffering while ignoring the sanctity of the sick. To be unclean is not to be immoral — ever.” When I stand in a hospital room, I am reminded of this over and over again. Illness comes to young and old, to innocent and guilty, to good and not so good people. While there are some illnesses that are a consequence of past choices, they are still not punishment for sins in other parts of our life. We may CHOOSE to try to gain strength from the suffering, but it does not mean the suffering is a consequence of our actions. Rabbi Farkas has a Jewish bio-medical ethics group with doctors and wrote of the parallels between our modern doctors and the priests of old. He reminds us that empathy is a necessity for medical care. “After the priest sees them and welcomes them back to the community, a sacrificial rite is performed. The patient is brought to the literal center of the community and anointed in the same manner with the same rituals that anoint the High Priest over the people. Both priest and patient are bound together in this ritual of mutuality.” I think that as mechanized and technologicized (I may have made up that word) as medicine has become, the human connection is essential. Some medical schools even have mock patient scenarios as part of their interviews to weed out potential doctors who have absolutely no bedside manner!
Dovetailing with those words of Torah, were words I heard on Thursday at the Rabbinical Assembly’s Executive Council meeting. I went perhaps unethusiastically. How could I miss our annual meeting? How could I be away from our community to think about the needs of the RA. What is the purpose of the RA for me? Yet after just a few hours, I saw great holiness. I heard powerful Torah. I saw an organization that is looking carefully at its past and future. Like our congregation, the RA is over 100 years old. Like us, it has people that are more and less connected, wondering about what comes next.
Over the two days I was at the Pearlstone Retreat Center (http://pearlstonecenter.org), we carefully considered a proposal from a Texan rabbi. We went through a huge agenda and made significant progress. We even changed our meeting structure for the future. Rather than going through a standard agenda, our future meetings will only have action items. If it is just a report, we will read it before the meeting. Those reports will include follow-ups to ensure that previous items are dealt with. This is called a consent agenda--we consent that we can group those reports into one agenda item and quickly move on to the things that matter! The second day was follow-up on the RA’s strategic plan. The last two years the board and another 30-60 rabbis have been heavily involved in considering what the RA has been successful at and what is essential for its future. The biggest change may seem small, but has been to change the language. Instead of saying THE RA as I just did, it is calling it OUR RA. When we speak of OUR RA, we are claiming ownership. We remind ourselves and those around us that we are a part of that organization. How would that work for us? We might speak of OUR shul instead of THE shul. Our Agudas Israel instead of just CAI. Our home instead of just Kol.
Returning the parsha, I want to share a verse that was mentioned in a Dvar Torah yesterday. Vayikra 13:3 says:
וְרָאָ֣ה הַכֹּהֵ֣ן אֶת־הַנֶּ֣גַע בְּעֽוֹר־הַ֠בָּשָׂר וְשֵׂעָ֨ר בַּנֶּ֜גַע הָפַ֣ךְ ׀ לָבָ֗ן וּמַרְאֵ֤ה הַנֶּ֙גַע֙ עָמֹק֙ מֵע֣וֹר בְּשָׂר֔וֹ נֶ֥גַע צָרַ֖עַת ה֑וּא וְרָאָ֥הוּ הַכֹּהֵ֖ן וְטִמֵּ֥א אֹתֽוֹ.
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׃The priest shall examine the affection on the skin of his body: if hair in the affected patch has turned white and the affection appears to be deeper than the skin of his body, it is a leprous affection; when the priest sees it, he shall pronounce him unclean
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As my colleagues noted, it is strange that the priest seems to examine or look at the person or irritation twice. The question is the focus of the second look. Before declaring the person clean or unclean, the priest must look at the WHOLE person. Like every hospital and medical practice claims today, they must not just look at the illness, but the entire person. Doctors, nurses and our ancient priests recognize that the illness is not in isolation. It is not just a skin infection. It is on a human being. That person has needs, wants, hopes, dreams. That person lives in their economic, social, religious context. If the doctor sees only the irritation, she cannot do her job.
This is a major challenge of the economics of medicine today, when doctors are required by their employers to see far too many patients. They have no time to be patient and to do their job well are often forced to work extra unpaid hours to deal with their paperwork and computers. While I cannot claim to have a solution for that issue, our Torah reminds us that it is a problem! So as I declare the importance of empathy FROM the medical professions, let us also have have empathy FOR the medical professions. They, too, are people who must have lives and possibilities.
Shabbat Shalom!
