Parashat Tazria 5784

One of my rabbis used to tell a story about a time when his father was on death’s doorstep. He had been 30 days in a coma suffering from a rare blood infection. The doctor comes into the room and says, “I don’t think he’s going to make it. There is one more drug we can try, but it’s so strong— if it doesn’t help him, it could kill him.” He told my rabbi the name of the drug. “Oh!,” said my rabbi, “that is the same drug that I was given 40 years ago when I was sick with Typhoid fever. It saved my life.” “Well,” the doctor replied,” if it helped you, then maybe it would help your father. What do you think?” And from the hospital bed, in a hoarse voice that had not been heard for a month, his father croaked, “he’s not a doctor!”

This story was generally told as the punch line to my rabbi explaining how while his father was proud of him becoming a rabbi, he had probably wished that he had become a doctor instead. And the irony that my rabbi did indeed have some medical, and even life-saving, knowledge—that his father came out of his coma to refute—was more than hilarious.

And so in this week’s parashah, Tazria, when questions of bodily swellings and rashes, discolored flesh or leprosy are brought to the priest for examination, I had to giggle. The parallel called out to me. “He’s not a doctor!,” I thought. I can imagine the kohein in question, or anyone for that matter, observing someone with discolored flesh or a swollen infection or eruptions and responding with a public or private, “Yuch.” I can even understand how that might elicit a judgment of impurity. But how is it that all of a sudden the kohein is qualified to make medical diagnoses? He’s not a doctor!

Or is he?

What, exactly is the priest’s function in the event of illness?

How, exactly, is the priest (priests, actually—Aaron’s sons, as well) medically qualified to administer the medical arts?

Well, we know that in the case of any number of ailments, the process might look like this:

1.       Report the “affection” (nega) to the priest. [Lev. 13:2]

2.       Examine the affected person and the affection. [Lev.13:3]

3.       Diagnose the affection. [Lev. 13:3]

4.       If affection does not rise to the level of impurity, isolate the affected person for seven days. [Lev. 13:4]

5.       After seven days, re-examine. [Lev. 13:5]

6.       If unchanged, continue isolation for another seven days. [Lev. 13:5]

7.       Re-examine. [Lev. 13:6]

8.       If affection had faded, pronounce “pure.” [Lev. 13:6]

9.       If affection has spread after “pure” pronouncement, call the priest! [Lev. 13:7]

10.    Re-examine. [Lev. 13:8]

11.    If affection has spread, priest pronounces, “impure—leprosy.” [Lev. 13:8]

The list of “affections” goes on—inflammations, burns, psoriasis—the priests could conceivably be seeing patients all day!

And so my theory that they might be doctors is supported by…well, pretty much, no one.

In his commentary of The Five Books of Moses, regarding Leviticus 13, Everett Fox argues, “Notable in this chapter is the role of the priest, who functions neither as medicine man nor as doctor, but simply as a religious official whose duty it is to check the afflicted person for signs of what is considered ritually polluting, and to act accordingly.”

True, enough. The priests are really acting here in a diagnostic role and not in the role of doctor or healer. Their diagnosis is never “healed!” or “not healed!,” but rather, limited to “pure!” or “impure!” Healing does not seem to be the priest’s job; identifying purity or impurity, is. In fact, we’re told in Exodus 15:26 “…I יהוה am your healer.” Healing, apparently, is G*d’s job.

As an intermediary, however, the priest’s assessments and subsequent sacrificial supplications to יהוה do seem to be a necessary link to alert the Divine Healer that healing is needed. And isn’t that assessment—checking the afflicted person and acting accordingly—part and parcel of a doctor’s duties? In the next parashah, Metzorah (often linked with Tazria on a non-leap year), prescribed sacrifices sound like a modern day prescription to me: “take two turtledoves…and call me in the morning?” [Lev. 15:14] (OK, I’m paraphrasing, but it’s close!) The modern Hippocractic Oath is full of instructions which call for a doctor to administer respect and privacy and to “prevent disease” whenever possible. And like the priests, a doctor’s Oath includes that “above all, [a doctor] must not play at G*d.”

The Hippocratic Oath ends with a kind of prayer: “If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.”

My rabbi is definitely not a doctor. But in a moment of crisis and clarity, his knowledge of medicinal arts, or possibly his prayer to the Divine, helped diagnose and heal his father. The ancient Israelite priests may not have been doctors either, but I would argue that if it looks like a doctor and quacks like a doctor…

I think that those priests, in their role as intermediary to the Divine, certainly knew enough not to play at G*d and, at the same time, to understand that they were doing G*d’s work.

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Cantor Robin Anne Joseph (’96) teaches cantillation as part of the faculty at AJR. A musician and composer, Robin’s liturgical and folk-rock compositions can be found through Transcontinental Music Publications and OySongs and sung at a synagogues world-wide. Past-president of ARC (the Association of Rabbis and Cantors), past-president of the Women Cantors’ Network, and the current president of Kol Hazzanim—the Westchester Community of Cantors, Robin has served the congregation of Temple Beth Shalom in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY for the last 42 years.