Shabbos 17
“All movable objects transmit impurity.”
All this talk of the eighteen decrees of impurity is difficult to read devoid of the filter of what we are living through today as a global community. There are some interesting items in today’s reading such as the lifting of a sword in the study hall during one of Shammai’s and Hillel’s infamous debates and the decree that all gentiles are “zav” so that a “Jewish boy should not be accustomed to be with a gentile in homosexual relations.” (And there it is again – a troubling homophobic passage that resonates with the discussion in Berakhot 43 that equates the wearing of scent with the accusation of homosexual acts.)
What resonates today for me, putting aside the heated debate between Shammai and Hillel, is this: “All movable objects transmit impurity.” I am envisioning our entire global population transmitting this frightening coronavirus from one person to another until we are all infected and some of us will die (the estimate is one million people). I live in New York City which has become the epicenter of this disease after it has flowed through China and Italy. The density in this city and the potential for mass infection is frightening.
Those of us that are not grappling with the disease ourselves, are dealing with the anxiety of a slow-moving train that is heading straight for us and we are so thick with immobility that we can’t get out of the way. Jobs are lost, the economy is wrecked, people are isolated within their homes, hospitals are already overwhelmed, and the infectious train continues to push through. It’s hard not to see our present circumstances in the movable objects that are transmitting impurity wherever they go. It appears that the best solution modern medicine has to offer to us today is isolation and social distancing.
Social distancing also appears in the Talmud (Berakhot 52) as a solution for dealing with leprosy, which must have been the frightening infectious disease of its day. If someone was suspected of leprosy, he would be isolated for two weeks during which period he would be observed by a Priest. After the two-week period, if there was no evidence of acceleration of symptoms, he would be allowed to reenter society. If the symptoms deteriorated during this time the Priest made the decision to move the afflicted out of the community. Today, we are all being placed into isolation for a period most likely much greater than two weeks. We are being asked to stay home in order to “flatten the curve” and we will do it. But what we are being offered as a defense against this encroaching disease is not much more advanced than what was practiced 2,000 years ago.
The Talmud reminds us: “whoever saves a single life, saves the whole world.” The world needs saving right now and we can all do our part.