Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Akiva were once walking on the outskirts of Yerushalayim, and there was another person with them. A sick person approached the group, and said: My rabbis, tell me how I may be healed!
They said to him: Formulate medication in such and such a fashion and you will be healed. The person replied: And who afflicted me? They replied: The Holy Blessed One.
The person said: And you inserted yourself into a matter that is not your affair! God afflicted me and you are healing me?! Are you not violating God’s will?? They said to the person: What is your profession? The person replied: I work the land, and behold the sickle is in my hand.
They asked: Who created the vineyard?
The person replied: The Holy Blessed One.
They said: And you inserted yourself into a matter that is not your affair?! God created, and you cut God’s fruit from it??
The person replied: Do you not see the sickle in my hand? If I did not go out and plow it, and cover it, and fertilize it and weed it, not a single thing would grow!
They responded: Fool! Have you never heard that which is written (Psalms 103), “A person’s days are like grass…”. Just as a tree, if one does not weed and fertilize and plow, it does not grow, and if it grows and isn’t watered and fertilized it will not live and it will die – so too the body! The fertilizer is the drug, and types of medicine, and the worker of the land is the doctor.
There is a contradiction at the heart of a verse in this week’s Torah portion. After we triumphantly cross the sea and sing Shirat HaYam the great song of praise, we search for water and complain, and thus begins the great forty-year project of religious education and maturation. Then and there God presents a basic overview of the covenant that will be confirmed at Sinai several weeks later:
וַיֹּ֩אמֶר֩ אִם־שָׁמ֨וֹעַ תִּשְׁמַ֜ע לְק֣וֹל ׀ ה אֱ-לֹהֶ֗יךָ וְהַיָּשָׁ֤ר בְּעֵינָיו֙ תַּעֲשֶׂ֔ה וְהַֽאֲזַנְתָּ֙ לְמִצְוֺתָ֔יו וְשָׁמַרְתָּ֖ כׇּל־חֻקָּ֑יו כׇּֽל־הַמַּחֲלָ֞ה אֲשֶׁר־שַׂ֤מְתִּי בְמִצְרַ֙יִם֙ לֹא־אָשִׂ֣ים עָלֶ֔יךָ כִּ֛י אֲנִ֥י ה רֹפְאֶֽךָ׃ {ס}
“If you will heed the LORD your God diligently, doing what is upright in His sight, giving ear to His commandments and keeping all His laws, then I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians, for I the LORD am your healer.”
If God is our healer – אֲנִ֥י ה רֹפְאֶֽךָ and we take that literally we should have no need for physicians. The Torah contains God’s promise to keep the afflictions of Egypt away from us if we will obey God’s command. Surely that correlation is more effective than anything a doctor could provide. And yet, אֲנִ֥י ה רֹפְאֶֽךָ suggests that healing is a Divine activity of tremendous benefit. Surely we should want to provide that profound good to others.We have a mandate to walk in God’s ways, vehalachtah bidrachav. We know that there are ways that humans can provide healing to others, and indeed medicine has been a part of Jewish history and Jewish tradition as far back as we can trace it.
This tension is replicated throughout Jewish history. The Talmud has statements that condemn doctors and also formalized a financial obligation to pay for the medical care of someone injured רפא ירפא. Rashi, in several locations in his commentary to the Talmud expresses concern that physicians will offer healing in ways that discourage prayer. Ramban, in his Torah commentary, develops a more nuanced opinion. He writes that it would have been better for people to avoid the need for medical interventions and to trust in God for healing and to seek out spiritual guidance whenever we are ill. However, he acknowledges, we don’t live at that level of spiritual refinement and so we are allowed to seek medical interventions. And, over time, generation after generation, the position in favor of seeking medical help gradually became dominant in Jewish thought and Jewish life.
I once spoke to someone who felt guilty that Jewish law and tradition discouraged donating one’s body for scientific research. It does not seem fair, she explained, that Jews should benefit from the advances in medical science without contributing our own bodies to the cause. I told her that Jews have done quite a lot for medical science. On balance I think we contribute far more than our share of the population! And that is a good thing. I think we all have adopted the position that sees אֲנִ֥י ה רֹפְאֶֽךָ as a charge to imitate God’s ways and promote healing of all kind to the best of our ability.
But in recent months I have returned to the skepticism about medical healing that is expressed in some Jewish sources. Yes, medicine has brought us antibiotics and vaccines and MRI machines and have transformed life in wondrous ways. But, medical science is not sufficient and cannot be sufficient to solve even our medical conundrums let alone other questions of existential importance.
Medical science can create a vaccine but cannot convince a skeptical community that it is safe and effective. Medical science can calculate vulnerabilities, but cannot tell us how to prioritize protecting others. Medical science can identify risks, but cannot nurture or spread hope.
Serving as a medical professional, and supporting the work of medical science is a profound and generous way to imitate God’s own calling-card as a healer. But אֲנִ֥י ה רֹפְאֶֽךָ should also remind us to look at the totality of God’s message. God heals, Rashi says, by sharing with us the mitzvot that give rise to a caring and considerate community that promotes healing. That is the reconciliation of the paradox. We imitate God’s healing powers by doing all we can to deploy medical science to heal others. And we rely on God as the true healer, by remembering that a life of Torah and mitzvot, and the values that inculcates within us, are indispensable to living in a truly healthy world.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 