Haftorah This Week
Welcome to Haftorah This Week, the place where you will find thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on this week's Haftorah.
HAFTARAT TAZRIA
(II Kings 4:42-5:19)
In this Torah reading, we are introduced to the laws of tzara'at, once commonly translated as "leprosy" but now thought to be another condition. The Torah's law has been read as evidence of a kind of primitive medicine, assumed to be based upon observation and experience. Thus those conditions for which the afflicted person is sent from the camp are assumed to be highly contagious and those with which he may remain in the camp have been assumed not to be contagious--or at least not dangerous. It is based upon assumptions such as these ("There must have been some rational reason that some afflicted persons were sent out and others not!")that modern readers have concluded that the Torah could not be speaking here about leprosy. But, as the Haftarah shows, these modern assumptions are dubious, for what the Bible is speaking of in sections such as these is not medicine at all.
In the Haftarah, Naaman, a captain of Aram, comes to the Israelite prophet, Elisha, to be healed from his tzara'at. Elisha directs Naaman to wash himself in the Jordan River seven times, at which time he will be healed. Naaman responds angrily, declaring that if such washing were all that is necessary, there are perfectly good rivers in Aram as well. But, the narrative makes apparent, Naaman has misunderstood the nature of Elisha's advice. Elisha was not offering a "medical" cure, in which case the other rivers would, indeed, have been equally as effective. Elisha's proposed cure was, in effect, arbitrary, for the true and miraculous cure would actually come from God.
In the Bible, illness and recovery are acts of God. If one sins one may be afflicted, but contact with an afflicted person--no matter how severe the disease--is not assumed to carry any danger by itself. The same is true, mutatis mutandis, for healing. It would not be until the rabbis, centuries later, that Jews would conclude "we do not depend on a miracle." Thanks to the rabbis, but not the Bible, a doctor can today be a good Jewish boy or girl.
(David Kraemer)
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