Heal a Heel
Moshiach is the ultimate physician who will restore all of the innocence and holiness we have lost in exile.
The Pedestal
The physician has always held a special position in Judaism. Many of the greatest Talmudic and Medieval Sages were not only scholars of Jewish law, they were also physicians. Judaism always regarded the art and science of healing to be a noble one. And despite the rare criticism voiced by the Talmud against physicians who are arrogant and insensitive (see preceding Essay), the Talmud’s attitude towards health-care individuals is extremely positive. Indeed, they are placed on a pedestal.
Where did Judaism’s view of the medical profession begin?
In this week’s parsha, the Torah speaks of a person who injured another. In addition to all the other payments of damage, pain, embarrassment, lost wages, the perpetrator must also pay the medical bills. This obligation, the Torah phrases by saying, “and heal he shall heal.”
From the repetition of the word “heal” the Talmud derives: “from here license was granted to the physician to heal.”
Why would we need a license to heal?
Rashi in his classic commentary on the Talmud explains that if not for the Torah’s granting of a right and license to heal, one would have thought that it would be forbidden to intervene in G-d’s workings. If G-d caused the illness, one might have thought, perhaps only G-d has the right to cure it. To dispel this notion, the Torah emphatically states and repeats, “and heal he shall heal,” we do have a right to heal.
In yet another discussion, the Talmud states that it is an obligation (not merely a right) to rescue a person from danger. Just as one is Biblically obligated to return a lost object to its rightful owner, so too, one is obligated to return one’s lost health to its rightful owner. Maimonides extends this to the practice of medicine. A physician not only has the right and license to heal, he has an outright obligation to do so.
A question has been raised. Once the Torah makes healing an obligation, isn’t it obvious that one has the right to heal? One cannot be required to do something he doesn’t have the license to do.
One answer is that there are two types of illness. One that is debilitating, an organ or body part is injured, or even life threatening. Without intervention, the person’s condition will not improve.
And there is another type of medical intervention that deals with an elective procedure, to alleviate some minor condition. While one has the right and license to provide medical assistance, even for such a minor procedure, one is duty bound to restore the health of a person who suffers from a more serious ailment and who is in need of emergency, non-elective treatment.
All of the above can be applied to each and every one of us, even if we have not pursued a career in the medical profession.
Whenever we see another individual who is need of spiritual guidance because he or she is a lost soul, we have an obligation to return his or her soul to that individual. We cannot stand by idly while one loses or doesn’t even know they have a spiritual and Jewish heritage.
Drowning, Mauled and Pursued
The Talmud (Sanhedrin 73a) gives three examples where the principle of restoring life applies: One who is drowning; one who is being mauled by an animal and one who is being pursued by armed bandits.
On a spiritual plane, this refers to those who are in danger of losing their Jewish and spiritual identity because they are “drowning” in the materialistic culture.
Alternatively, one can be in spiritual danger because the animal and bestial nature we all possess is mauling his Divine soul, losing all their soul’s sensitivity. Or, as is often the case, “armed bandits,” unscrupulous and immoral people threaten to indoctrinate others into a life of immorality devoid of Jewish values and practices.
In any of these dire circumstances, one does not just have a right to intervene, it is an outright obligation. If we must return a paltry sum of money to the one who has lost it, how much more so that we are obligated to return a system of values and a treasured heritage that they may have lost or are even unaware of.
Conversely, there are people who are in basically good spiritual shape. But they may still be in need of a spiritual boost. In relative terms we may also call them “sick,” because they are lacking some measure of health. However, because there is no emergency, the treatment of such people is only optional. One does not have an obligation to stop everything and treat this individual. And if there are two people, one has the emergency situation and one who seeks spiritual perfection, it is clear that the other person’s emergency takes precedence over one’s own desire to grow in his or her spiritual life.
Three Classes of Jews
Generally speaking, the Chassidic approach shuns the labeling of Jews the way we usually divide them into three or more denominations. A label is divisive and misleading. We are told, time and again, A Jew is a Jew is a Jew! No Jew is more a Jew and no Jew is less a Jew; the differences are about one’s potential abilities to live Jewishly and the degree to which they actualize their potential. And since only G-d can judge these matters, we can only judge people’s behavior not their potentials, and motives. Neither can we know all there is to know about a person to make a fair judgment.
Based on the above, if we had to divide all of Jewry into different categories I would divide it this way:
There are three types of Jews: Those who know that they have a treasure, access it and enjoy it. There are those who are aware of the existence of a treasure in their possession, but for whatever reason never or rarely avail themselves of it. And a third category includes those for whom the existence of the treasure eludes them entirely. They have no clue as to what treasures a Jew possesses.
The only reason it is important for us to classify and categorize Jews into these three groups is for us to determine what our obligation may be vis-à-vis these three levels. The degree to which we must help the other is commensurate with the degree of their loss. Our obligation to help restore that which our fellow Jew may have lost devolves primarily on the one who does not even know of the existence of the treasure or its true value. They ought to be the primary goal of our efforts to help others spiritually just as we would triage patients and work on saving the ones who are in the greatest of danger.
A story is told of a Chabad follower who had a “debate” with a Chassidic leader who believed in the “insular” approach; staying within one’s own enclave and catering to the spiritual needs of the insular community. This insular Chassidic leader argued his case by employing the metaphor of a burning building. “Would you expend your efforts to save the furniture that has already been damaged, or would you attempt to salvage the furniture that is still undamaged?”
To this the Chabad follower responded: “Your analogy is good for furniture, but when we deal with human lives, we attempt to save those who are injured and in greatest peril before we save those who can walk out on their own two feet…”
Moshiach: Treatment for All Forms of Illness
In the teachings of Kabbalah we are told that the word Choleh-sick has the numerical value of 49. This alludes to the person who has attained 49 levels of spiritual growth out of the total number of fifty. Yet this person craves to reach the pinnacle and considers himself to be sick and demands “medical” attention.
Chassidic literature refers to the situation we are in during the period of exile. Exile has given us both forms of spiritual maladies. We have people who are genuinely and direly sick, who need immediate attention and intervention. And there are people, “lofty souls” who crave to get out of the stifling environment of exile, where they cannot attain the fiftieth transcendent level of spiritual growth.
Moshiach is the antidote for both “medical” problems. While Moshiach will remove the spiritual constraints that do not allow us to reach the fiftieth level of spirituality, first and foremost, Moshiach is endowed with the capacity to heal the more serious spiritual problems.
The Heels of Moshiach
Indeed, this period—the last days of exile—are referred to in the Talmud as “the heels of Moshiach.”
One interpretation of that phrase is that our generation—notwithstanding many of its virtues that make us unique—is the lowest and lowliest of all of the preceding generations in terms of the treasure it possesses. We are at the very bottom or “heel” of Jewish history. And it is precisely the “heels” of society and of history that demand medical attention before everyone else. Moshiach is the healer G-d sends to heal all of us but especially the “heels” (pun intended).
Exile is when we experienced the loss of many of our national and individual treasures:
We lost the Holy Temple and the atmosphere of G-dly light that pervaded the entire Land of Israel that emanated from the Temple.
We lost our knowledge of parts of Torah.
We lost our ability to connect to G-d with so many of the Mitzvos that were applicable in the days of Temple.
And we lost millions of precious souls in the Holocaust as well as throughout Jewish history etc. etc.
If we have a commandment to restore a lost article to its rightful owner, and if we are told that G-d “observes” His own commandments, it follows then that the Messianic Age is when G- d makes good on His “obligation” as it were, and restores all of the above to us.
He rebuilds the Holy Temple and the many Mitzvos that are associated with it, reveals even the heretofore secret teachings of Torah, and brings the dead back to life in the process known as Techiyas Hameitim-the Resurrection of the Dead, the belief in which Maimonides considers to be the last of the Thirteen Principles of Faith.
From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Mishpatim by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
