As we speed towards Yom Kippur, we encounter the poetic parsha of Ha’azinu. It is a fire and brimstone poem, in which God threatens his people with all kinds of misfortunes because they abandoned his teachings:
דברים 32:15
וַיִּשְׁמַ֤ן יְשֻׁרוּן֙ וַיִּבְעָ֔ט שָׁמַ֖נְתָּ עָבִ֣יתָ כָּשִׂ֑יתָ וַיִּטֹּשׁ֙ אֱל֣וֹהַּ עָשָׂ֔הוּ וַיְנַבֵּ֖ל צ֥וּר יְשֻׁעָתֽוֹ׃
So Jeshurun [i.e. Israel] grew fat and kicked—
You grew fat and gross and coarse—
They forsook the God who made them
And spurned the Rock of their support.
It is within this context that we read the verse on which we will focus our attention:
32:25 דברים
מִחוּץ֙ תְּשַׁכֶּל־חֶ֔רֶב וּמֵחֲדָרִ֖ים אֵימָ֑ה גַּם־בָּחוּר֙ גַּם־בְּתוּלָ֔ה יוֹנֵ֖ק עִם־אִ֥ישׁ שֵׂיבָֽה׃
The sword shall deal death without,
As shall the terror within,
To youth and maiden alike,
The suckling as well as the aged.
The rabbis of the Talmud used this verse as a proof text for al ruling about behavior during a pandemic:
בבא קמא ס,ב
תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: דֶּבֶר בָּעִיר – כַּנֵּס רַגְלֶיךָ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״וְאַתֶּם לֹא תֵצְאוּ אִישׁ מִפֶּתַח בֵּיתוֹ עַד בֹּקֶר״. וְאוֹמֵר: ״לֵךְ עַמִּי בֹּא בַחֲדָרֶיךָ, וּסְגוֹר דְּלָתְךָ בַּעֲדֶךָ״. וְאוֹמֵר: ״מִחוּץ תְּשַׁכֶּל חֶרֶב, וּמֵחֲדָרִים אֵימָה״.
The Sages taught: If there is plague in the city, gather your feet, [i.e., limit the time you spend out of the house,] as it is stated in the verse: “And none of you shall go out of the opening of his house until the morning” (Exodus 12:22). And it says in another verse: “Come, my people, enter into your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourself for a little moment, until the anger has passed by” (Isaiah 26:20). And it says: “Outside the sword will bereave, and in the chambers terror” (Deuteronomy 32:25).
STAY Home
The Talmud has brought three proof-texts that support their advice to stay indoors during a pandemic. In the opening words of this important passage, the Talmud reverses what came to be the standard medical practice of isolating the sick. Instead, it isolated the healthy. Of course, the effect is the same: there is no contact between those who are ill and those who are well, but since there are usually many more healthy people than there are sick, the effort and social disruption of isolation of the former will be much greater.This talmudic intervention is also one that is now all too familiar to us from the widespread lockdowns and stay-at-home orders that began in 2020 during the COVID- 19 pandemic.
…Or don’t stay home
The talmudic advice to stay at home during an epidemic outbreak was ignored by later commentators and those who wrote the halakhic codes of Jewish law. commentators on the Talmud added their own rulings about social isolation during a pandemic. The Polish exegete Rabbi Shmuel Eidels known by his acronym as Maharsha (1555– 1631) wrote that the rabbis of the Talmud could not have been suggesting that one should not flee from the locus of a pandemic.
This is certainly not the case, because if there is an outbreak of plague in a town it is best to leave and flee for one’s life. Rather, the intent of the Talmud is that if one cannot flee, then do not go outside into the streets.
The Maharsha’s ruling was precicely the opposite of that in Bava Kamma.
In true talmudic fashion, this comment of the Maharsha was itself commented on by a later rabbi, Yosef Hayyim from Baghdad (1835– 1909) who is better known by the title of his major work on Jewish law, Ben Ish Hai. In his commentary on the Talmud, he wrote that
the words of the Maharsha are only applicable to [bubonic] plague. But in the case of cholera, even when arrangements could be made to care for a sick person at home, it is best to flee the city. Because cholera also frightens a person, and he can be consumed by the illness on account of this fear . . . Therefore it is best to flee far away so that his ears cannot hear and his eyes cannot see the sickness that rules over everyone, lest he be overtaken with fear, and he himself be taken, God forbid.
Several other medieval commentators ruled like Maharsha. They include Rabbi Ya’akov ben Moshe Moellin (c. 1365– 1427) who is better known by his acronym Maharil; the Polish Rabbi Shlomo Luria (1510–1573), better known as Maharshal, (who descended from a family line that it was claimed could be traced back to Rashi, and whose mother was herself a Talmudist of some repute); The Sefer Hasidim (The Book of the Pious), a collection of folk stories, customs, and ethical adjurations that originated in the German Jewish community around Regensberg in the thirteenth century; and the Polish Rabbi Moshe Isserles (1530– 1572), known as Rema. Without doubt the work of his that had the greatest influence on Ashkenazi Jewry was his gloss on the Shulhan Arukh, which had been written by a Sephardic Jew, Joseph Caro (d. 1575). Isserles’ gloss is the authoritative reference work for Ashkenazi Jews. Less well known is the fact that as a young man, the Rema Isserles had himself fled from a plague. Here is his description of what had happened.
I Moshe, (son of my father the honorable benefactor and leader Israel, may he live long) called Isserles from Krakow, was exiled having left our city in [5] 316 [= 1556] because of the polluted air (may it not befall us). We were sojourners in a land that was not ours in the city of Shidlov which has neither figs nor vines and there is barely any water to drink. . . we could not celebrate [the minor festival of] Purim with the usual joy and happiness. In order to remove the sadness and dejection I resolved to stand and take pride in my creativity, for my wisdom helped me . . . and so I decided to investigate and expound on the meaning of the Megillah [The Book of Esther].
Minghag becomes normative law
In what he described as a self- imposed exile, Isserles wrote a book called Mehir Yayyin [The Cost of Wine] which was published some three years later in 1559.This experience surely played a part when he wrote a legal commentary called Darkhei Moshe [The Paths of Moses]. He cited Maharil, of course, but then quoted a rather unexpected source. It was from the Zohar, the central mystical text of the kabbalah, which had been printed for the very first time in 1558, the year before Isserles fled from the epidemic in Krakow.
. . . It is likewise written in Zohar, Parashat Vayera Elav, that one should flee the city. And even though the Talmud states, “If there is plague in the city, gather your feet” [i.e., limit the time you spend out of the house,] it seems to me that fleeing is certainly better, but if one can go inside and not leave [he need not flee]. If this is not possible, he is required to flee. And the custom of Israel is Torah [i.e., this custom is now normative law].
Martin Luther and Muslim Law on Fleeing
To put the writings of Moshe Isserles, Maharil and Maharshah into context, we should pause to consider the work of the German priest Martin Luther (1483–1546). It is of course well known that Luther was, even by the standard of his own day, virulently anti- Semitic. However, his thoughts on fleeing from a pandemic allow a comparison across very two religious traditions.
In the summer of 1527, bubonic plague struck northern Germany and despite an order to leave, Luther stayed to minister to the sick. He then published a pamphlet titled On Whether One Has To Flee Death [Ob man fur dem sterben fliehen muge], which proved to be very popular; it was published in four separate editions in 1527 alone, and there were a further eleven editions over the next several decades. Luther adopted a position that was quite different from the Jewish responsa of the time, for he wrote that not all who flee from a pandemic acted correctly. Only some had. The decision depended both on who the person was and the degree of faith they possessed. “Christ does not want his weak ones to be abandoned,” he wrote, citing the New Testament.Luther made it clear that it was forbidden to flee if the goal was disobedience to God’s word or command. But if the motive was to avoid infection, some leaders might be able to flee if others remained to minister and to keep social order. Otherwise, abandoning the local community [Gemeinda] was a great sin. Luther cited the biblical story of Abraham “who feared death and escaped it [furcht er den Tod und floch yhn] through pretending Sarah was his sister.
Muslims, or at least Ottoman Muslims, also adopted a theological stand in which fleeing from a plague was acceptable. It is still a point of academic debate as to how much Muslim law permitted these actions. But regardless of the finer points of Muslim law, during the 1604 outbreak of plague in Constantinople, the Muftis fled, like everyone else.
Why Bother to flee?
What lay at the core of these rulings, which ever way they went, was the belief that pandemics are a divine response to human sin. If falling ill was a punishment, then what sense did it make to flee, as if by doing so, God could no-longer find you and strike you with bubonic plague or diphtheria?
This is the central message of the Book of Jonah that we read in the afternoon of Yom Kippur. There is no escaping God’s presence, and no escaping his justice. On this Shabbat Shuva, what better message could there be?
