For some time now — and more particularly as patients report difficulty in obtaining an appointment at the local GP surgery — the rabbinate is sometimes considered the fourth emergency service without charge at the point of delivery. Does this represent a return to the biblical model of priesthood?
Parashat Tazria prescribes the role of the priest in diagnosing and ritually purifying sufferers of skin complaints, known in biblical Hebrew as tzara’at. The priest in biblical Israel was a source of both religious and medical authority, who was responsible for diagnosing (but not treating) the ailment and for overseeing the reintegration of the sufferer into the community.
Although often translated as “leprosy”, tzara’at, appears to designate a variety of skin ailments concerning which the priestly procedure involved identification and, in some cases, isolation and most dramatically a requirement for the sufferer to declare “Impure, impure!” When the disease had abated, the priest would complete a ritual not to claim credit in a magical way for healing but as part of the rehabilitation of the patient.
This “impure, impure” declaration requirement, which may remind us of the medieval leper’s bell, might initially cause us to recoil but the Babylonian Talmud remarks that the purpose of such a declaration serves not only as a warning to others but should elicit compassion and prayer on behalf of the sufferer (Mo’ed Katan 5a).
