Thazriah: the Isolation of Disease

Thazriah:  the Isolation of Disease


A diagnosis of Tsaraath carries with it isolation, questionable tsaraath compels imprisonment. 

When I was an intern at Bellevue Hospital in New York, there was a  dank, remote, police patrolled prison ward. It was frightening to go to this outpost of Riker's Island,this embassy of the Gulag,where violence replaces reason.  There is no reason in isolation.  

But more frightening still was the ward for drug resistant tuberculosis.   This was also a prison where, in the sincere interest of public safety, people with a highly contagious disease, for which there is no effective treatment, were confined until a more suitable venue could be found. I will never forget looking into the throat of  a beautiful, young woman - probably more beautiful because of her consumption- in that place,  This most public  thing, her shining beauty , hidden from everyone

The leper is also contagious. What we now call leprosy -Hansen's disease - is caused by a bacterium that is similar to the tubercle bacillus, the cause of tuberculosis. But no one thinks that Hansen's disease is the tzoraath that the King James committee translated as leprosy.

The Torah demonstrates the isolation  that come from serious disease. All of the outpouring of sympathy magnifies the awareness that the  person with the disease is alone in his suffering and in her shadow of death.