Sunday, Oct. 27
Leviticus 12:1 – 13:59 Read it here
When I worked at a bookstore there was a popular series of books titled “Eat This, Not That.” The premise of the books was that you could lose weight and be healthier through simply substituting one food for another without sacrificing taste or convenience.
In yesterday’s reading and continuing today we get into teachings that are essentially health codes for the people of Israel. Yesterday was a lot about what to eat and what not to eat. Today we move on to ritual purification after childbirth and rules about skin diseases and mildew.
If these sound obsessive, think back a few years to the early days of the COVID pandemic. When faced with fear of infection, whether it’s COVID, or leprosy, or bird flu or whatever, people often react in extremes.
Sometimes it’s over-reaction that causes unnecessary disruption to the community or harm and isolation for the victims of the infection. Sometimes it’s under-reaction that allows the infection to spread to harm more people.
Similarly, the concern about mildew sounds less extreme after the concerns about black mold following repeated flooding in recent years. If you live in a house that’s been flooded, it’s important to know if the risks have been contained, or if living there is a danger.
In a world in which the priests were the only well established authority, it fell on them to bring sanity and consistency to the people’s reaction to disease. Moses and Aaron provided guidance on how to recognize the difference between different diseases, and how to determine if mildew and mold make a house unsafe to live in.
These may seem to be outside the realm of religion, but ultimately these are questions of human well-being. Good public health guidance can give the greatest possible protection to both the sick and those who are potentially at risk. Likewise, food guidelines minimized the risk of food poisoning.
And even the purification rituals after childbirth, while not disease-related, provided a timeline and a pattern for new mothers to have both a time of isolation and a smooth re-entry into the community.