How Jewish Sages ‘Predicted the Coronavirus'

How Jewish sages 'predicted the coronavirus'

A modern-day educator says Jewish sources dating back almost a thousand years provided medical advice for dealing with the coronavirus. by Shimon Cohen arutzsheva

It's pretty incredible that some of Judaism's biggest sages provided their disciples similar advice when dealing with epidemics of the past as guidelines released to Israeli citizens by the Ministry of Health and the Prime Minister's office.

Rabbi Yitzhak Malka has conducted extensive research on the centuries-long struggle of Halakhic authorities with different plagues. Could the first indications of isolation orders and social distancing guidelines be found in these? Malka says that the answer is certainly "Yes" and even points out that the current guidelines sound as if they were taken from the writings of Judaic scholars from the Middle Ages.

"I researched the period between 1450 and 1700 and focused on the period of Rabbi Ovadia Sforno (1468 to 1550). The Black Plague began in the spring of 1347 and continued in waves until the end of the 17th century. It was part of the culture and influenced prayer, the Passover Haggadah and Jewish holidays," says Malka, a member of the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar Ilan University and education lecturer at Efrata College.

"If you follow the Sages' [halakhic] rulings, there is nothing new under the sun. All the briefings of the Prime Minister's Office and Ministry of Health appear to have been taken from the writings of Rabbi Ovadia Sforno, Rabbi Yitzchak Abarbanel and later from Rabbi Yaakov Tzahlon and Rabbi Abraham Catalano," says Rabbi Malka and presents several examples with the Passover Haggadah as the first of these.

"There is a 15th-century Haggadah, the 'Birds Head Haggadah,' decorated with images of bird heads. What do birds have to do with Pesach? Researchers clearly indicates that this Haggadah, found in the Israel Museum, was composed during the time of the Black Plague. The bird's head symbolizes an ancient physician. In ancient Egypt, the symbol of medical practice was a bird's head. In the Haggadah, the figures appear wearing hats – the same hats as those used by doctors in times of epidemic. Black spots on the figures are another sign of the epidemic. All these was around already then.”

Malka adds that the image of the bird comes from the physician's mask of those days, and inside the source were inserted into the sky and weeds to screen the disease, "The same mask that is described by the Sages as its source is Torah," writes Abarbanel, relying on the verse and the affliction he touched. Abarbanel comments on the expression "and their spades": "A teacher whose head is visible and mouth covered and mustache on his mouth so as not to harm human health in his humiliation.”

The quarantine issue is also mentioned in the sources, Rabbi Malka's secretary. "The idea of quarantine originated in the Torah which was first to prescribe quarantine as a preventive measure. Lepers were supposed to sit alone outside the [Israelite] camp.”

The sages also determined the length of the 14-day quarantine. "14 days of isolation is not a modern concept," says Malka. It comes from Sforno, Abarbanel and others: "Close them off for 14 days to open notice the signs of the disease and see if it still holds the disease. In addition, those infected with the virus should not be approached so that others don't get infected."

Rabbi Malka notes that the sages' directives also reached Christian communities and that quarantine became an accepted measure in Italy: "the Pope forbids Christian repentance processions and Jewish Purim celebrations. Christians constructed 'Corona hotels' and the Jewish community, like the gentile, was obliged to pay for the establishment of such hotels on the outskirts of local villages.”

The halakhic rulings of sages from those days were concerned not only with treatment of patients, but also halakhic questions arising from the emerging reality in times of epidemic. "One of the halakhic rulings is to avoid praying in minyan. This appears in Part Three of Tsahlon's" Otzar Ha'hayim," which documented medical procedures in the closed-off Jewish ghetto where he worked as physician and rabbi. He says that "because the synagogue was off-limits, "On the street, I gave a Torah lesson at the corner of a street. People would listen from the window of the house and the crowd congregated outside to avoid spilling into the road against instructions", referring to people isolated within houses inside the ghetto to hear Torah lectures.”

In light of these findings and many others, Malka is left to wonder: "Why did it take all the wise [politicians] a month to realize that they could not allow people to participate in a minyan? All they had to do was open Otzar Hahayim, Sforno, or the Abarbanel to understand. I don't get it.”

Malka adds, "There is a painting depicting a hanging tower for isolation violators in the middle of the Jewish neighborhood of Venice. Punishment by hanging no less –not fines imposed by the Ministry of Healthy. If somebody would have bothered reading this, it would have saved them a lot of time.”

Malka also refers to earlier times –the days of King Uzziah who quarantined lepers, and of the times of Jeremiah, when the city of Gilead served as an isolated medical center. He also mentions the Mishnaic commandment to wash hands for dealing with viruses and Abarbanel's view that physical contact with outside objects is a way of transmitting bacteria, "that is, they were aware of these things inasmuch as the rabbis ordered the clothes of infected individuals to be burned.”

Malka mentions a warning by Rabbi Abraham Catalano, (1630) a physician during the epidemic in Padua. He recommends renting out a special house and for those who cannot afford one, to self-quarantine in an isolated room. He also recommends storing grain and vines "so that you do not step foot in the market during the epidemic.”

Among his writings, Rabbi Abraham Catalano also mentions the stricken and isolated, in an apparent reference to the elderly population. He calls on people to come to help out by keeping them busy, "lest you die bitterly and have sin in you." "Depression can kill the elderly and you should make sure to keep in touch with them and not neglect them."