Coronavirus in Jewish Law and Thought
- The sages say “turn it [the Torah] over and turn it over for you will find everything in it”.
- So what are the key Jewish messages in relation to the present state of the outbreak of coronavirus?
- There is a Biblical requirement to look after one’s health. That involves, in particular, not deliberately exposing oneself to unnecessary danger.
- There is also a rabbinic dictum that those involved in doing meritorious actions do not come to harm as a result.
- And there is another rabbinic concept based on a verse in the Psalms (God guards the simple) that those who do things through habit without really thinking whether or not they are good or bad for them, can look for a degree of divine protection.
- Rabbi Moshe Feinstein applied the latter principle to those who were already addicted to smoking when the dangers began to be publicly known apparent in the mid-20th century; and he used it to excuse their continuing in the habit of smoking, even after he was clear that it was halachically prohibited to begin smoking because of the biblical injunction to guard one’s health.
- Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch has written that the principle of divine protection for the simple-minded could reasonably be applied when Rabbi Feinstein originally wrote about smoking, but that he would no longer have applied it now, given that it is no longer a question of an unknown degree of risk but a known and definite damage to oneself every time one smokes a cigarette.
- (Yes, it is true that there are still people who look like orthodox Jews and who smoke cigarettes: the answer to the conundrum is that they are not orthodox Jews, any more than are those who dress like orthodox Jews and fiddle their taxes or cheat on housing benefit by having their father-in-law buy a house through a limited company so they can sign that they are not related to their landlord.)
- So, where we are at the moment with the coronavirus spread in the UK, it is entirely reasonable to carry on life as normal and in the knowledge that Jewish law and thought requires reasonable precautions, but neither requires nor supports paranoia.
- So we go about our ordinary business but without exposing ourselves unnecessarily to obvious dangers, such as travelling without particular need into areas in the world where there are hotspots of the virus.
- Obviously that adds up to common sense: but isn’t it nice to know that God agrees?
- Two thoughts to add.
- First, there is a halachic principle requiring obedience to the law of the land. So if the law of the land requires self-isolation, for example, for people travelling back from a particular country, whether or not one thinks that is sensible or necessary as a matter of health and hygiene, we follow the law of the land as both a secular requirement and a religious obligation.
- Secondly, trying to look for positives in the present experience, traditional Jewish values place enormous emphasis on kindness to others, which was the foundation of the religion that Abraham discovered: and any public health outbreak creates multiple opportunities for kindness in looking after each other; so the present experience is a spiritual opportunity as well as a time of anxiety.
The Sceptic Blog 
Under point 4, are you thinking of the Gemoro in Pesachim 8b where it says
שלוחי מצוה אינן ניזוקין
those on the path to perform a mitzva are not susceptible to harm?
But it also says
היכא דשכיח היזיקא שאני
where danger is evident it is different, (as one should not rely on a miracle).
IMHO, this may be a case where danger is evident.
MICHAEL WILKS
March 8, 2020 at 4:45 pm
Yup, agreed – both rabbinic dicta are qualified by the Biblical requirement to guard ones health – so as I say in para.10 the bottom line is we go about normal business without putting ourselves in danger. When it comes to risk assessment, where there is not certain danger but there are some risks, the dictum of divine protection for those involved in mitzvos can be weighed in the balance – not as a guarantee of immunity, but as an encouragement not to hold back. So medical professionals can and do incur proportionate and unavoidable risks of exposure to various kinds of illness; and I could take an elderly neighbour some shopping despite a small risk of exposing myself to coronavirus (but not, of course, in a way that unnecessarily exposes my elderly neighbour to a risk of catching it from me, where the consequences for her or him might be severe and there are other ways of having them supplied with what they need).
Daniel Greenberg
March 8, 2020 at 5:29 pm