You will make yourselves unclean by these; whoever touches their carcasses will be unclean till evening. Whoever picks up one of their carcasses must wash their clothes, and they will be unclean till evening. – Leviticus 11:24-25

Today's Scripture Reading (November 8, 2021): Leviticus 11

We seem to have an internal drive to blame someone other than ourselves when bad things happen to us. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the incidence of violence against people with oriental origins took a sudden rise. We wanted to blame them as a race for the trouble that had been visited upon our society. It was not our finest moment, but it was far from the first time such violence had resulted because of the trouble in which our community found itself. And it was not the first time we visited violence on people who had done nothing to increase our pain. They were innocents, but their innocence didn't protect them from our violence.

In the middle years of the fourteenth century (1348-1351), the Black Death ravaged Europe. And one of the people groups that were persecuted during this time were the Jews. And part of the basis for the violence was that it seemed that Jewish communities fared better than other communities during the plague. The Black Death impacted them, but not to the extent that the rest of Europe had suffered. And so, rumors began to circulate that the Jews had started the plague. The ancient understanding of the plague was limited, and people started to believe stories about the Jewish origins of the disease inflicting vast numbers of people.

We know a little more today about the plague than those who suffered through this dark time in the fourteenth century. The most predominant modern theory is that rats had fled their native grasslands and began to inhabit the city because of climate change. There they lived and died, and they were accompanied by the fleas that carried the disease. When the rats died, the fleas jumped from the rats to human hosts, infecting them and killing over one in every four people that lived on the continent.

So why did the Jews fare better? That goes back to the laws that they ritualistically followed. Because the Mosaic Law specified it, dead animals, including rats, were dealt with immediately. All animals were disposed of immediately following their deaths, or at least, the discovery of their deaths. The law also mandated that the one who disposed of the animals was unclean until evening. They had to wash themselves along with their clothes and then isolate themselves until the next day. As a result of this ritualistic washing, the Black Death had less of a chance to gain a foothold among the Jewish community. And the Jews were spared of some of the effects of the plague. But it was not because they had more knowledge or had created the pandemic, and even they didn't know that it was their ritual that had saved them.

Sometimes, we struggle with the cleanliness laws that are found with the Mosaic Law. But at other times, their logic becomes apparent, and we understand the benefit of the rules and the commanded isolation that resulted when a person became "unclean."    

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Leviticus 12