Why Sicknesses?

Translated by Rabbi  Lazer Brody

Every test we are given in this world is tailor-made by Hashem.  It behooves us to observe all that happens to us, and try to understand event in our lives.  This is especially true when it comes to the test of  a sickness. Our healing depends upon looking at our ailment through eyes of emuna.

On the surface, it appears that medicine is no different than any of the other natural sciences.  Dedicated researchers invest long hours and enormous sums of money conducting  experiments  with the latest and most sophisticated equipment. As they make breakthroughs in understanding specific illnesses, new medicines and innovative therapies become available. 

So far so good.  This is all quite logical, right?  The Creator gave man intelligence to investigate the natural world in order to improve and perfect life. Man’s obligation is to use his intelligence for constructive purposes, for these make our lives more pleasant. We  see this  demonstrated on many planes, as technological advances bring more and more improvements to our lives. So logically, it should follow, that by using the gift of intelligence  bestowed upon us by Hashem to improve our quality of life, we should also be able to apply this to field of medicine as well, bringing healing and relief to the many pains and illnesses that people suffer from.

This idea is supported by the wisdom of our sages as well, who learn from the verse in Exodus, “And you shall surely heal,” that doctors have  explicit permission to heal the sick. It is for this reason that many of our giants, throughout the ages, including The Rambam, The Baal Shem Tov and many others, engaged in medicine.

We would think that the more research that is done in this field of science, the more success there should be in producing medicines and other advances to heal the illnesses and wounds that afflict mankind. Let’s see if that’s true:

This might be true if we would consider man as we would consider any other animal.  But unlike any other being, man has free choice, and the essence of man is his spiritual component, which is his soul, to which the body merely serves as an outer casing.  Since the health of the body is dependent  upon the health of the soul, when  speaking  of healing, we must start from a completely different place, one apart from natural law.

Everything in the world depends upon Divine providence.  It is not just coincidence that the word “illness” (machala in Hebrew),  is made up of the same letters as “forgiveness” (mechila).  This is to teach us that the purpose of illness is to atone for our sins, and that once we have merited  recovery, the letters transform from machala to mechila.

Although everything in nature is guided by Hashem, the less something directly affects us, the less we recognize how Hashem is directly influencing our lives. In general, nature follows specific clear paths and laws, especially relative to cosmological phenomena, as it says in Psalms (148:6) “He set them up so that they would last forever, He gave them as a law and it cannot be changed.” And, as we declare in the monthly Blessing on the New Moon, “He gave them laws and times, so that they never deviate from their mission.”  Everything remains constant unless The Creator decides for a specific reason to change things. 

On the other hand, it is much easier for us to see Hashem’s Divine providence in  areas of our lives which affect us directly, such as our livelihood, our children, our health, and so forth. In those areas, we are more  sensitized to feel Hashem’s role in our lives, and are therefore, more awareness of the hints and signs that he sends us, sent to make us more aware of our mistakes, in order to correct them.

More than in any other area, we see Hashem’s Divine providence concerning our health.  Hashem uses physical and spiritual pain and illness in order to hint to us what we need to change and fix.  This is for the following reasons:

1. In other ways that Hashem can hint to us, we can still choose to ignore or remain indifferent to those messages.  But it’s impossible to ignore pain which we sometimes  can even feel every waking hour (if we’re even allowed to sleep!).  We see this in the story of Job.  When the Satan wanted to test him with tribulations,  Hashem first instructed him, “You can bring upon Job any kind of tribulation.  Just don’t do anything to him personally or physically.” And no matter how difficult the tribulations were: affecting his property and even losing his sons,  as long as the tribulation didn’t personally affect him physically, Job withstood the test.  Until finally, the Satan declared, (Job 2:)”…Flesh covers flesh  a man will give all that he has for the sake of his life. But put forth Your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh if he will not then curse You to Your face.”   The point that the Satan was making was that as long as the person himself isn’t afflicted, the test is bearable.  Therefore, the Satan requested permission to attack Job himself, and we find that that indeed was the breaking point:  for when Job was afflicted with boils, he could withstand no more, and questioned the ways of Hashem.

From here we see that nothing affects a person more than feeling pain.  When one  is suffering, nothing really matters, and all the money in the world, all the pleasures in life are meaningless, bringing him no joy. On the contrary, they exacerbate  and reinforce his total helplessness, seeing all that he has, and not being able to enjoy any of it. Even worse, though, is if the suffering  affects him emotionally and spiritually, as well. For then, even if he starts to get better,  he will still be convinced that he has no reason to live.

As the expression goes, “The main thing is health.”  So, of course, one’s health is certainly going to be the main tool that Hashem uses, more than anything else, to bring a person to make changes in his life. 

2.  Our bodies are made up 248 organs and limbs and 365 sinews and vessels, each corresponding to one of the 248  positive and 365 negative commandments.  When one “damages” one of the commandments,  he also damages that organ or sinew which corresponds to that commandment.  What he needs to do, therefore, when a part of our body suffers, is to listen to the message that  Hashem is sending him. For it is through  the way that one is afflicted, either the particular illness or the specific part of the body, that Hashem tells the person how and in what way he needs to repair his actions and  how to do teshuva, specifically focusing on the commandments which he performs with that part of the body.

With the above in mind, Hashem – our loving Father – doesn’t want us to to walk around with blemished souls, for blemished souls can’t properly cling to Hashem. He therefore uses our health to keep us on our spiritual toes. In that respect, the more we invest in teshuva and daily self-assessment, the healthier we’ll be! Blessings for a healthy winter!