There is a moment for patients after we deliver the news of a frightening diagnosis, after they have taken in the realities we have laid before them, when they realize that there is one more tremendous hurdle ahead: to share that news with others. Sometimes that feels like the hardest part. How much do they have to disclose? Do they speak in euphemisms or share the harsh realities? It is as though saying a diagnosis aloud finally makes it real.
These words were written by Dr. Daniela J. Lamas. They are a welcome contribution to the chaos surrounding Princess Catherine Middleton’s announcement of her cancer diagnosis. Dr. Lamas reminds us – and many of us need no reminding – that such diagnoses are scary and life-changing. Above all, they are highly personal.
Allow me to interrupt these reflections to share that I am not, and never have been, an acolyte of the British Royals. I’m not especially riveted by the photos, and don’t follow the perpetual drama. But there is something so poignant about the pressures on this one individual to handle whatever comes next in her life in a way that suits the public rather than in a way that is right for her.
This was also a right that did not exist in the time of Tazria, our Torah portion this week. Bearing in mind of course that the context was very different: in ancient times when skin diseases were suspected or confirmed by the priestly clan (Aaron or one of his sons), that person was isolated from the rest of the community until the requisite healing had taken place. What a world it must have been chutz lamachaneh, or outside the camp. Imagine those conversations among people suddenly catapulted out of everything that worked about their lives just yesterday, all they understood to be true about themselves. Huddled together for warmth, they begin to form a different kind of community in a land none of them know how to navigate yet.
And yet. These afflictions were handled in the best way the priests knew how. There was a necessary balance to keep between the feelings of the ill ones and the health and welfare of the community as a whole. Was this balance imperfect? Absolutely. Did it represent good intentions and an ability to name the dynamics of illness and healing other cultures at the time were years away from possessing? Very likely yes.
Most bewildering of all is a verse towards the end of Tazria. “As for the person with a leprous affection, his clothes shall be rent, his head shall be left bare, and he shall cover over his upper lip; and he shall call out, “Impure, Impure!” (Leviticus 13:45). Decisions around privacy were not possible then, so intent were the priestly leaders on containing these physical afflictions. And so, time outside the camp begins. It marks us. It remakes us. We learn things we never would have discovered inside the camp, and not necessarily things we wanted to learn. We begin the daunting task of making peace with lives forever altered. It takes a long time.
It would take even longer, and the struggle goes on, for a world in which bodily autonomy, choices around family life and personal disclosure would be respected and honored. That’s what I’ll be hoping and working for. For the royals and the rest of us. If not in the time of Tazria, then in our own days. May it come to be so.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Gutterman
