Two thousand years ago, the Talmudic Sages speculated about sickness. Is there a moral cause? Can we avoid illness by controlling our actions? Do illness and recovery really depend on our deeds?     

Some Sages speculated that the leprosy handled by the kohanim, the biblical priestly families in charge of both health and worship, can come about through idol worship, unchastity, bloodshed, profaning God’s name, robbery, gossip and greed. 

But the ancient Hebrew Sages were not naïve or self-righteous. They understood that people who try to live decent and even holy lives are subject to illness, just as unethical and cruel people may never be sick a day in their lives. 

The Sages had a general teaching: If evil befalls someone, let him examine his or her deeds. If one still feels that the suffering is unjust, let him or her regard it as God’s loving chastisements. The point is that whatever we face in life can be an opportunity to find God’s love and concern. The goal of religion is to inspire us to take every opportunity to examine our lives, and to bring God into our lives.

“Choices” by Gemma Stiles, 2013

We are not God. Barring unusual circumstances and a bona fide prophet on the level of a Moses, we do not know why illness affects some and not others. In fact, the Bible teaches this. When Job is afflicted with illness, loss of loved ones and financial ruin, even though he sincerely tries to do what is good and right, his friends tell him that there is something that he must have done wrong.

Job cannot accept that some, that any, misdeed on his part was as heinous as to warrant such total disaster as punishment. At the end of the book, God declares that Job must not take it personally, that there are certain things about the way this world is crafted that bring illness and tragedy and disaster upon innocent people, that these are the risks of the blessing of life. The best we can do is to understand that the Creator is wise and purposeful and caring, but that we can’t fathom all the considerations that God had to weigh in fashioning the world as we know it. Still, we can try to control illness and to prevent it; there will always be, after all, a “time to heal.” (Ecclesiastes 3:3)

Throughout history, people have had to wait to see what viruses might break out. True, we have learned to store some viruses as so-called weapons (“biological warfare”). But those viruses and illness were distilled, as it were, from age-old plagues and outbreaks. The Coronavirus may well have spilled out of a laboratory.

Around 1988, however, something rather unprecedented happened. A new kind of virus came upon the world over which humans had total responsibility and control. 

I refer to the “Computer Virus.”

Computer viruses are wanton human tampering with machines and data, in order to vex and to hurt other human beings, emotionally and financially.

The early symptoms of computer viruses were rather mild. Machines ran more slowly than normal, or with exaggerated speed. Their load might have increased suddenly. Like biological viruses, computer viruses can reproduce themselves. From the start, computer viruses could decimate hours or even years of information gathering.

By the end of 1988, that early internet virus had affected, by some estimates, over 50,000 university, corporate or military machines world-wide. A new industry was born in response to the demand for computer virus blockers and killers. It is now as far-reaching as the pharmaceutical industry. 

It is a tribute to the Talmudic tradition of debating what is ethical that discussions about ethics and computers began decades ago, paralleling debates about medical ethics. There is no question that, in just about every imaginable scenario, creating computer viruses would be a grave violation of Jewish Law. The prohibition against wantonly destroying fruit-bearing trees during war (Deut. 20:19) is understood in the Talmud as a blanket prohibition against wantonly destroying any natural or man-made resource (bal tash-khit). The Bible and its Talmudic interpreters respected the worker and his output, including the work of the data processer.  

To trick people with e-mail phishing violates the biblical prohibition, “You shall not put a stumbling block before the blind” (Levit. 19:14) which the Talmudic Sages interpreted as prohibiting any intentional misleading of others. 

I do not mean to trivialize the horror of a pandemic virus by comparing it to computer viruses. I’m certainly not comparing the death of human beings to the infection of computer screens. We need to take note, however, of an ugly outcome of the mandate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to distance ourselves physically in order to combat the disease and to spare those most vulnerable to it. 

As businesses and schools and religious congregations and families move to Zoom and other internet media to communicate, to connect, to learn and even to pray, they have been harassed by hackers who have bombarded the screens with vulgarity and profanity. Also, the FBI has warned that “criminals and malicious actors” have been creating domains that impersonate Zoom and other videoconferencing applications in order to steal personal information from unsuspecting users.

Such vicious machinations will become an increasing threat to home business, home schooling and to children’s internet activities.

Sadly, these malicious actions confirm the wisdom of ancient biblical warning against putting stumbling blocks before the blind. 

Behind biblical law, as interpreted in the Talmudic tradition, is the responsibility of every human being for the well-being of other human beings.  Each individual home builder had to provide a roof railing for the safety of family and guests and passers-by. (Deut. 24:8) Everyone who dug a pit was responsible for the safety of anyone who might fall into it. (Exodus 21:33-34) People were responsible even for returning lost items to their owners. (Deut. 22:1-4) These ancient laws entered into everyday life and informed the behavior of families and communities so that no one could, in good conscience, repeat Cain’s outrageous disclaimer, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9) Without question, we are the keepers, the guardians of others, of all created in the Divine image.

The commandment in Deuteronomy, “Guard yourselves” (4:9)—literally, “Keep yourselves”—has been understood as the commandment to look out for our health and for the health of others. (This is the verse invoked by Rabbis to forbid smoking.)  All who are “sheltering at home” are acting upon solid values of social responsibility with deep roots, in Western society, in the Hebrew Bible and in the Talmud. The messages of the Passover and Easter holidays affirm the mandate to shelter at home by bringing home to us the ancient biblical mandate: “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life.” (Deut. 30:19)