Opinion & Comment
Thoughts About SARS

To The Editor:

"Why did Hashem promise that He would never bring another flood upon the Earth ever again? It doesn't mean that Hashem will not bring localized disasters upon the world. He will bring napalm. He will being poison gas. He will bring viruses!" (HaRav Avigdor Miller zt"l, The Path of Life 2002, p.14).

We do not yet know the source or extent of the SARS virus. But it is sufficiently serious to bring back memories of the last great pandemic: the 120 day Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918 that sickened 100 million people and killed 21 million (double those killed in WWI). It ranked with the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death as one of the most destructive outbreaks of disease that the human race has known.

The Midrash Shir Hashirim (2:13) states: "Shortly before the days of the Moshiach, a great epidemic will come upon the world and the wicked will vanish."

"Behold, the L-rd makes the Earth empty, and makes it waste, and turns it upside down, and scatters abroad its inhabitants. And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; . . . " (Yeshaya 24)

Above all, there is one supreme lesson that must not go lost. The human body is compared to an olam koton. Its defenders are the armies of the fantastic autoimmune system, the white blood cells: macrophages, phagocytes, "killer" B and T lymphocytes, monocytes, neutrophils, eosinophils and more. If we could witness these tireless protectors of our health in their ceaseless, frightening battles to the death with hordes of invading bacteria, toxins, viruses, protozoa and other lethal antigens, then we would never desist from relating the awesome chasdei Hashem: mibsori echezeh Elokah, "From my flesh I can perceive G-d!" (Iyov 19). May Hashem keep our immune systems patent!

Yours Truly,

Amnon Goldberg

Tzefas

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