[Avodah] FW: Medicine for a Metzora

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 04:56pm EDT, R Daniel Israel wrote:
: The only nafka mina I see is that in the teva model, one could heal 
: tzaras with a medical intervention, and it would require HP to 
: cause the intervention to fail, assuming HKB"H didn't want the 
: person cured.  As opposed to the miraculous explanation, in which 
: medical treatment would fail derech hateva, so to speak.

So the question wasn't really spiritual vs physical, but supernatural
vs natural HP.

:> Does it make sense to cure someone's high blood pressure and not 
:> address his stress?

: Here we are asking two different questions.  My question is, given 
: that HKB"H gave us a spiritual means for healing tzaras, do we 
: expect that he would allow someone a refuah without doing the 
: necessary spiritual repairs? ...

Wholesale neis nigleh? Does even neis work that way?

WRT broken bones, you later write:
: whether the physical aspect of the disease is natural or not.  This 
: is different from, say, a broken bone, where HKB"H presumably 
: maintains a degree of hester panim and generally allows medicine to 
: perform within its normal bounds.  (Perhaps He sends, e.g., a 
: broken bone knowing that what the person needs is exactly the 
: degree of suffering that will occur _with_ a normal medical 
: intervention.)

There is a certain level of hesteir panim He always maintains, or else
the person's bechirah is compromised by neis. As earlier asked -- if it
was blatant, who would ever sin?

The Ramban's answer to the question of the fairness of hikbadti es leiv
Par'oh is that Hashem only made sure that he wasn't influenced by neis.
That being convinced via neis is the tampering with bechirah, and so
being kept immune from being convinced actually preserves bechirah.

Similarly, "ruach shetus" is insufficient to answer the question,
if tzora'as involved neis nigleh. I qwould have to conclude the Ramban
would say that supernatural tzora'as would only happen to people who see
no difference between oil burning or vinager burning, that Yad Hashem
is equally obvious in both, nothing new is proven to such a person OR
ANYONE ELSE WHO WITNESSES HIS CONDITION, and no change in belief would
be caused by nissim.

Which is why I don't believe in wholesale neis nigleh.

The spiritusomatic illness idea was that the cause is no more mysterious
than the usual the soul-brain issue. And just as someone's mental state
can push the body into an abnormal state, so can his spiritual state.
However, the abnormal state is a symptom, which would mean that --
short of miraculous intervention -- there is no reason to believe the
symptom couldn't be treated.

So, I would be surprised to learn that it actually couldn't, and therefore
more willing to ask the next ones:
If it could be treated, would it be permissable?
... And would it be advisable?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The waste of time is the most extravagant
micha at aishdas.org        of all expense.
http://www.aishdas.org                           -Theophrastus
Fax: (270) 514-1507