JUSTICE - No. 65

19 Fall 2020 ntroduction Millions of people have contracted COVID-19 and the virus continues to spread.Various countries are using a variety of means to protect their populations. These include restricting entry to their territory, quarantining people arriving from“dangerous areas,” the imposition of internal curfews and limits on gatherings, and rules requiring social distancing. Alongside medical and administrative measures, countries have also taken legal steps to enforce such actions, at times formulating special regulations by declaring a“state of emergency.” Viruses and diseases have appeared throughout the course of history. One of the most well-known pandemics was the Black Death, which claimed victims throughout Europe and Asia in the 14 th century. It is estimated that the Black Death killed millions of people, between one- quarter and one-half of the population of Europe at that time. 1 Much has been written in the wake of this and other pandemics. Among the well-known literary descriptions of plagues are Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron , along with Axel Munthe’s The Story of San Michele in which a 19 th century medical doctor describes a cholera epidemic in Naples, Italy that claimed thousands of victims daily. Other examples of books documenting pandemics include Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez and The Plague by Albert Camus. In art, in theater and in film, efforts were made to convey the experience of the epidemics and their horrors. There are also many echoes of epidemics in modern Hebrew literature, such as the “plague weddings” that were intended to prevent, or at least delay, the devastation wrought by an epidemic. Epidemics have given rise to various mystical beliefs and theological perceptions. For example, among many of those living during the Black Death and afterwards, a common view was that the plague was a punishment for the sins of mankind and was a sign of the “end of days.” In the wake of this, various religious customs took hold, including special prayers and fasts. Alongside these practices was the telling of stories of miracles performed by religious figures who saved mankind from the ravages of the plague. Epidemics have raised complex ethical questions. An example is whether a person is duty-bound — or at least permitted — to inform the authorities about an acquaintance who had fallen sick with the disease. There is also the question of whether medical professionals and others are obligated to care for a person who has contracted the disease, even if that endangers themselves. 2 Jewish law is replete with halakhic and legal questions emanating from pandemics. 3 Legal sources from North Africa describe terrible epidemics in the region between the 16 th and 19 th centuries that The Corona Pandemic through the Prism of Jewish Law I AviadHacohen* * The author thanks Amy Yourman for her excellent translation and insights. 1. See e.g. William Naphy and Andrew Spicer, T HE B LACK D EATH ANDTHE H ISTORY OF P LAGUES , pp. 1345-1730 (Tempus Pub Ltd, 2000); Barbara W. Tuchman, A D ISTANT M IRROR : T HE C ALAMITOUS 14 TH C ENTURY (Alfred A. Knopf, 1978). During this period, antisemitism ran rampant, with the charge that Jews were responsible for the dissemination of the plague by poisoning wells. 2. Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, a great halakhic scholar of 19 th century Lithuania, ruled during an epidemic in Brisk that there was a duty to help a sick person who was in a particular type of danger — even at the price of endangering oneself. 3. Some of the questions in Jewish law arising from epidemics and diseases are found in studies dealing with medicine and Judaism. See e.g. Avraham Steinberg, E NCYCLOPEDIA OF J EWISH M EDICAL E THICS (Fred Rosner, trans., Feldheim Publ. House, 2003), under the entries “plague” and “contagious diseases,” among others. See also Julius Preuss, B IBLISCH -T ALMUDIESCHE M EDIZIN [M EDICINE INTHE B IBLE ANDTHE T ALMUD (Fred Rosner, trans. & ed., J. Aronson, 1993) [originally published in 1911]; Hirsch Jacob Zimmels, M AGICIANS , T HEOLOGIANS AND D OCTORS : S TUDIES IN F OLK M EDICINE AND F OLKLORE AS R EFLECTED INTHE R ABBINICAL R ESPONSA (London: E Glodston & Sons, 1952). I discussed the legal approach to some of the diseases in Aviad Hacohen,“Not Immune Forever!? Vaccines and Anti-Vaxxers in Jewish Law and State Law,” P ARASHAT H ASHAVUA , no. 484 (5779-2019) [Hebrew]; Aviad Hacohen,“Viruses and Epidemics in Jewish Law Sources,”