Over the past week, new COVID-19 cases in America have averaged more than 100,000 per day. This represents an increase of 59% from just two weeks earlier.
Scientists and doctors warn that with the onset of colder weather combined with “quarantine fatigue,” worse is yet to come.
Our tradition is clear that taking precautions to ensure the health of others as well as our own is a mitzvah, a religious obligation. It can be tedious and even exhausting at times but we have no other choice: lives depend on it.
Here’s how the great sage Maimonides frames it:
“God wants us to take care of our bodies for it is impossible that we might come to understand or know anything of the divine knowledge concerning the Creator if we were to become seriously ill. Therefore it is incumbent upon us to distance ourselves from things which are harmful and accustom ourselves to things which are healthful and beneficial.” (Mishneh Torah, De’ot 4:1)
For Maimonides, a physician and scientist as well as a religious sage, a person’s ultimate goal is to attain knowledge of God and God’s creation. We must stay healthy and protect others so that, together, we might discover what is true and eternal about our universe.
Adhering to the sage advice of doctors and scientists, exercising regularly, eating healthy foods in the proper proportion, getting plenty of sleep, washing our hands regularly, and—for now, at least—wearing a mask and maintaining physical distancing from others, are the best strategies for protecting our bodies and those around us so that we might come to know and understand more fully God’s glorious world.
Despite positive and hopeful news about the development of a vaccine, we are nowhere near the end of this terrible pandemic. Let’s keep one another safe—it’s a mitzvah of the highest order.
— Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback