The Contexts of Healing in Jewish Antiquity

Although rabbinic medical recipes and instructions may have been directed to anyone attempting to assist with health and healing, there were also professional physicians, midwives, and other experts in the workings of the body. Ben Sira regards such healers with reverence and praise; the rabbis seem to have a more complicated view. On the one hand, b. Sanhedrin notes the importance of having such professionals available, presumably in part owing to the requirement to preserve life and well-being (and the presumption that experts might prove crucial in that effort). On the other hand, b. Kiddushin condemns such medical professionals. Commentaries indicate that this attitude is rooted in assumptions about such professionals’ presumed haughtiness regarding their own role versus that of God, alongside a concern that they might wield their powers of healing inequitably (and thus might sometimes play a hand in allowing or causing—rather than preventing—harm or death). As with other halakhic concerns regarding interaction with non-Jews, this skepticism is emphasized in discussions of non-Jewish healers and midwives. The rabbis question whether a non-Jew can be trusted with such power over a Jewish life, balancing that concern against the possibility that reliance on a non-Jew to save a Jew might become necessary.