Leviticus 13:40 contains my favourite verse: If a man loses the hair of his head and becomes bald, he is pure. My photograph shows that I am extremely pure. This strange verse comes in a part of the Torah that seems to link skin disease with divine punishment.

As a hospital chaplain, I was called to the bedside of a Chasid with an infected arm. He said: Tell me what sin I have committed that is makingGod punish me. We became friends, but I could not comprehend a cruel God who would use disease as punishment. He could not understanda Jew who didnt see diseaseas punishment.

On festivals, we chant the Torah verse: God merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in kindness. The verse end, which tells how the sins of parents are visited upon children, is omitted because we seek out the compassionate side of God. Ours is nota God who punishes with disease.

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However, does Leviticus suggest that my Chasidic friends view of a punitive God is correct? My bald verse occurs in a section interpreting a leprous condition called tzaraat. Clothes could suffer from tzaraat (mildew?), as could houses (rising damp?). Tzaraat was evidence that a person or an object had been touched by ritual impurity. The Israelites felt that sometimes God used skin ailments as punishment, just as God sometimes used frogs, locusts, darkness and hailstones. But we cannot extrapolate from this that illness must be understood as punishment. Sometimes a frog is just a frog.

The Talmud interprets tzaraat as punishment for slander. Claiming disease as punishment from God is to slander the ill. Rather we should treat the ill like God, with compassionate and abounding kindness.

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The Bible Says What? 'Only the bald are pure' - Jewish News