Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place...
Any disease that is treated as a mystery and acutely enough feared will be felt to be morally, if not literally, contagious.
- Susan Sontag (1933-2004), "Illness as Metaphor"
(ב) טהרות. פְּרָט לְעוֹף טָמֵא, לְפִי שֶׁהַנְּגָעִים בָּאִין עַל לָשׁוֹן הָרַע שֶׁהוּא מַעֲשֵׂה פִטְפּוּטֵי דְבָרִים, לְפִיכָךְ הֻזְקְקוּ לְטָהֳרָתוֹ צִפֳּרִים שֶׁמְּפַטְפְּטִין תָּמִיד בְּצִפְצוּף קוֹל (ערכין ט"ז): (ג) ועץ ארז. לְפִי שֶׁהַנְּגָעִים בָּאִין עַל גַּסּוּת הָרוּחַ (שם):
((2) הרותט CLEAN — This term excludes an unclean bird. Because the plagues of leprosy come as a punishment for slander, which is done by chattering, therefore birds are compulsory for his (the leper’s) purification, because these chatter, as it were, continuously with a twittering sound (Arakhin 16b). (3) ועץ ארז AND CEDAR WOOD — This lofty tree was used because plagues come also as a punishment for haughtiness (cf. Arakhin 16a).
It seems that there is a hint here, that when one checks a person, one must not only
see what they lack, in the place of the affliction; rather, one must see them in their entirety, including their elevated qualities. And so Balak said [to Balaam]: "You will see only a portion of them [the Israelites]; you will not see all of them - and damn them for me from there" (Numbers 23:13). Therefore: "the priest will see the affliction" - and after that, "the priest will see the person" - he should see them in their entirety.
- Rabbi Israel Joshua Trunk of Kutno (1820-1893), on Lev. 13:3
The near enemy. It's a psychological concept. Two emotions that look the same but are actually opposites. The one parades as the other, is mistaken for the other, but one is healthy and the other's sick, twisted. There are three couplings. Attachment masquerades as Love, Pity as Compassion, and Indifference as Equanimity.
Compassion involves empathy. You see the stricken person as an equal. Pity doesn't. If you pity someone, you feel superior. As long as the pity's in place there's not room for compassion. It squeezes out the nobler emotion.
- Louise Penny (1958-), The Cruelest Month
The soul trait of compassion may be more accurately defined as the inner experience of touching another being so closely that you no longer perceive the other one as separate from you...
What appears before us when we look at another [with eyes of judgment] are that person's accumulated deeds and habits as they stand right now, which we judge from our own vantage point. When we lower or transcend the boundaries of self, however, and draw closer so that we can feel within us the truth of that other person's experience, and so see with eyes of compassion, we still ought to see that person as they are now, but something else will be added to that picture. We will also see more deeply to perceive the untainted soul that is the kernel of that being - the image of the divine that is reflected in ourselves as well.
- Alan Morinis (1949-), Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar
Sources discussed in "Rachamim - Mercy: Seeing the Whole Person," by Lisa Grushcow, in Barry Block, ed., The Mussar Torah Commentary: A Spiritual Path to Leading a Meaningful and Ethical Life (CCAR Press, 2019).