Sweep and Scour to Survive

Over a thousand years before the advent of germ theory, Jews washed their hands and feet often as part of their religious practice. Jews emptied their houses of grain once a year in preparation for Passover. They swept out their cellars and scoured their barrels, discovering and resolving any possibility of infestation. Rats did not proliferate in these communities and so neither did their fleas. The Sabbath restriction hotzaah incentivizes the integration of households so their communities were cooperative. They kept their own wells and had a kosher food infrastructure distinct from the surrounding community, so they were also self-reliant. Their relative survival of the “Great Pestilence” was so marked that their neighbors accused them of widespread conspiracy. They hadn’t poisoned anyone’s wells, their religious observations enforced strategies that had seen their culture through epidemics before. They received these traditions along with Hebrew and the menorah, along with the Old Testament.