It is a gentle, pleasant walk up the hill along Graetz Street from the main road, Emek Refaim, in Jerusalem's trendy German Colony. There are no sidewalks so one has to be careful of cars squeezing up and down, always in a hurry. Graetz intersects with Dor Dor V'Dorshav Street at the top. Dor Dor V'Dorshav becomes Gedalyahyu Alon Street. The 19^th century Jerusalem stone buildings seem to glow yellow in the afternoon light accented by faded red roofings. An easy left down the hill along the treed narrow path suddenly opens to a broadened roadway with sidewalks.

On the right is open space not because it is open but because no one has developed the high priced land. Whatever stood there once is gone. The Jerusalem stoned low retaining walls the only remains. On the left, a large grey flattish building complex, rectangularly colonnaded in the front and appropriately guarded by security personel, is architecturally out of place. The numerous parking spaces in the front are a rarity in the German Colony.

Ancient Indian sources infer a disease that resembled Leprosy from 6000 B.C.E. Leprosy was supposedly described in Egyptian papyruses about 1550 B.C.E. Old Testament references to skin diseases have been mistranslated from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English as Leprosy. The biblical descriptions do not correspond to the symptoms of or diagnosis of Leprosy. The only way to accurately verify leprosy is by microscopic examination of a biopsy: a diagnostic technique not available in the biblical world.

Leprosy has been a human scourge, affecting virtually all racial groups for untold years, without any viable medical treatment.

Historical treatment of Leprosy, and other communicable diseases, was segregation, quarantine or death. It is now realized by modern medicine, Leprosy is not a highly communicable disease the way that syphilis or tuberculosis is.

The modern scientific world recognizes that Leprosy is a very old disease, worldwide in its scope. Oceans, mountains and natural barriers have not been significant factors as barriers to the presence of Leprosy.

Until modern medicine provided a solution to and an understanding of Hansen's, the disease was perceived as a retribution of God. It was believed to be highly infectious and hereditary. Hansen's victims have been segregated, sterilized and exterminated well into the 20^th century.

The very word, Leprosy, brings up the ancient and biblical imagery of the unclean, the retribution of God against the sinner. The first reference to Leprosy in the Old Testament is Exodus 4:6. God was demonstrating his power to Moses. "The LORD furthermore said to him, "Now put your hand into your bosom." So he put his hand into his bosom, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow".

Leprosy was also a punishment from God for sin: Numbers 12: 10-16. "But when the cloud had withdrawn from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow. As Aaron looked upon Miriam, behold, she was leprous. 11 Then Aaron said to Moses, "Oh, my lord, I beg you, do not account this sin to us, in which we have acted foolishly and in which we have sinned. 12 "Let her be like one dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes from his mother's womb!" 13 Moses cried out to the LORD, saying, "O God, heal her, I beseech Thee!" 14 And the LORD said to Moses, "If her father had but spit in her face, would she not hide in shame for seven days? The curative response was segregation, quarantine from the rest of the people. It was more than a simple spiritual banishment is was a physical exile as well so as not to infect the people. "Let her be shut up for seven days outside the camp, and afterward she may be received again." 15 So Miriam was shut up outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not move on until Miriam was received again. 16 Afterward, however, the people moved out from Hazeroth and camped in the wilderness of Paran."

Europe about the period of the Crusades had Leprosy reintroduced by returning Crusaders. It had spontaneously disappeared after the fall of Rome for unknown reasons. Knowledge of disease transmission was unknown at the time. As in a later period of the Bubonic Plague, the Jew was viewed as a factor in transmission. The Jews were not contributory in the reintroduction of Leprosy in Europe. The accusation was an anti-Semitic conspiratorial assumption.

Leprosy is a not a totally opportunistic disease. Segregation and quarantine may have an ameliorative effect on the spread of the disease. In the 20^th century it was finally understood that a form of natural selection was involved with Leprosy. Approximately 5 to 10 % of European population has a genetic factor in who can and cannot become infected by the bacterium when they encounter infectious people. Two genes must be present for the disease to take effect. Isolation and eventual death of the infected individuals may have had a contributory effect in the disease virtually dieing out in Europe by the 19^th century.

A curious aspect of the disease is also spontaneous, independent recuperation from infection. It cannot be accurately stated that the centuries old practices of isolation, sterilization and euthanization, by direct or benign neglect, actually resulted in a significant reduction in the number of people infected.

The 19^th century saw a fundamentalist Christian religious rewakening. European and American missions to the Leper, emulating their understanding of Christian doctrine, flourished. The missionary's purpose was to heal and comfort the Leper while saving their souls from evident sin.

About the same time the rudiments of the modern scientific revolution burst unto Western thought trying to understand the physical world. Charles Darwin's 1859 seminal work, The Origin of the Species, on evolution advanced his earlier theory of transmutation of the species (1838). It led to the emergence of a new theory of human engineering.

"Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention. The goals of various groups advocating eugenics have included the creation of healthier, more intelligent people, to save society's resources, and lessen human suffering, as well as racially based goals or desires to breed for other specific qualities, such as fighting abilities.

Earlier proposed means of achieving these goals focused on selective breeding, while modern ones focus on prenatal testing and screening, genetic counseling, birth control, in vitro fertilization and genetic engineering. Opponents argue that eugenics is immoral and is based on, or is itself, pseudoscience. Historically, eugenics has been used as a justification for coercive state-sponsored discrimination and human rights violations, such as forced sterilization of persons who appear to have - or are claimed to have - genetic defects, the killing of the institutionalized and, in some cases, outright genocide of races perceived as inferior or undesireable.

The logical extension of eugenic moral and legal theory was advanced in the 20^th century by two German intellectuals, Karl Binding, a respected jurist and Alfred Hoche an honored psychiatrist. Collaboratively they wrote the highly influential book, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwertem Lebens (Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living) –1920.

Concerns for the betterment of humanity, concern for the meaning of and the value of a dignified life, led to three central stuggles in their book. The questions revolved around who should live and who could be mercifully put to death.

1. A person who has been mortally wounded or is terminally ill and has somehow communicated their wish to die.
2. A person that is incurably mentally ill.
3. The people belonging to the middle group, were "mentally healthy" people, which having suffered a serious injury are now unconscious. If they ever awake, they "will awake to a nameless suffering".

Life and death decisions would be rendered by a committee of three. The committee consisted of a psychiatrist, another doctor and a jurist to be sure that the law was being followed and to protect the rights of the individual; medicine, science and Law – the best representations of German culture. Clergy were notably absent from the committees and from the Appellate system.

The 1920 book, Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living, quickly merged with the developing eugenic theories of racial hygiene that the Nazi movement implemented when they came to power thirteen years later in 1933. The German people, the Nazi's argued needed to be cleansed racially, of physical and psychological unsound elements. The German people agreed with Hitler when they electing him their Chancellor. Isolation, segregation and sterilization would not be sufficient to eradicate the diseased parts for the health of the German and even the world's body. Nazi Eugenics evolved not a temporary solution but a "Final Solution."

The administrative implementation of the "Final Solution" began on a quiet street in Berlin near the Zoo. The address was Tieregarten 4 Street. The project became know simply as the T-4 project. The definition of "who" was to live began with the Germans "mercifully" killing their own incurable, sick children. The "who" eventually meant anyone the Nazis chose - especially Jews and the incurable – such as Lepers.

It is frequently asked how could an advanced culture such as Germany's devolve into the most basic of barbaric destructiveness. Could the situation have evolved anywhere else? The early implementation of Eugenic laws and concepts was not German it was British and American. Yet British and American society did not devolve into barbarity, consuming its own, as it did in Germany.

Jewish tradition holds that all human society must adhere to certain basic laws, moral imperatives, to earn a place in the world to come. The imperatives are called the seven Noahide laws. Tradition says they were given to Noah – hence humanity - after the great flood.

1. Prohibition against idolatry
2. Prohibition against blasphemy
3. Prohibition against murder
4. Prohibition against theft
5. Prohibition against sexual immorality
6. Prohibition against eating the limb of a living animal
7. Establish courts of justice

Nazi Germany and the evolution of eugenics concepts had violated the basic Noahide moral imperatives. Eugenic theory then and now is that man is God. The theistic possibility that God had provided mankind with the ability to think to learn to understand, to feel, to choose and to develop miracles such as Dapsone to cure leprosy, or the Salk vaccine to cure polio or hundreds of other life saving advances is not considered.

The last permanent patients left the Jerusalem Hansen Hospital for Lepers in the 1960's. The Shalom Hartman Institute, across the street from the empty hospital was built years later. The Hartman Institute is a center of learning and reinterpreting modern American centered understanding of Jewish pluralism. Jewish pluralism or some might say relativism looks to find the good in all paths to God. American, British and Jewish religious leaders, from around the world, come to the Hartman Institute to discover, to experience and to carry back what they have learned.

David Hartman the highly respected son of the founder wrote in his essay Auschwitz or Sinai:

Gedalyahu Alon Street ends by intersecting with November 29 Street. Looking back on the left is the Leprosarium, on the right the Hartman Institute. There is an emptiness – a dissonance of the spirit at the two contrasts that are different and are the same.

In Jerusalem the words of the Torah are never far away. The hunger to understand the meaning of Gedalyahu Alon Street comes from the Torah.

"I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, [that] I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live;" Deut. 30:19

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