Shabbat Sermon: The Healing of the Gila Monster with Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger

From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Last week, I came across a fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine. Kim Tingley, in her article “‘Nature’s Swiss Army Knife’: What can we Learn from Venom ?” writes about the incredible potential of highly toxic reptile and insect venom to provide pharmaceutical miracles. It turns out that reptile and inspect venom contains hundreds, even thousands of molecules, which each have the ability to act in powerful ways on the human body. In the aggregate, the venom can have disastrous consequences. But applied strategically and sparingly, these compounds can make a world of difference.

Take, for example, the wildly popular weight-loss drugs Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound. These drugs were created from research into a venomous reptile called the Gila monster which lives mostly underground in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. It’s a very striking lizard—typically they have a black head and matching black tongue, black legs, and a tiger-like pattern of orange and black down their back and tail. And they are highly toxic. If you Google them after shabbos, you’ll find a bunch of stories of people who have lost their lives to chance encounters on hiking trails or from bites from Gila monster pets.

Gila monster venom had been screened back in the 80s, but when gastroenterologist Jean-Pierre Raufman and endocrinologist John Eng re-screened it, they discovered a molecule that had been previously overlooked which resembled a hormone that regulates insulin in healthy humans. That molecule, which they called Exendin-4, is the basis for these weight-loss drugs which have so transformed the medical landscape.

Learning about this research and these medicines made me wonder—what would happen if we were able to look at the toxins in our lives with the same outlook? There is no universe where we would see all the misfortunes of our lives as helpful or even healing, but would it ever be possible to get to a place where we could see elements of the challenges in our lives as having blessed us with possibility?