Rabbi's
Sermons
Yom Kippur 5770
Day
September 28, 2009
On this day of atonement, in which vidui, confession, is a
necessary component to the process of repentance, I have a confession to make. I
have a real problem, a theological problem with a prayer that is very important
to most people. I am really uncomfortable with the Mi She Berakh prayer that we
recite for the ill. Oh, I don’t want you to think I am uncomfortable praying on
behalf of those who are sick. I just feel very uneasy about the idea of saying a
prayer which by virtue of reciting it we will get God to change reality. It is
just a little too close to magic. Does reciting the prayer cause God to make the
person better? And if we neglect to say the prayer or say it improperly will God
not heal? Do we truly believe that humans have this power over God to change
destiny? The underpinnings of such a prayer seems blasphemous and yet…we say
these prayers. And not only do we say them, but prayers for healing have become
popular across the Jewish spectrum. Liberal congregations devote whole worship
services to healing, and even in the most right wing Orthodox congregations it
has become common to place greater emphasis on these healing requests. But why
are we doing this? Do we really believe that we can bend God’s will if we recite
the prayers in an appropriate way?
Perhaps some do, but most of us, if we think rationally about
what we want to accomplish with healing prayers, know that there are a number of
valuable reasons for them. First of all it, it informs the community of those
who are ill, and hopefully generates concern among the congregation. I think
that it also strengthens the spirit of those for whom the blessing is said.
Knowing that people care enough about you to pray for you is encouraging to
many. And finally and not in the least it gives the caring community something
to do. When people we care about are sick it is discouraging not to be able to
do something for them. So if we ourselves are not in the healing professions, we
bring chicken soup, we do the mitzvah of bikur holim, visiting the sick, and we
pray for them. Often when I visit people in the hospital I let them know that we
are all a team to their healing – for them to get better they need to do their
part by staying positive and following the care directives from the staff, the
doctors and nurses have to do their part and we at shul will do our part and say
a healing blessing.
It reminds me of the story of the Hasidishe synagogue in a
small village that caught on fire, the fire dept came and was doing all they
could to put out the flames. The fire chief said to the rabbi, “We don’t have
that many firefighters, rabbi, we could use some help.” The rebbe said, “Of
course!” And turned to his Hasidim and shouted, “Don’t just stand there, Zog
Tehillim, Recite psalms!” See everyone of us has a part to play.
Calling on God to heal our loved ones is one of many examples
of prayers in which we call on God to do the good work but we understand that
for such a request to be fulfilled we must become partners with God. Whereas the
atheist says the Divine component is an illusion, religious individuals
recognize that the natural world is a vehicle by which God transmits Divine
action and blessing.
Not all Jewish teaching saw it this way. Some understood this
prayer literally, that only God provided healing and just as they believed that
all illness came from God for a reason, so it seemed reasonable that only God
could heal. The human role in healing was mute. But this did not become a
dominant strain in Jewish thought because the majority of Jewish scholars
followed a different approach. They taught that saving a life, the mitzvah of
Pikuach Nefesh, was considered one of the preeminent mitzvot, a command so
valuable that almost every other commandment could be violated to serve this
end. In the words of Rabbi Gail Labovitz a professor of Talmud at American
Jewish University, “This perspective validates medical expertise and makes the
practice of healing a religious obligation.”
Rabbi Labovitz points out that two verses from Torah in
particular serve as a foundation to what has become the normative Jewish view on
healing and access to health care. In Exodus 21:19 the Torah rules in a case in
which one person has injured another in an altercation, that the assailant must
see to it that the victim receives necessary medical attention: ”he shall
certainly heal him.” The rabbis of the Talmud, derived from the doubling of the
verb in Hebrew (Berakhot 60a and Bava Kama 85a) that this verse gives permission
to the human healer to heal. Moses Nachmanides, a scholar and physician himself,
noted in his 13th century work, Torat ha-Adam, “ people should not say ‘the Holy
One has struck (the ill person) and is the One to heal….(rather) it is a
commandment to heal, and is in the category of saving a life.”
From a second verse we learn that healing is not only
permissible, but can be considered a required act for those with the necessary
knowledge and training. In Deuteronomy 22:2 we learn that one who finds lost
property is obliged to return it to the original owner: “you shall return
it to him.” Since the Hebrew suffix meaning “it” can also mean “him,” the rabbis
reread the phrase, (Bava Kama 81b and Sanhedrin 73a): “From where do we know
that it is a mitzvah to return a person to health? “The Torah says, ‘return him
to himself.’” Moses Maimonides, one of the great Jewish thinkers and also a
physician (do we see a pattern here?), explains, (Commentary on the Mishnah
Nedarim 4:4), that this includes providing medical care: “the doctor is
obligated by law to heal...and this is included in the explication of the verse,
that ‘return it to him’ means to include (the ‘return’ of) his body...”
The responsibility for healing was not only on those with
medical skills but also on lay members of the community. Maimonides in the
Mishnah Torah, his great code of Jewish law, laid preventive care at the feet of
each individual: “Health and wholeness of the body are among the ways of God,
for it is impossible to understand anything of the knowledge of the Creator when
one is ill. Therefore one must distance oneself from things that harm the body,
and conduct oneself in ways that create health and wellness.”
Access to health care also was a requirement for Jewish
communities and Maimonides recorded this first on his list of the ten most
important communal services that a city had to offer to its residents (Mishneh
Torah, Hilchot De’ot IV: 23).
Thus a prayer for healing and the firm belief that God
provides healing for the sick was not an illusory hope nor an attempt to
manipulate the Divine to do our will, it was a call for human beings to actively
pursue a sacred mandate - Choose life that you should live.
And the pursuit for how best to fulfill that mandate
continues to this very day. Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, an Orthodox rabbi and one
of the leading religious authorities on Medicine today published in 1985 (Ramat
Rachel, no. 24; published in vol. 5 of Rabbi Waldenberg’s collected responsa,
Tzitz Eliezer) a responsum that insists that a bet din, a Jewish Court, may
compel needed medical care to patients unable to pay whether or not there is
reimbursement. However in a community where there are multiple doctors, no one
doctor can be compelled to provide services not demanded of the others. So Rabbi
Waldenberg suggests several means by which a community might provide for its
members, including paying for the medical care from communal charity funds, or
creating a system whereby doctors equitably share the case load on a pro bono
basis. Rabbi Waldenberg’s teaching emphasizes that providing health care, in the
final analysis, is the responsibility of the community as a whole.
And Rabbi Shlomo Goren, then the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, argued in a
1978 responsum that in fact this obligation upon the community meant the
government of the Jewish state to ensure that all citizens have access to
adequate medical care. He wrote: “The government may not excuse itself from its
responsibility toward the sick, since the government — and not the doctors — is
responsible for the health of the people”. (Sh’vitat haRofeh L’or HaHalachah,
Assia 21)
We are duty bound to be partners with God for healing. An
ideal Jewish society is one in which we are all responsible to keep everyone
healthy and secure. This command as we have seen does not fall only on the backs
of the medical providers but on the people who need health care as well. While
there is not one way that is THE Jewish way to provide for health care there is
no doubt that there is a Jewish mandate to make health care available for the
entire community. Thus it is not surprising that Jewish rabbinic and lay
organizations across the denominational spectrum have agreed that we must seek
the goal of an equitable system of access to healthcare in America.
Sadly this Jewish sensibility does not hold true in America
today. Too many of us American citizens either do not have health care, do not
have enough health care, or live in fear of losing our health care. The stories
are legion and tragic. And while I am sure that the medical professionals in
this sanctuary today know all too well first hand about this crisis, as a rabbi
I have heard too many disturbing stories, either in my office or from other
pastors in town:
The person who loses his job and with it his health care and
now must make the decision what does he pay for – continuing to pay high medical
premiums for he and his pregnant wife, keeping up his car payments or their
mortgage payment. Without a car he cannot get work, without healthcare the birth
of his child will put he and his wife in perhaps a lifetime of debt and without
a house…well, what choice would you make?
Or the individual who leaves their job for a significantly
better one that has only one drawback :the job does not come with healthcare,
you have to find your own policy, and before this person finds an individual
policy, the doctors find cancer. Now try to find an insurance plan with that
kind of pre existing condition.
Or the grad student who is about to complete her studies with
no guarantee of a job. She has health care through her school but what happens
after graduation? What if she can’t find a job right away? Incur more debt as a
student?
What about the child with a chronic illness, currently his
mother carries him with her insurance but when he reaches the age of majority
how will he find his own coverage? Why should a mother have to deal with such
fears in addition to her concerns for her child’s well being?
Or yet another case in which a mother does without her own
health insurance in order to assist in paying for her adult son’s continued
insurance after he lost his job. She was afraid of him being injured or coming
down with a pre existing condition before finding a new job and falling into
debt he would never escape. Would you be willing to make that sacrifice? But why
should you or any of us have to?
This is what I hear and other pastors in town hear all the
time.
The most recent census figures that came out in early
September show that there are just over 46 million uninsured people, that is 15
percent of the country. But the numbers are worse then that. First because the
number of uninsured children went down due to the government run Children Health
Insurance Program, meaning that the number of uninsured adults actually went up
and second, because these census numbers were taken before the recent recession.
Now look, some of you may be rolling your eyes and saying I
did not come to shul to hear politics. But this is not about politics, this is
about Torah and Jewish values. The issue is not whose health care reform program
is preferable. This is not about whether the Torah promotes Obamacare or not.
This is about how Torah demands that we create communities that fulfill the
mandate of “Choose Life”, this is about the mandate that doctors are obligated
to heal and the society is obligated to support their sacred work.
And if one were to say to me, as some in the Jewish world
might, ‘Well the Torah and Jewish scholars were talking about Jews healing and
caring for fellow Jews.’ I say that I think the people in this room are too
decent to go there. We are all proudly American and proud of what our nation
represents and as American citizens we are part of the fabric of this society
and take upon ourselves all the obligations of other fellow citizens. But as
Jews we must be informed by our tradition.
And our tradition demands that we strive to be Godlike. Rabbi
Hama bar Haninah asked, “How can a human being follow and hold fast to a God of
whom it is said that God is a consuming fire (Deut 4:24). He answered his
question, One holds fast to God and acts like God by imitating Divine Qualities.
Just as God clothes the naked, as he clothed Adam and Eve in garments of skin,
so you should clothe the naked. Just as God visits the sick, as when he visited
Abraham after his circumcision, so you should visit the sick. Just as God buries
the dead, as he buried Moses, so you must bury the dead.” And just as God heals
the sick, as God healed Miriam from leprosy, so we are commanded to heal the
sick.
Rabbi Irwin Kula tells of a Jewish doctor whom he met on
vacation in Nantucket who told him when he learned what Rabbi Kula did that
Judaism was silly and how he hated hebrew school. At some point Rabbi Kula asked
him what he did and he said he was a fertility doctor. “What is it like to be a
fertility doctor?” All of a sudden the doctor became reflective and said Rabbi
Kula wouldn't understand. Rabbi Kula said, “try me”. And he said, "well you see
people come to you who think they have death inside and if you are very very
fortunate you create life."
And he was quiet. And Rabbi Kula said to him, "Do you think
in some way, at the deepest level of your consciousness, in fact somewhere in
your subconscious there is some connection between your being a fertility doctor
and describing the creation of life the way you do and the fact that the very
first command in our tradition is to create life...that what God wants is more
life? And the guy burst out in tears.
Ours is a tradition that seeks to sustain and create life.
And our current healthcare system is not living up to our ideals.
We are not the only religious faith tradition that recognizes
that healing and universal access to healthcare is acting in Godlike fashion.
The United Religious Community published a letter to all the faith communities
of Michiana in which it reads in part:
“In the tumult over policy, many have lost sight of the moral
and spiritual principles undergirding the very issue of healthcare and
healthcare reform….We boldly proclaim that all persons have a right to quality
healthcare…To continue down the path we are going with rising costs and reduced
access guarantees that some will unnecessarily suffer and, in fact, die because
of indifference and neglect… As representatives of the member congregations of
the United Religious Community of St. Joseph County - Christian, Jewish, Muslim,
and Baha’i faiths – we call on our legislators and community representatives to
do all they can to achieve the changes needed in our present system that will
allow all access to quality healthcare and enable all of God’s children to be
confident that such care will continue and be there when they most need it.”
In a few moments we will intone the Unataneh Tokef prayer,
with its disquieting verse – Who shall live and who shall die, whose life shall
be shortened, and whose will not be; who shall have tranquility and who shall be
disturbed; who shall be at ease and who shall be afflicted; who shall be
impoverished and who enriched…
The refrain tells us that these fates are inscribed and
sealed during these 10 Days of Awe. But for many Americans, every day is a Yom
Nora, not an Awe – filled day, but an Awful day. Every day is a day of not
knowing your fate. Our liturgical response to the anxiety produced by these
words is that repentance, prayer and tzedakah can mitigate the bitterness of
whatever our destiny is to be. Our response as Jews and as Americans has to be
to support ways that our nation can mitigate the fears and suffering of millions
of our fellow citizens who either lack health insurance, are underinsured, or
fear losing their health insurance. And let us not forget that many of those
individuals are sitting in this sanctuary at this time.
Our tradition suggests a different vision for a healthy and
enlightened society. The prophet Micah envisioned a day when “(God) will judge
among the many peoples, And arbitrate for the multitude of nations, however
distant; And they shall beat their swords into plowshares And their spears into
pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up sword against nation; They shall never
again know war; Rather every man shall sit under his grapevine or fig tree With
no one to disturb him.” It is a vision of security and comfort and it is our
responsibility to act in ways that make that vision a reality.
May we in this coming year know when we intone our prayers
for healing that our words alone will not be a substitute for the actions
required to create access to affordable and quality healthcare for all
Americans.
