Not the Health Care Sermon You Were Expecting

You may have read this in your email in-box, but it’s worth a repeat:
The first Jewish woman President is elected.
She calls her Mother: "Mama, I've won the elections, I’d like you to come to the swearing-in ceremony."
"I don't know, what would I wear?"
"Don't worry, I'll send you a dressmaker"
"But I only eat kosher food"
"Mama, I am going to be President of the United States, I can get you kosher food"
"But how will I get there?"
"I'll send a limo, just come mama"
"Ok, Ok, if it makes you happy.”
The great day comes and Mama is seated between the Supreme Court Justices and the Future Cabinet members. She nudges the gentleman on her right and says, "You see that girl, the one with her hand on the Bible?...Her brother's a doctor!"

How many of us here tonight ever had a parent nudge them toward medical school—successfully or not? And the rest of you…law school, right?

The medical field is a bit of an obsession for the Jewish people. From having the best chicken soup recipe to believing that we know everything about skin cancer because we had a mole in 5th grade, we are a medically focused people. Health care is incredibly important to us.

Now don’t leave just yet. I am not going to talk about politics tonight or the national plan for health care. While it is a good idea to discuss Health Insurance Reform, that is not our topic for this forum. The truth behind the joke of the mother at her daughter’s inauguration is that for us medicine has greater significance than politics.

The Jewish view is that health care is imperative, preventative, and collective. We must care for ourselves when we are sick, we must do everything in our power to stay healthy, and we must take care of those who are sick as a community. Let’s take a look at each of these three facets of Jewish Health care.

Jewish health care is imperative.

Above all else, Judaism teaches that human life is the most important thing there is. Deuteronomy tells us we are to choose life and live (30:19). Genesis tells us we are all created in the Divine image (1:27), which means we need to treat the form our souls inhabit with respect and dignity. Leviticus tells us not to stand idly by the blood of our neighbors (19:16).

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, recently cited these texts. From them he points out two central ideals that Judaism adheres to. The first is that an individual’s life is more valuable than anything, and saving the life supersedes almost all else. Second, God has endowed us with the understanding and responsibility to be God’s partner in making a better world. Using our ability to cure illnesses has been a central thought in Jewish history.

From these two ideals—that life is sacred and that we are commanded to protect it—the Rabbis from Talmudic times to today have continually offered requirements for us to fulfill both of them.

The Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin (17b), lists ten things we must have in any city where we would reside. It says:

A Jewish person should not reside in a city where the following ten things are not found: (1) A court of justice; (2) a charity fund; (3) a synagogue; (4) public baths; (5) toilet facilities; (6) a mohel; (7) a doctor; (8) a notary; (9) a shohet; and (10) a school-master. Rabbi Akiba is quoted [as including] also several kinds of fruit [in the list] because they are beneficial for eyesight.

Six items on the Talmud’s list are directly related to health care issues. Public baths because cleanliness helps prevent certain skin afflictions, infections, and bacteria. You know all those signs that tell us to wash our hands? Well, the Talmud knew about that almost 2000 years ago.

Toilet facilities—well, I hope I don’t have to go into detail about why keeping waste away from homes is beneficial. Having bath houses and restrooms also increases the town’s general aesthetic and decreases its environmental impact.

A mohel, because the very first time a Jew has elective surgery, it should be done right.

Having a doctor in town is also obvious, and often when this passage of Talmud is quoted, “doctor” is the only requirement cited.

A shochet is a kosher butcher, which is related to the preventative aspect about health care. We need to get our food from a trusted source—someone who knows the ins and outs of preparation of anything we would put into our bodies. This is also why Rabbi Akiva, like many of our parents, tells us we should eat a little fruit. It’s good for you.

The charity fund is also part of health care. It is the Jewish belief that the public is responsible for helping the poor pay when they cannot afford the best care. The Shulchan Aruch, Joseph Caro’s 16th-century compendium on Jewish Law, takes it a step further. Caro writes that Jewish doctors must cover all costs of treatment when their patients cannot afford to pay. But I promised this would not get political, so we’ll move on.

Six out of ten things we must live near relate to health care. It is a Jewish imperative to take care of our bodies, to get proper treatment when we are sick, and to ensure that our neighbors are cared for as well.

Jewish health care is preventative.

Even before we are required to take care of anything wrong with us, we are required to keep bad things from happening to us.

We believe that God owns everything, including our bodies. Since they are gifts from God, it is our responsibility to care for them. Just as we are obligated to take care of a car on lease or a house we rent, we must take care of that which God has loaned us. Exercising, eating right, getting enough sleep, and maintaining good hygiene are not for appearances. These are religious duties that keep our covenant with God regarding our bodies.

One of the greatest Jewish scholars of all time, Maimonides, was both a rabbi and a physician. Boy was his mother proud!

One of Maimonides’ writings is called Mishneh Torah, a 14-book compendium of Jewish law, philosophy, and practices. Early in this work, in the section call “Laws of Ethics,” he writes:

…when one eats and drinks it should not be done simply for pleasure, or else a person might eat and drink only sugary foods. Rather, pay attention to eat and drink in order to maintain the body health. Therefore, one should…eat things that are good for the body—whether they are sweet or bitter. Also, one should avoid eating that which is bad for the body, even if they are sweet to the palate (Hilchot De’ot 3:2).

Maimonides also speaks out against over-indulging and the sicknesses that can come from it, and he presents a plan for regulating the diet. His nutritional guidelines are almost exactly what the USDA teaches grade school students in the form of the healthy eating pyramid.

A note regarding over-indulging: Judaism often appears to give mixed messages about eating and drinking. We sanctify with wine. We use bread at our meals. We encourage certain foods for certain holidays, such as jelly donuts, hamantashen, and blintzes—none of which are considered healthful. On Purim we are even commanded to drink alcohol until we cannot tell the difference between Haman and Mordechai. Do not think that this means we are to put our health at risk.

Anyone who cannot physically or psychologically handle sweets or alcohol or any other type of food is forbidden to take part in these practices. We are allowed to use grape juice in place of wine. We can replace our sugary confections with a piece of fruit. If we can handle it, then we are permitted to celebrate according to the dictum, “Everything in moderation, including moderation.” If we cannot, it constitutes a danger to our health, and according to the Shulchan Aruch, “One should avoid all things that might lead to danger, because avoiding a danger to life is more important than complying with a ritual” (Yoreh De’ah 116:5).

Knowing that we are to avoid danger easily gives us understanding of what Jewish law says about smoking. We have known the dangers of smoking for years, and the negative effects it has on our health, even if we are only bystanders. Cigarettes are the only products legally sold to us that, if used the way they are intended, will kill the users. It’s only a matter of when.

We are commanded to do whatever we can to avoid the need to receive medical treatment. Eat right, exercise, maintain good hygiene, use alcohol sparingly, and stay away from cigarettes and recreational drugs. We do what we can to prevent the need for health care.

Jewish health care is collective.

Health care is a communal concern. When someone in our community is sick or in need of healing, we react together. When we pray, our daily liturgy is full of prayers that thank God for our health or asking God to keep us healthy. We recite Mi Shebeirach for the sick when the Torah is open to demonstrate its severity. There is a prayer for healing in the Amidah, as a part of Asher Yatzar, and elements of health and protection in Haskiveinu. We thank God for giving strength to the weary and lifting up the fallen.

At Temple Sinai when we recite Mi Shebeirach during a Shabbat morning service, we read a list of names. These are people who might have asked for our prayers and people who might have been put on the list by our partners. If anyone ever feels they need us to pray for their healing, we will absolutely say a Mi Shebeirach for you. All you have to do is let us know you are in need.

Do we believe that God miraculously grants healing to the sick? That by praying the sick will be healed? Not necessarily. But we do believe that there is great power in community, and that together our prayers do reach God. If our prayers do nothing else, then they give comfort to the sick. Comfort helps to relieve stress, and less stress means more healing. So maybe our prayers can be effective.

We add to our prayers with action. The morning blessing Eilu Devarim reminds us that Bikkur Cholim, visiting the sick is one of the duties whose worth is immeasurable. Bikkur Cholim, is a central Jewish value. Rabbi Litwak, Cantor Kruk and I visit partners in the hospital or at their homes regularly. Our caring community does it as well. Spending time with someone who is sick is an easy way to show that we care, and it brings a little light into a dark time.

The practice of Bikkur Cholim is exemplified in a Midrash:

When Abraham was circumcised and was in pain from the circumcision, God told the angels to go and visit him. But before they arrived, God came in first, as the Torah says, “And God appeared to [Abraham] and after that, “He lifted his eyes and saw three men approaching” (Tanhuma Vayera 2).

Abraham circumcised himself at 90 years old. He was in a great deal of pain, and God came to visit him. The 41st Psalm tells us that “Adonai supports one who lies on a sickbed.” So it is not just biblical characters that merit God’s attention, but anyone who is ill. Like the poem about the footprints in the sand, God is with us when times are hardest. If Bikkur Cholim is important enough of a duty for God to practice it, think about how much more so is it incumbent upon us to visit the sick. In fact, when we sit with someone who is ill, we are representing God.

We can also help by healing with our feet. In a few weeks, the weekend of October 16th, we will hold our second annual Pink Shabbat for breast cancer awareness. We will pray for those who a re struggling with breast cancer, rejoice with those who have survived it, and remember those who have succumbed to it. On Friday evening, October 16th, we will have a special Shabbat service here in the sanctuary. On Saturday morning we will join the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. We will meet bright and early for a very brief Shabbat service in the amphitheatre at Bayfront Park in downtown Miami. After services we will attend the Survivor Ceremony, followed by the 5K Run or Walk for the Cure.

Temple Sinai is currently the only Jewish organization sponsoring this event. Even though the Race for the Cure is on a Saturday, we feel that participating falls under the guidelines that saving a life supersedes all else. We hope you can join Team Sinai, put your pink on, and walk with us. More details are on flyers in the Bloom lobby.

Whether we are praying, visiting, or walking, we respond to issues of healing as a collective—a strong caring community—emissaries of God.

Not everyone can be the doctor that would make our mothers so proud. But everyone can and should be a part of the healing process. It is imperative for us to be healers. It is crucial that we keep ourselves healthy through preventative measures. We face health issues as a collective.

May this year be a year of good health for all of us and our families.

A year of providing necessary care.
A year of maintaining our health with our good habits.
A year of caring for each other and staying active in our caring community.

21st Century Jews

Pay attention, this may be the only time you hear me make a sports reference in a sermon:

A few years ago, someone from the congregation I was working with approached me just after Rosh Hashanah. “Rabbi,” he said, “I know next week is Kol Nidrei, but that night the Steelers are playing. The Steelers are my second religion. I’ve got to watch that game on TV.” I said “that’s what VCRs are for.” “Oh!” he said, looking surprised, “you mean I can tape Kol Nidrei?”

How many of you are on Facebook? Look around at the people in this room with our hands up. For the few of you who have not yet connected to the phenomenon created by Mark Zuckerberg, allow me to offer a brief explanation. Facebook is a social netweorking website. "Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region." This definition is according to Wikipedia, an online collaborative encyclopedia, where users can edit the encyclopedia’s entries, which were until very recently immediately posted to the site, and later submitted for review. Now a panel reviews all submissions before they go live.

But there are other wikis, which allow users to collaborate immediately about documents or other projects….

Wait. Am I going too fast here?

Does anyone know what this is?

This is the Gutenberg Printing Press. Built in the 15th century, it revolutionized reading, making it possible for the average person to afford books. In 1455, the Gutenberg Bible was first printed and has remained number 1 on best-seller lists ever since. Before the printing press, only the wealthy were literate. Writing implements and parchment were expensive, and most literature was transcribed by professionals who had to be paid. Plus it took time to read, and time was also a luxury of the rich.

Today we live in a literate society, thanks in part to Gutenberg and his Printing Press. Of course if you don’t want to lug around books, you can use one of these:

The Amazon Kindle is a book-reading tool that allows users to read from a “paper quality” screen held easily in one hand. The first version of the Kindle came out in November, 2007, and was sold out in five and a half hours. The latest version, the Kindle DX, which you see here, is the size and weight of an average magazine, holds approximately 3500 non-illustrated books, and has a battery life of two weeks. The price tag hasn’t yet made it accessible to everyone, but to everyone who missed my birthday a week ago, if you each kick in a dollar….

I have one more bit of technology to show you. Does anybody know what this is?
This is called a node, or a touch graph. It is a graphic display of about half of my Facebook friends, grouped according to network. I’m the larger red circle in the middle. Some of you might be in the red group, which represents my Miami connections. Perhaps the best thing about Facebook is demonstrated by the node. What keeps me intrigued about nodes is the knowledge that every one of these dots on my node has a node of their own. If you were to pick any random dot on this Touch Graph, you would see a similar graph with that person in the center, connecting me and everyone on my node to them indirectly. The combinations are infinite to connect any two people on Facebook. There are hardly six degrees anymore.
Facebook has revolutionized networking, allowing people to connect with others to help them find a job in this difficult economy. Employers are now checking Facebook pages of applicants before offering them a job. It has become the final stage of the interview process—what is your social networking image?

Admittedly, I am a bit of a technophile. I was among a small group of rabbinical students with palm pilots plugged in to collapsible keyboards in rabbinical school. I rarely used a pen and paper. I was among the first to get a laser keyboard that projected onto my desk and sensed where my fingers were—when it worked I could type by tapping my desk. I use Facebook daily, I use a Zune at the gym, I text with an average rate of 1400 outgoing and incoming each month. At a meeting about technology for about 50 Miami Jewish professionals, I was the only one in the room with a blog. This sermon was intentionally edited and discussed using as much technology as possible with the help of Rabbi Bradley Levenberg from Temple Sinai in Atlanta. We used a wiki, Twitter, Facebook, email, and cell phones both for talking and for texting.

Temple Sinai is integrating technology into our practice regularly. We use a program called Hineynu to help us know who in our congregation is celebrating a simcha or suffering a loss. Temple Sinai has a Facebook Group, as does the Jacobson Sinai Academy and the Sinai Parents’ Association. We have a beautiful new web site that Debbie Blooomfield and Cantor Kruk spent most of the summer putting together. On the web site a JSA parent can find the Digital Backpack, David Prashker’s answer to the problem of too much paper being sent home. Our newest toy is an internet camera which we have used for three webinars so far. Our Log-in Lunch and Learns for the High Holy Days have been well attended on line, and we are very excited to offer more interactive learning opportunities. New innovations in technology allow us to do amazing things. We hope to keep taking advantage of all of them.

There are also some drawbacks to overuse of technology. Seven years ago my father (z”l) and I were driving Natalie’s and my things from storage in Cincinnati to our new apartment in New York. He spent most of the time on his cell phone, and I spent most of the time with my headphones on. Neither of us did it to avoid the other. We enjoyed each other’s company and had a great time chatting at restaurants and in our hotel room during the day-and-a-half journey. It just happened because we wanted to plug in. We were close enough to touch, and yet with our devices we put bubbles around ourselves and hardly spoke a word to each other in the car.

We see this kind of thing all the time. Kids in restaurants texting or playing hand-held video games. Parents at the dinner table answering the cell phone instead of talking to the people in front of them. Drivers. Oh, Miami drivers. The average speed while talking on the cell phone with a hands-free device is 10 mph slower than while not using the phone at all.
In the 21st Century we have a great task ahead of us. It is our responsibility to make technology accessible to as many people as possible, and at the same time to stay plugged in to each other and not just to our machines. We need to revel in physical contact as much as we enjoy wi-fi connections.

Natalie and I recently had the “good touch/bad touch” conversation with our five-year-old Gabriel. Gabriel loves to pick apart details of any instructions we give him, so he kept asking which kind of touch certain activities were from non-strangers. “Hitting?” “Bad touch.” “Hugging?” “Good touch.” “Kissing?” “Good touch if both people want to kiss.” “Tickling?” “Usually good touch.” “Spanking?” “Bad.” “Potching?” “Good.” After exhausting his list, he came to a conclusion. “Daddy,” he said, “there are lots more kinds of good touch.”

I hope he’s right. Touching is generally a very, very good thing. We know that newborns need to be held. Holding hands with a new romantic interest can be electric, and holding hands with our spouse can be comforting. We hug and kiss people we haven’t seen in a while, and some of us hug and kiss every time we see certain people.

In the 1986 remake of The Fly, Jeff Goldblum’s character is trying to make a teleportation machine, but whenever he sends an animal through it ends up destroyed on the other side. Geena Davis’ character helps him make his transporter work when describing how it makes grandma’s crazy to pinch babies’ cheeks. He can only send a live creature through his teleporter after he teaches his computer to love flesh, to go crazy over it like a grandmother over a baby’s cheeks.

Technology can keep us simultaneously connected with hundreds of “friends” on Facebook. I can send an e-card to my sister on her birthday. This sermon will be posted on my blog.

We cannot use technology to hug our friends. I won’t be able to see the look of surprise on my sister’s face when I actually remember her birthday. And while we appreciate emails and calls after a loss, nothing compares to the warmth of an embrace and the comfort of the loving presence of family and friends.

There are very few of us who would deny that in person is better than on line for certain connections. Taping Kol Nidre just doesn’t cut it. And isn’t it better to go to the stadium than to watch the game on TV?
So what does Judaism say about Modern Technology? It is pretty hard to find a Biblical story about the internet or a Pesikta from the Talmud about web-based technologies. But we can glean the Biblical lesson about modern technology by reading about the technological achievements of Genesis. First, The Tower of Babel.

[The people of earth] said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them hard." -- Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar. -- And they said, "Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world." Adonai came down to look at the city and tower that man had built, and Adonai said, "If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another's speech." Thus Adonai scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, because there Adonai confounded the speech of the whole earth; and from there Adonai scattered them over the face of the whole earth (Genesis 11:3-9).

The inhabitants of the ancient world did not have electronics. Their technological advances were the bricks and mortar they used to build a tower. The Torah would not mention the architectural style—using bricks burned hard—if it was not significant. We can learn from this that they were utilizing the very best of their engineering abilities. The tower of Babel was the most technologically advanced design of the day.

The people declare they want to build the Tower of Babel to make a name for themselves, and to not be scattered all over the world. They want to make themselves great. God comes down, sees what they are doing, and punishes them with the very thing they were trying to avoid in the first place. God knows that if they are only concerned with themselves, they will suffer for their egotism. Perhaps if they were building a tower to be able to visualize the grand scheme of world issues, we would all still be speaking Hebrew today. When technology is used only to better ourselves, we lose sight of the world at large.

The other side of Biblical technology comes a few chapters earlier, from the story of Noah. God gives Noah instructions about how to build a contraption that will, in essence, save the world:

Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make it an ark with compartments, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you shall make it: the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make an opening for daylight in the ark, and terminate it within a cubit of the top. Put the entrance to the ark in its side; make it with bottom, second, and third decks (Genesis 6:14-16).

While the reenactment of this story from the movie Evan Allmighty makes this technique look ancient, in Biblical times this was top-notch shipbuilding. Again the important distinction is not only that Noah was able to build an ark that could hold all of the world’s animals. Noah’s purpose was not self-serving. He was acting at God’s command to save the world. Noah’s technology provided protection from the destruction of the world.

So it is not technology that causes problems. It is how we use it that matters.

Sometimes we can become too focused on the technology itself and not enough on what it can do to help others. We can connect with people across the globe for free. We can donate money to Israel with a click of our mouse. We can express our solidarity by joining the fast for Darfur. We can learn from incredible resources and inspirational leaders.
Just as the High Holy Days is our time to reconnect with ourselves, we need to find that balance between connecting on line and connecting face to face. May our connections this year bring us great fulfillment and joy. May we find our hearts more linked than our modems, and our ability to reach out enhanced.

Shanah Tovah