Levitical Reflections on the Health Care Bill: What Was Missing in the Debate?

Levitical Reflections on the Health Care Bill: What Was Missing in the Debate?

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

May 8^th, 2010

 

I am not sure whether my maternal grandmother ever read the last two sedras of the book of Leviticus but she certainly lived her life according to its ideals. During the Depression, when the evictors came to throw you and your  belongings out of the apartment and onto the street for non-payment of rent, my diminutive grandmother would schlepp on her back the furniture back into it. It certainly must have made quite a scene on the streets of Boro Park section of Brooklyn, New York. In my lifetime I remember that the outer of the two shopping bags was always that of the ILGWU - International Ladies Garment Workers Union. In her earliest life my grandmother worked in the sweat shops rolling cigars and making umbrellas. With a grandmother like that, two grandfathers and a father who were factory workers all their lives, I grew up with the issues of Leviticus, social justice, workers' rights, unions, and health care as my daily fare, as much as the real food that my mother served at the kitchen table. Listening to passionate Yiddish conversation - of which I understood little but loved its cadence and intonations, and the Workman's Circle Arbiter Ring are as part of me as the air I breathe.

 

It is with those eyes, ears and heart that I ruminate on the Health Care Debate recently paused - not concluded - in the reflection of the sedras of Behar and Behukotai. While the debate focused on costs, cuts and coverages, there was something essential missing in the argumentation. Exactly in this point Judaism has a great deal to say and add to the conversation. The piece that disturbs me most and that is missing is the following:

 

The belief that: Everyone is equal. Everyone is holy. Everyone's well-being is sacred. Thus, everyone's health should be equally cared for. A just society takes care of everyone. A society were some are and some are not, some are  cared for more and some are cared for less, is rotten in its core. Why is there a debate at all? Is not the cardinal value enshrined in America's holiest document that we are "entitled to the pursuit of life"? How do you have life without health? Why didn't the debate focus on being a just and moral society? That was not in evidence.

 

I can put my finger on the one detail that makes everything clear to me. Why is it, how can it be that a person elected to Congress and serves only one term will received the best medical care in the land for life, yet the person who will break his or her back in the most laborious trades, sweating in the summer and freezing in the winter, without whose labor we could not live, can have no health care at all? It is not a question of cost. It is an issue of the view of the collective society. Are some of us more holy than others? Are others less holy than the rest of us? It is an issue of justice. This is what was missing in the health care debate. Even worse, the underlying assumption is not everybody should have health care.  The haves have it, and the have-nots do not. This attitude Judaism most strenuously rejects with all its might.

 

These two Torah portions have a great deal to teach America and contribute to the debate that is far from over. I will indicate just a few pieces.

 

1. No body owns the world. No body owns health care. God owns the world. We are temporary custodians of all that is in it. We read that God says: "Kee Lee Kol HaAretz" - "Because the world world in Mine."  We are recipients of God's gifts and stewards of it, once received. We are transient and what we have is impermanent. We don't own others. We barely own ourselves. How dare we keep health care from others, minimize and restrict, while others "have it all"? Health care is God's gift to humanity.

 

2. When society acts unethically and immorally it will ultimately be destroyed. This week I paused to wonder: Which is more dangerous to the existence of the United States? The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? The SUV that nearly blew up in Times Square? [I have been there for a number of New Years Eves.] Or sick people that can't see a doctor and get medicine? Which threatens our society most? The Torah says: sick people. The chastisements - the Tochecha - in Behuckottai indicate that the people lose the right to the land and will be destroyed not because of idolatry but because of immorality, specifically, the breaking the laws that protect individuals, workers rights, taking care of the poor and ruling with justice. These laws, the Torah says, came from Sinai, just like the "big ten" to indicate how central, critical and core they are to have a proper society.

 

3. It is too bad that when they etched the words on the Liberty Bell that they didn't do it in Hebrew. It says: "And proclaim d'ror - translated as liberty - throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof." What does d'ror mean? Rashi explains that the word comes from "dar" meaning "to dwell" and indicates that a person can live wherever they want; they are unfettered; they have true freedom of movement. Ibn Ezra has it refer to the freedom of a little bird that can fly wherever it desires. Nachmanides also connects it to living wherever we want but refers to "b'nai chorin" - a term that should echo from Pesach seder - namely - that we are not enslaved, not to a Pharaoh, not to anyone. The context for all these comments is the release of indentured servants in the Jubilee year and the resetting of the economic clock to the pristine moment when all were equal. No matter how distant from reality, it is a dream to which to aspire, a vision of society that elevates all, but none to high above others; a healthy society, where the public policty about health care for all is a matter of justice and righteousness.

 

4. I close with reference to one further commentator, called Ba'al HaTurim. He plays gematria and counts the value of the letters of the word d'ror as 410 [ daled is 4, vov is 6 and resh is 200 twice = 410]. He notes that the duration of Solomon's Temple was 410 years from its construction to its destruction. Regardless of historical truth, the point is well taken: Their world was destroyed because human beings were destroyed; because society became unjust; because the poor and the defenseless were trampled; because of the inequality of wealth and privilege. Soon America will celebrate its 234^th year of independence. May this grand experiment in human governance long exist and its flag proudly wave. May it truly proclaim d'ror throughout the land, for all its inhabitants.                                                                                             Shabbat Shalom.