guide to the jewplexed



tissuesHome with a cold, sneezing and coughing, I wondered if my attitudes towards affordable health care were making me sick.

If you're like me, you figure that as long as your family has access to health care, why worry about what's happening with people who can't afford it. In a fugue of runny nose reasoning you figure: How can an outbreak over there affect me here?

Besides, as our heads fill with the news of national cold and flu outbreaks, isn't this the time of year when we look with suspicion on sniffling strangers?

As I suffered through a record-breaking week of tissue consumption, I bobbed my head in agreement with the advice dispensed by the cheerfully phobic TV news Doc: Wash your hands frequently, avoid close quarters, and wipe everything down with hand sanitizer.

As I watched, she pantomimed how to wipe down door knobs and toilet handles. "Avoid restaurant menus and elevator buttons," she warned, waving off contact with virtually anything another human had touched.

But in this rush to withdraw contact and Purell everything, I worried if we were at the same time washing our hands of reaching towards more accessible health care.

Under the influence of steam from a restorative bowl of chicken soup--research shows in addition to tasting great, it actually provides some health benefits - I began to look at the issue of access to health care from a Jewish point of view.

I recalled the Talmudic principle: "Kol Yisrael arevim zeh la-zeh," "All the people of Israel are responsible for one another." I had read that in the poorer areas of Boston, where the flu outbreak was particularly high, flu shots were hard to come by.

Were we all then responsible if our neighbor couldn't afford a flu shot? Should we care?

An editorial in Eurosurveillance, a European peer-reviewed scientific journal focusing on the prevention and control of communicable diseases, suggests we should.

In the piece we read that whether the poor receive effective health care, "Is not purely an issue of solidarity and social justice," wrote the authors who work for the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Stockholm, Sweden. In vulnerable populations, the authors conclude, the higher levels of infectious disease "Pose a health threat not only to them, but also to society at large."

So, how we feel about our neighbor's health care could ultimately affect our own health. Counter to what the TV Doc had advised, avoiding contact and Purelling everything wouldn't be enough--we would have to wipe down our phobic attitudes about affordable and accessible health care as well.

When a friend or family member is sick, Jews have a custom to wish them "Refuah shlema," literally a "Complete healing." It's our way of expressing "Get well soon."
But how can we wish someone a complete healing if they don't have the medical means to achieve it?

One of our higher values is "Bikur cholim," visiting the sick. But in what spirit can we visit them if we have not done our best to keep them well?

As we wheeze through winter, lining up for flu shots and check ups, I wonder, as a nation when a true refuah shlema will be accessible to everyone, and our visits to the sick made in good conscience.


Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate. In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."