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Jewish, Liberal, and Conservative

This is a version of a section of the sermon I delivered last year on Yom Kippur. While I wrote it originally before any of the primary voting took place, I still think it helps clarify some of the choices before us in 2016. I welcome comments, and hope you will share this widely within your networks. For those of you who are religious but not Jewish, I am curious if there are analogies in your own faith or tradition that speak to you as well.

Let's talk about Jewish, liberal, and conservative.

Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative... At their worst, these are the names of teams that fight – gangs, maybe – or brands we like to be associated with. But at their best, these are clusters of ideals and values that guide us as citizens. A political ideology might be a heritage from your parents. A political party might be a reminder of a leader who commanded your respect and admiration.

Each philosophy has a truth. The fiscal conservatives make sure we worry that money, which is never unlimited, is well-spent for our wellbeing. The liberals make sure we don't neglect anyone, no matter why they are suffering. The libertarians challenge us to take responsibility for doing things ourselves. The social democrats remind us that ownership is not an unlimited prerogative.

And each of these concerns is a Jewish concern. Each of these truths might flow from some experience of the Jewish people in history, or from our understanding of the Torah.

So as we approach this year's election for president and Congress, think about being a better, more Jewish conservative, or a better, more Jewish liberal.

If you think of yourself as a political conservative, I ask you to think about becoming a more Jewish conservative. Your bedrock, already, is the idea of freedom – which is where the Jewish people began, the moment we began the struggle get out from Pharaoh's rule.

What you might trust the most is private initiative. For many families of American Jews, especially those who came over from the czar's empire a hundred years ago or more, the story has been about hard work, relying on family and friends and other Jews for solidarity, for capital to start a small business, the sacrifice of a parent to get the next generation to college.

If you believe in local community, that's because it's how Jews made it for nearly two thousand years. Across the world, for centuries, tzedakah was a system of local Jewish self-taxation. We forced each other to give, to organize education (for boys) at a level unheard of in the outside society, and to take care of hunger and disease within the community.

It goes almost without saying that if you are conservative, you value tradition and religion. These are forces that teach us and that keep people together, that we rely on even when we're not sure of the truth of every word from the Torah or our Sages. A conservative knows that society is hard to hold together.

To be a more Jewish conservative, you will have to think deeply about the substance of these beliefs, and what it takes to make them work in our society. And I think a Jewish conservative would play a crucial role, as a critic of conservatism who can sharpen it as a way of thinking and acting.

The Jewish conservative, knowing what it is like to be hated or discriminated against just for being Jewish, would call it out when conservatives are the agents of hate or discrimination, whether they intend it or not.

The Jewish conservative would have a certain perspective on business and free enterprise. When the culture of materialism goes too far and reduces people to objects and consumers, the Jewish conservative would speak in the name of a higher value, that all people are created in the image of God.

A Jewish conservative would be a watchdog, making sure that conservatives value traditions beyond Christianity for their insights and the social cohesion they create.

A Jewish conservative would be there to say that small, charitable communities do not exist everywhere or automatically. Not all groups have the traditions, resources, and social networks that Jews brought to this country to take care of each other. If we want to rely on these things, we have to take responsibility to help people create and build them, so they can work.

A Jewish conservative would respond to the prophets' call for justice, with a pragmatic question: Which groups in our society have which jobs in making sure that no one is left to suffer from want?

If you think of yourself as a political liberal, think about being a more Jewish liberal. Your bedrock, already, is equality – rooted in the liberation from Egypt. That was when we learned that a people regarded as the bottom of the heap of all humanity became the ones chosen as the vehicles to introduce God's Torah into the world.

What you might believe in most is our responsibility to make sure no one is an outsider, because of income or skin color or any other reason. Surely it is because we know what it is like to be an outsider, for century upon century and even in the most modern phase of this country's history. For many, Jewish identity in America has meant not just being our own group, but seeking a more encompassing social identity as Americans.

As a liberal, you may believe in sharing our resources to help those with less, because that is the Jewish duty of tzedakah.

If you believe as a liberal in audacious solutions to social and economic problems, it's because it took radical steps for us to end up where we are. Most of our families had to flee tyrannies to arrive in democratic societies, or worked to overthrow those tyrannies. That became the family tradition, the way of living in a Jewish idiom – by joining the labor movement or the civil rights movement and changing society dramatically.

To be a more Jewish liberal, you will have to think deeply about the substance of these beliefs, and what it takes to make them work in our society. And I think a Jewish liberal would play a crucial role, as a critic of liberalism who can sharpen it as a way of thinking and acting.

The Jewish liberal would remind other liberals that tzedakah requires community. When people who receive public assistance have to go to special offices and buildings, in different parts of town, the effect is to segregate and stigmatize, not to build relationships of partnership and dignity.

The Jewish liberal would remind other liberals that big solutions require a lot of groundwork, not just a lot of money, and the work has to be done by citizens. And they would remind other liberals that religion is not a small-minded way of building walls around ourselves, but a profound way of enlarging our vision toward God's own perspective.

The Jewish liberal would say that a society of individuals, set loose from authority and tradition, is in danger of losing faith in the idea of a moral compass, and that too can lead to the devaluing of people.

I hope I have said something recognizable to everyone, about the things you believe. There are a couple of possibilities. One is that I have indeed described your outlook as a liberal or a conservative, and given you something to think about in terms of rooting yourself more deeply in Judaism and in the Jewish story. The other is that you have heard truths in both my descriptions; that there is something of the Jewish conservative and the Jewish liberal in you. That would be good too. It would mean that liberals and conservatives have something to talk about, without seeming like people of different faiths or tribes.

After all, the political parties are not idols to worship, but tools for our good. Only the Torah was given at Mt. Sinai; the donkey and the elephant should not be our golden calves. The Torah didn't tell us what the marginal tax rate should be, but tells us where our focus should be. On issues of life and death, suffering and hope. In other words: political issues.

Whenever we vote, the outcome will be either-or. Yet if we can become better Jewish citizens – better Jewish conservatives and better Jewish liberals – we will have made a contribution no matter who wins. And we will have a stake and a role and a faith, hopefully, in the work that the next president does, whoever she or he will be.

A year and a half ago, I had the honor of accompanying my Congresswoman, Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, to the National Prayer Breakfast. I heard Julian Castro, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, read the words of Isaiah 58 that Jews hear in our synagogues every Yom Kippur:

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice
 and untie the cords of the yoke...Is it not to share your food with the hungry
, and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter...If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
 with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
 and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness.

In the grant hall of the Hilton in Washington, DC, I felt that religious words have a unique power to call us together toward our civic obligations. We all interpret differently whose job it is to implement those words of Isaiah. What proportion of individual effort, voluntary groups, local or larger government. But those are the words we must be interpreting. Our challenge today, as Jewish liberals or Jewish conservatives – as Jews, period – is to find a way beyond the pointing finger and the malicious talk, to make ourselves the light that pierces the darkness, the repairer of breaches in our society. That is a message we must all approve.

 

Learning from the Tragedy of Marlise Munoz z"l

Last weekend the tragedy of the Munoz family in Texas came to an end. Marlise was a woman, a wife and mother, who was pregnant when she collapsed at home last November 28 and was taken to the hospital. She was declared dead at the hospital on the basis of a standard known as “brain death.”

The situation was complicated by the fact that in Texas, there is a law that “life-sustaining treatment” may not be withheld from a pregnant woman, out of concern for the unborn fetus. And in fact, Marlise Munoz's situation is the most dramatic illustration of a fact of modern medicine: that once a person is declared dead, it may be possible through a mechanical respirator to keep the body in a state that allows organs to continue functioning so that they may be harvested for transplant.

What do we call a body in that situation, with blood and oxygen moving through a body – alive or dead? How far does the imperative of preserving life, such as through the donation of organs, extend?

This a gray area in the law – both American law and Jewish law – as well as in the experience of medical professionals. It is a gray area too for people whose loved one has died, and it is a philosophical question about whether death is in fact a moment in time.

Here are few thoughts, from the perspective particularly of halacha (Jewish law). These are musings, not edited or polished. I write them too with the awareness that first and foremost this is a family tragedy, for Marlise Munoz's husband and small child.

Is brain death the same as death? Rabbi Daniel Nevins wrote a comprehensive paper for the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative movement. He reviewed both traditional Jewish legal definitions of death, and contemporary medical understandings of death. His conclusion is that death is defined in Judaism not as cardiac arrest, but as the irreversible cessation of spontaneous breathing. Part of the clinical determination of brain death includes this test, and thus a person who is declared brain dead is considered to have died under halacha.

How should we treat the dead body when its organs can be “harvested” for donation? The word “harvested” is a terrible word, obviously. It seems to be the term of art.

Most of the Jewish world has come around to the idea that organ donation is an example of pikuach nefesh, the preservation of life. It is not only permitted, but encouraged, for people whose organs could save another person's life to donate them. (Why is it not, therefore, required?) In much of the Orthodox world, and in Israel, organ donation is understood to be the saving of life.

In hospitals, there are or should be policies to prevent staff from hastening the death of a person who is about to die, for the sake of the condition of the organs or if the recipient is deteriorating, or for that matter if the staff would just like to go home sooner. There should ideally be protocols that separate the staff who care for the dying person from the staff that come to prepare the organs for transplantation.

There is an emotional dimension for the survivors, who know that a loved one has died, and yet who know or even see that the person is being treated in the same way he or she would if still alive but in a coma.  How do you begin to mourn someone who has died, but look as though being kept alive?

To my knowledge, no one has tried to codify how long a body can be kept in a state that perfuses the organs without violating the halacha of k'vod ha-met, respecting the body of the dead. Jews view the dead body as still sacred, and deserving of a prompt and respectful burial, before the body deteriorates. In the typical case of organ donation, burial is not delayed for weeks, or even for days. Where is the soul in relation to this body?

Is preserving the fetus equivalent to preserving organs for donation? This is the unique question of the Munoz case, which I imagine will become a classic case for us to reflect on and study for this reason. If the fetus is an actual person, on the border between life and death, then its life would surely weigh heavily.

In Jewish law, the fetus does not have the same status as a living person. We know this from the Mishnah's case of a woman in labor whose life is in danger because of the delivery. Before the head emerges and the baby can breathe, the fetus can be dismembered to save the mother; once the baby's head is out, the baby must be protected.

At the same time, halacha does not say that abortion is permitted right up to birth without restriction, and Jewish law has no clear statement about how to regard a fetus, given that it has a body and a heartbeat and is on its way to being born as a person.

Someone might argue that since Marlise Munoz was, so to speak, not in danger by being kept on the respirator, the Mishnah does not speak to this case. Unless the birth is causing danger right now, the fetus should be sustained.

I cannot see that we would maintain a dead body artificially for weeks as an incubator for a fetus, even if Erick Munoz had consented. It would be a terrible burden on him, on the medical staff, on the hospital even to have to make this decision.

Maybe I am influenced more by science fiction movies than by reasoned arguments, because I am placing a value of k'vod ha-met above pikuach nefesh, the dignity of the dead body over the preservation of life. Rabbi Michael Broyde, an Orthodox rabbi on the faculty at Emory University Law School, argues that Judaism encourages us to “play God”, in his words. But even so, I think keeping Marlise Munoz on a respirator for weeks after she was declared brain dead was far beyond playing God for good reason. 

Had she been not declared dead but was likely to die, I could see her pregnancy being a factor in deciding whether or not to let her go sooner. But in fact, she was dead. We have no prerogative to override death in this way. Dead bodies are not available for us to use (but...what about cadavers for medical training?).  Had I been on the ethics committee at John Peter Smith Hospital, what would I have said to keeping her body on the respirator for just one extra day, just as might be done in order to donate her organs? As I wrote above, how long is a gray area, but there would have been no point in just another day. What if the fetus had been closer to viability?

So these are difficult questions. They test the meanings of k'vod ha-met and pikuach nefesh, and they test our kishkes, our gut reactions. My prayers are with the Munoz family. Perhaps they will derive some comfort, eventually, from knowing that Marlise's life and her death will help teach us to think about these difficult and important ethical and spiritual questions.

Please feel free to submit your thoughts and questions in the comments area.

The Talmud and the Constitution

I've been listening in the car and while doing dishes this week to recordings of the oral arguments at the Supreme Court over the Affordable Care Act.  I took two semesters of constitutional law during college, so I'm one of the people who understands why there is so much talk about the "commerce clause" rather than, say, the justice of the health care system in a broad sense.

So this posting too is not primarily about the justice of the health care system.  I have written and spoken about that -- for instance here, in a letter I wrote to President Obama in 2009 and read to the congregation.  I don't believe the Torah has a position on whether a single-payer system, or a regime of mandatory coverage minimums coupled with subsidies for the purchase of health insurance, is more right.  I do believe that care of the sick is a primary moral responsibility of society, as well as any smaller community.  If you're a strict libertarian, you could hold that the while the state or Federal government can't guarantee this, people and groups have a moral responsibility to do so.  I've been working for a while on a program that would get at these deeper questions of political philosophy; stay tuned.

In any case, it's been interesting as a student of both the Talmud and the Constitution to listen to the arguments.  I revel a bit in the presence of three Jews on the Court (33% of the Supreme Court vs. less than 2% of the U.S. population)!  There is something distinctly Jewish about the three, whether it's Justice Breyer's and Justice Ginsberg's public statements about justice and Tikkun Olam, or Justice Kagan's testimony that she likes to eat Chinese food on Christmas Eve.

More than that, I appreciate the Talmudic style of the oral arguments.  I love in particular to listen to Justice Breyer.  Part of it is his sonorous voice (no apologies for sounding here like a sports fan or a music critic).  What's best about Justice Breyer, though, is that he asks questions that truly probe and test the arguments, and he directs them at both sides.

Interpreting the Constitution is parallel in many ways to interpreting the Torah as a source of law.  The Torah and the Constitution each have a combination of specific provisions and generally stated principles about justice and rights.  It's clear in the Torah that a capital trial requires at least two witnesses -- that's a specific "constitutional" statement, akin to the Constitution's provisions defining a fair trial.

Often in the Talmud, one encounters the Torah's statement that "people are created in God's image" as a general, legal principle.  So, for instance, the rule (!) in Leviticus 19 to love your neighbor as yourself is conditioned by the more general statement.  If you don't love yourself at the moment, you must nonetheless treat others with respect and concern because they are created in God's image.

There are two related, big differences between the jurisprudence of the Torah and that of the Constitution.  The Torah was written once, while the Constitution can be amended.  But, according to the Talmud, the Torah is a "living constitution."  There is no philosophy of originalism when it comes to Torah law.  We say this in the blessing after an aliyah.  The Torah is both Natan lanu Torat emet, "a Torah of enduring truth that has been given", and Chayei olam nata b'tochaynu, "ever-living, planted within us."

My own Bar Mitzvah parasha was Shoftim, about the justice system.  There it says (Deuteronomy 17:8-9):  "If there a matter too difficult for you...then you shall get up and go up to the place that Adonai your God chooses, and come to the levitical kohanim and to the judge that will be in those days, and make an inquiry, and they will tell you how the matter shall be judged."  According to the Talmudic interpretation of these words, whoever the judge is "in those days" has the final word on the legal meaning of the Torah -- whether or not the judge is as great as Moshe.

The meaning of this authority, and how much latitude it gives, are of course as much debated among rabbis as is the true meaning of the Constitution among judges.

Some people might listen to the arguments at the Court and see only politics, or arcane words disconnected from justice.  There is that.  But at their best, the justices are grappling with their understanding of our Constitution, and the words in it that define the structure and system of our "more perfect Union."  The justices approach the words, and the commentary on them in books of cases that are a lot like our Talmud and Torah commentaries, with great care.  Though the Constitution was not written by God, it has a unique stature.  Through the American people in each generation, working in tandem with the leaders and judges who have tried to express its meaning in new words.

Health Care Reform

As the health care debate reaches yet another crescendo, here are some interesting things:

• Statistics from Dr. Ken Dolkart's presentation at Temple Beth Abraham on January 31, 2010.  One of the most interesting was how much the growth in people working in medicine-related administration (offices, insurance companies, hospitals, etc.) has outpaced the growth in the number of physicians starting in the mid-1980s.
  
  
• The famous article by Dr. Atul Gawande about how Medicare dollars are spent so differently in two different places, and the lessons that might be drawn.
  
  
• An interesting and entertaining (!) overview of the American health care system and its costs by Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton, one of the country's leading health care economists.
  
  
• The Rabbinical Assembly, the organization of Conservative rabbis, is a member of Faithful Reform in Health Care, an interfaith coalition.

Dear President Obama -- A Response to a Conversation about Faith and Health Care

On Wednesday, August 19, I participated in a conference call with President Obama on the subject of health care reform.  The call was organized by the Religious Action Center of the Reform movement, in conjunction with the Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbinical associations.  I formulated my response in the form of a letter, which I read in shul last Friday night and am sending to the president.

August 21, 2009

Erev Shabbat

Dear President Obama:

I was honored to join a thousand of my rabbinic colleagues on the telephone with you this past Wednesday, to hear your charge to speak about health care reform in this country when Jews gather next month for the High Holidays.  Just to hear the voice of the president of the United States coming out of my own telephone -- I confess I put it on speaker, so my children could hear too -- it brought me once more to appreciate the great blessings of freedom and equality that we enjoy as citizens of this country.  Little more than a century ago, all my family still lived as they had for centuries in places where because they were Jewish, they did not enjoy the privileges of citizenship.  In places where the government was often their enemy, and certainly not their agent.

Mr. President, you approached us this week as fellow people of faith.  I wondered how you would do that, what would be different in this conversation from your other talks about health care.

You began by reminding us of the most vivid of our prayers on Rosh Hashanah.  We say that on our choices depend who shall live and who shall die, who will have the chance to live out the fullness of life's years and who will not.  Who will be serene and who will be tormented because they don't have the means they need to face life's challenges.

You reminded us that the discussion throughout the country right now is about how we take care of the sick, and whether in fact we do take care of everyone who is ill or injured.  While the talk is about dollars and cents, public options and cooperatives, the real issue is life and death.  Who has the care they need to live, and who will die because they cannot afford it.  You said that caring for our brother and sister and for our neighbor is a teaching of every faith.

Then you told us that you know we hear the stories of medical care denied, as pastors and counselors and open ears in our communities.  And you told us the principles and goals of your reform proposals.

To be frank, Mr. President -- it was a good beginning.  But that was all it was, and I was disappointed.

If we rabbis, and the many other pastors and people of faith you addressed later that day, are going to ask people to raise voices for the changes you seek, you are going to have to do more.  And you are going to have to rely on us, religious people and religious leaders, in a deeper way, as more than a possibly sympathetic interest group.

We're going to need you to be a better teacher.  We're going to need that voice of yours, that prophetic voice, that captivated so many people last year.  Then we might be in a position to speak out, about health care bills moving through Congress, from a standpoint of faith.

So let me presume to give you some teaching advice, and some Jewish advice.

If you are going to teach us, you'll need to remember that telling us the goals of your proposals is not the same as explaining how and why they'll work.  When the financial system collapsed in the 1930s, President Roosevelt's fireside chats were models of clarity.  He explained what a bank is, what a system of banks is, what happens when there's a run and exactly how, step-by-step, his acts would reopen the banks.  Slow down with us.  If someone would trust us and break it down, any of us would listen, even those on the far right or the far left.

For goodness sake, find one of the kids who has been working at Pixar on Toy Story 3 and get her to stand you in front of a green screen.  They do wonders digitally these days -- you could appear to walk with a dollar as it moves from employer to insurance company to hospital to employee or equipment maker.  You could use split screens to show how medical dollars are spent for the same need in Miami on one side, and the Mayo Clinic on the other.  Help us see the savings that are supposed to pay for all this.  Surely all those young folks Tweeting for you in the campaign can help you out here.

On the moral level, I want to tell you some things you can learn from the Jews.

It's true, a lot of people use the word "community" or talk about the general idea of "love your neighbor as yourself."  It's common language, and I know you want to use it to reach across religious lines.  In Jewish ethics, we are very practical about this.  Who is your neighbor?  What is loving your neighbor?  What is the community?

In our Torah reading for this week, in Deuteronomy 21, we get some very specific answers. Here is a fascinating law.  A body is found -- God forbid! -- out in the open, outside a town, and no one knows who killed the person.  The elders and judges of the nation go out, and they measure the distance from the corpse to each one of the towns in the area.  Whichever town is identified as the closest -- the elders of that town are now presumed to be guilty of a murder.

Their only way out is to perform a ritual, involving the blood of a calf that has never pulled a plow, at a pristine river bed not used for irrigation.  They wash their hands, and then they must declare out loud -- "Our hands did not spill this blood, nor did we see what happened."  They say:  We know that we cannot bear to live in a land where innocent people are killed.  Only after the ritual, and their words out loud, is their guilt cleared.

Who is your neighbor?  If it's not a friend or relative, the Torah says:  Take out a measuring stick, and the closest community in miles, that's how you define neighbors.  It's as simple and concrete as that -- you are responsible for a neighbor's life because she has passed this way.

As this ritual was interpreted later, the Talmud sharpens a few details.  The death took place in a remote place, but the leaders of the nation respond, personally.  They can't staff it out.  Whichever town is responsible can't send a small delegation of its leaders to perform the cleansing ritual -- every leader of that town has to show up.

Finally, the Talmud interprets the words at the ceremony.  "Our hands did not spill this blood" -- It's not that anyone thinks the leaders murdered someone.  Rather, the leaders say -- We did not let this person come into our town hungry and leave without feeding him.  We did not let this person think it was safer to go away from us into the wilderness, rather than stay in an unfeeling place.  We did not let this person leave town without an escort as he went into unfamiliar, dark terrain where there might be bandits.  We didn't act like we were responsible only until he left our sight.  If we had seen him, we would have cared for him and protected him, until we could see him to another safe place.  Though we didn't see him, we know that his death is a blot on our community -- because he passed through, and the last place he was whole was with us.

What is "love your neighbor"?  Keep him safe, keep him fed, keep him alive.  What is community?  Community is who does those things, because there won't always be an individual looking who can do it.

Mr. President -- the words of "love your neighbor" don't answer the question by themselves.  So say more than cliches. Tell us that each person who falls ill without access to health care walks with an invisible string unfurling from behind, attaching back to every place she passed while she was in good health.  Ask us what we would do if, God forbid, she became incapacitated or died, and the measuring led back to our community. Ask us if we can truly wash our hands and say we don't see the person who chooses between food and drugs, between paying the rent and seeing a doctor.  I know you like the positive, Mr. President, but as you yourself said, this is about who shall live and who shall die.  Don't let us hide from that.  A little fire and brimstone wouldn't hurt.

To your credit, Mr. President, you are stepping up, just like the leaders in the field from Deuteronomy.  So are many other leaders, at all levels and in both parties.  Some aren't.  Some of those who aren't read the Bible too, so you may want to bring this story from Deuteronomy to them.

I am sharing this letter with my congregation as we welcome Shabbat in our synagogue.  As a religious gathering, we embody even more about the meaning of community.  Some of the people here tonight live here, some come from elsewhere -- yet we know that we are linked.  We know in our bones to identify with people welcoming Shabbat all over this country and the world.  So we know that community is not only the measuring stick, the potentially visible, but also our unseen distant connections.  When you speak to us as people of faith, remind us to teach others what we know about community.  That we are linked, and responsible beyond what our eyes see.  That we as faith communities have a unique role to play because we experience community ourselves in a unique way.
 
You asked us rabbis on the phone to be a shofar, and call out on this matter of caring for the sick.  You please do that better, Mr. President.  Help us see that to you and our other leaders ,this is a matter of conscience and faith.  Then we will find words appropriate to our role.

You closed your call by wishing us a Shana Tova.  Right back atcha, Mr President -- I hope you have a good year too.  I know we need you to.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Jonathan Spira-Savett