November 2007 Archives

I took part in a phone conference earlier this week with Gil Hoffman, the chief political correspondent for the Jerusalem Post to hear his reflections on the Annapolis conference--a conference for which expectations were so low that everyone is coming away pleasantly surprised by the outside chance something may actually come of it. Gil began his remarks by observing that every 30 years, in November, something extremely significant for Israel’s future takes place. In November 1917, it was the Balfour Declaration, stating the British government’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In November 1947, it was the United Nation’s vote to partition the territory of the Palestinian Mandate, effectively creating the State of Israel. In November 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to visit Jerusalem, laying the groundwork for the Camp David Accords and the possibility for Israel to make peace with her neighbors.

Who knows, Gil said--perhaps the Annapolis Conference of November 2007 will go down as the turning point that led to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians?

Rabbi Stern has many good reasons to be pessimistic about the ultimate outcome of the peace discussions begun this week at Annapolis.

However, not everything appears as dark to me as it does to Rabbi Stern. Why? For several reasons. First, because at Annapolis, Saudi Arabia met for the first time directly with Israel. This is big news.

Speaking to my congregation last week as part of our series on “Israel: Can There Ever Be Peace?,” Rabbis for Human Rights Director Rabbi Arik Ascherman, explained that our wariness over provisions in the Arab peace plan proposed by Saudi Arabia in 2002 have obscured how monumental a step it was that Saudi Arabia--protector of Mecca, Islam’s holiest city--was willing to publicly acknowledge its willingness to officially recognize Israel and sign a peace treaty with it. This is a far cry from the 1967 Khartoum Resolution of the Arab States that cited the three “no’s”: no peace, no negotiations, and no recognition of Israel.

In theory the Annapolis summit between Israelis and Palestinians sounds like a good idea. It’s been a really long time since Israelis and Palestinians substantively talked about the possibility of peace. It’s been an even longer time since the Bush Administration actively involved itself in the dispute between the two parties and who even knows when was the last time an Israeli or Palestinian governmental official traveled to Annapolis? If you wonder why I mention this last issue it’s because that when looked at closely it’s the best, if not the only reason why anyone should be going to Annapolis.

I appreciate Rabbi Grossman’s overview of Jewish texts pertaining to the mandate to heal. I would add Chapter 25 of Leviticus which, while not directly relating to health, speaks to the question of obligations to those in need that are borne on the individual level versus obligations that are born collectively--at the societal level. Chapter 25 of Leviticus speaks of the yovel or Jubilee year, which is the 50th year when all land that had switched hands for whatever reason in the previous 49 years reverted back to its original owner. Debts were forgiven and slaves were freed--in essence, whatever inequities had developed over the prior 49 years were wiped clean. By acknowledging God’s power rather than worshiping our own, yovel functioned as a check on society--a built-in mechanism to ensure we would not end up with haves and have-nots, and a recognition that sometimes wealth would need to be redistributed in order to make this happen.

Rabbi Grossman has the right idea when she states, “As Jews we seldom have one position on any issue. Certainly, the idea of health insurance did not even exist at the time of those writing our great codes of Jewish law.” That said she goes on to argue why Judaism would support a form of universal health care. While I am less sure than she is as to whether “Judaism” would back the Democratic party’s universal health care proclivities, I am pretty certain that such is the case with the vast majority of Clal Yisrael (the Jewish people) today. Simon Greer in a great post on jspot makes a very compelling argument for why, as a Jewish community, we are (and should be) concerned with the state of health care in America. Greer tells us: