Whether it’s a flood, a tornado, a civil war, or the U.S. invading the country, whenever lots of people have nowhere to live or little to eat—or when the power, or the medication, runs short—the media use the same term: “humanitarian crisis.”

 

Think about that term for a minute.  An energy crisis means there’s too little energy.  A humanitarian crisis means there are too few humanitarians?  Nonsense! 

 

What makes it a crisis is that for some long period of time, people have been put into a vulnerable position.  Sooner or later, people in poverty or people in a war zone will begin to die in large numbers.  When they do, humanitarian agencies are called in to rescue them, but that only serves to conceal the political decisions that led to their deaths.

 

Calling a Darfur, an Iraq, or a New Orleans after the hurricanes a “humanitarian crisis” is pointing the finger in the wrong direction.  It is not some special class of people called humanitarians who should be concerned.  We are all human, and we are all responsible.

 

 

 

 

I’m sorry for being out of touch lately.  Rona’s been somewhat incapacitated by a minor car accident just after Christmas, and I had to wet-vacuum the basement when the sewer backed up, and shovel the walks when the snow came down. 

 

On the occasion of the Patriots’ making it to the Super Bowl, however, I thought I’d take as my text today one of Coach Bill Belichick’s famous oracular sayings.  Reporters ask him about his team’s record, or about challenges they face, and he just shrugs his shoulders and says, “It is what it is.”

 

Anyone who knows Belichick’s record understands that when he says this, he is not being stoic.  The phrase is not an expression of his calm, philosophical resignation.  He wouldn’t have led the team to an undefeated season if he didn’t care whether he won or lost!  No, “It is what it is” means something like “Why are you asking me what this team is all about?  Their actions are who they are.  Their actions speak for themselves.”

 

A couple of weeks ago, in the first Torah portion of the book of Exodus, we find a similar phrase from the coach of a team much harder to coach than the Patriots.  Moses is attending God’s press conference at the burning bush.  He poses to God the question, “When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” 

 

God answers with the Hebrew phrase, “Ehyah-Asher-Ehyeh.”  It’s very hard to translate this phrase.  Older versions give “I am what I am,” but that makes God sound like Popeye the Sailor.  Others translate, “I will be what I will be.”  The one sounds too obdurate, the other too uncommitted to be the reassurance that Moses is seeking.  Because the Hebrew root hayah can mean either “to be” or “to become,” it’s possible to read God’s remark as “I will become what I will become,” or even “I will become what I am becoming.”

 

All the English translations are inadequate—but any of them will do if we read the Torah the way we read the saying of Coach Belichick.  “Moses,” God would seem to be saying, “why are you asking me my name: in other words, who I am and what I am all about?  You cannot know God as some distant reality that only God could explain.  Know God by God’s actions.  If I am ‘the God of your fathers,’ know by me what I have done.  If I am becoming your God, commit to Me, and know what I am becoming.”

 

From this point on, Jews are less interested in what God is than what God does—and what God asks us to do to repair the world.  God is a winning coach.  God takes the stiff-necked people of Israel and gives them the guidance and the confidence they need.

Dear Mr. McDonough,

 

How can the president of an organization named Health Care for All support the Romney mandatory health insurance plan in Massachusetts?  It isn’t health care.  It doesn’t include all.  And it’s not “for” those who are enrolled.

 

The Massachusetts plan requires individuals to purchase their own health insurance—but the affordable plans people can purchase hardly cover anything.  There’s a huge “deductible,” a payment people have to make up front each year before the insurance policy pays a dollar.  If I go to the hospital for a week, sure, I’m covered after the first day.  But if I go to see my doctor or dentist, or if I have to buy prescriptions or eyeglasses, I’m the one who’s paying.  How many thousands of Massachusetts residents will be insured but never get any more health care than they have now, under this plan?

 

And what about all the people who won’t be insured, even under this “mandatory” system?  You and the hospital executives who cobbled together this plan recognize that for some desperately poor people, or even people with a decent income but a lot of expenses, there’s no plan on the market that can really be called affordable.  You graciously exempt them from the system.  But that means they won’t have health insurance, the same as before.  What will Health Care for All say when they turn up at your door?

 

A strictly commercial logic decides who’s in this plan and who’s out.  People who can’t pay are out, even if they need health care.  But people who can pay—or this new bureaucracy called the Connector, in its infinite wisdom, have decided ought to be able to pay—well, those folks are in, whether they want to be or not!  If they won’t pitch in to help the poor hospitals (huge corporations, mostly) pay for the bills, under the Romney plan that you endorse, they will be fined.  Up to $912 a year, according to today’s Globe.  You’ll get their money one way or the other.  Tell me again why this benefits the public?

 

Mr. McDonough, when you were a state rep, you knew that “health care for all” means health care as a matter of right.  The same way we are all entitled to a public education, we are entitled to publicly funded health care.  The so-called single-payer system, sometimes referred to as Medicare for all, is simple and cheap.  The Massachusetts program is complicated and expensive—for everybody except insurance companies, who get a load of new customers.  When are we going to stop paying for insurance and start paying for health care, for all?