Letters to the Editor - Sept/Oct 2009 
A NEW STIMULUS
While we are waiting for the miraculous advent of economic democracy (as described by John Sanbonmatsu and David Schweickart in the May/June 2009 issue of Tikkun), perhaps good-hearted people and institutions could advocate a few helpful transitional populist ideas. One such idea: create a decentralized second stimulus. There is a lot of work that could be done and people to be employed on a low-skilled, even no-skilled basis. Unemployed people could be paid a living wage, say $15 per hour, to help make their rent or mortgage, medical bills, or car payments.
Think outside the box of top-down, labor-saving, energy and machinery-using projects like standard highway construction and other typical infrastructure projects. "Shovel-ready" in my sense, refers to technology appropriate for creating labor-intensive "infrastructure micro-works," maximum jobs for stimulus and the general welfare. My "shovel" is the "pick axe and shovel" technology that built the original railroads and was used by the Civilian Conservation Corps. It could be reused nationwide to build a twenty-first-century electrified hi-speed rail line and a smart electricity distribution grid, using thousands of local work crews.
Also nationwide, there's an enormous need for easily trained, small-group child care givers. Evidence in the book Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children shows that forty-one hours of small-group, out-of-home day care, with an encouraging caregiver who engages the children in talking, from eight months to school entrance, raises the verbal skills of children born in poverty to the same level as those of employable working-class parents. The caregiver doesn't need higher education; he or she just needs to talk with the kids and show them encouraging rather than prohibiting behavior.
Thus I suggest we advocate a program of stimulus-bypassing states and counties-directly to small cities, boroughs, and townships, where councils and managers can create projects and hire unemployed local people to carry them out. This is not "make work." The work is there to be done. It is a "produce jobs" program.
Infrastructure microworks could be done by unemployed people showing up at municipal halls with a social security ID, signing an "assumption of risk" waiver of municipal liability with workers' compensation funded by the federal stimulus program. The manager or mayor would use paid municipal employees to supervise the work. Workers could be paid at the end of each day with hard-to-counterfeit American Recovery Scrip, $15 per note, which they could deposit or redeem for cash at local credit unions, savings and loans institutions, or banks. The institutions could be incentivized by having the Federal Reserve credit their interest-bearing reserve accounts with dollars so they could loan more money.
Jacob Coxey's idea of non-interest-bearing bonds issued by municipal localities, with "higher" governments required to provide proceeds, could be combined with advocacy of state-owned banks to produce a vastly cheaper way of financing state deficits and infrastructure work. Coxey's bill would have required the U.S. Congress to provide proceeds of a bond created by any municipality to employ local unemployed workers to build local infrastructure. The proceeds would be secured by the value of municipal real estate and repaid at 4 percent per year over twenty-five years with zero interest from local real estate taxes. A state bank such as North Dakota already could use the inherent leverage of its fractional reserves to close any temporary budget deficits. Such a bank would receive all state taxes and fees and, keeping 8 percent reserves, would be able to lend the state 12.5 times its reserves.
Given the deafening roar from mainstream media of "no alternatives" to the current policies, our failure to advocate these ideas and get people asking "Why can't we have decentralized stimulus, non-interest-bearing bonds, state banks, etc.?" risks losing even the teachable moment this collapse presents.
ROBERT COGAN
Edinboro, PA
WHY THE LEFT LOST SINGLE-PAYER REFORM
Thank you Rabbi Lerner for the information in your health care editorial (Tikkun, July/August 2009). I'm an old-time member of ACT UP, the AIDS activist organization in New York City also pushing for a single-payer system. Obama again recently said he doesn't want to disrupt the present system. Doesn't he know it's been disrupting many people's lives for years now? I myself have not been able to afford to see a dentist since 1986.
Bill Moyers a few weeks ago called our existing system a "health medical business" or something like that. He had a great show last month on this, starting off with people getting hauled off and arrested at hearings in DC. I think they were the Health Care Now coalition. That's what ACT UP did in response to the AIDS crisis-civil disobedience leading to our arrests. That tactic got people talking and it ought to be used by people today who are upset about the health care system as it is.
Also I hope the impact of your analysis of health care in Tikkun encourages more spiritual leaders to address our health care problems. Hopefully they will create town meetings to hear the health care needs of their own communities and to come up with suggestions on making it accessible and affordable to everyone. For me personally, a workable plan now is better than nothing in moving the health care reform issue.
GEORGE PLAGIANOS
New York, NY
One of the reasons I am a member of Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) is because of its advocacy of single-payer health care. I am saddened and angry to see Rabbi Lerner throwing in the towel in the July/August 2009 Tikkun. Even if many of us have already been doing so over the years and months, it is my belief that this is not the time to give up. It is at precisely this time that we should be flooding our local and DC offices of U.S. representatives and senators with our thanks to those who have signed on to single-payer legislation, and a demand to the others to do likewise. (I'm sure that many readers are aware that a way to find out who is signed on to HR 676, HR 1200, and S 703 is to access http://thomas.loc.gov.) In addition, all Congress folks, whether already signed on or not, should be told to use their power to follow through with this prescription of Dr. Aaron M. Roland's in "The Health Care Battle Lines" in the same issue of Tikkun: "There must be a complete, honest, side-by-side comparison of all major proposals, including HR 676, the most prominent single-payer bill, by the Congressional Budget Office. The side-by-side comparison must include projected costs now and into the future, not only to the federal government, but also to state governments, employers, and individuals and households of different income levels."
The Lerner and Roland editorials have much good thought and information. What I object to is the giving-up attitude. Genuinely fixing our health care system is a great challenge, but if not now, when?
PEGGY KACEREK
Bedford, OH
I disagree with the title of Rabbi Lerner's editorial: "Why the Left Lost Single-Payer Health Care Reform." We haven't lost national health care because we haven't stopped fighting.
We learn from Parashat Pinchas that the entire Exodus generation including Moses was barred by G-d from the Promised Land. A free nation must devote its life and soul to just action, even if it means passing realization to a new generation. The Israelites were slaves. They needed the immediate gratification of fire and thunder, earthquakes and plagues to recognize the Divine Presence. A free people can hear the still, small voice within.
I am director of a health and human services department for a challenging county. We have some of the highest rates of poverty, overdose deaths, and diabetes indicators in the United States. I have been in my position for fifteen years. It took four years to build our community's first playground, seven to establish a residential treatment center, and ten to create the first county-run HHS department in New Mexico. We are still trying to convince policymakers to consider data when allocating resources. I know from firsthand experience that it will take more than a new financing system to change the way people think about health care. We have reached the banks of the Red Sea. We have not even begun to wander through the Sinai.
I agree with Rabbi Lerner's premise that our politics must become a spiritual pursuit. A friend of mine is fond of saying that while we were waiting for the pendulum to swing back, "they moved the whole effing clock to the right." The right wing did not make its gains by winning a presidential election. Its proponents used religious issues to secure local governments one school board, county commission, and town council at a time. They sustained their movement over the course of a generation. And that is exactly what we must do.
Dr. Roland is correct about our bottom line for the public option. And Rabbi Lerner is correct that the public does not trust government. Most Americans' direct experience of government comes from their interaction with local officials from schools, public health departments, zoning offices, police departments, etc. For the past forty years or more, these offices have been packed with individuals ideologically inclined to treat the public as criminals. We must change America's attitude about government one community at a time. And we must do it from within.
Even if we are able to restructure health care financing, underserved communities across America face severe shortages of dentists, specialists, ambulances, trauma centers, and behavioral health services. The dysfunction of our public health system caused by forty years of neglect will be blamed on reform efforts. We must empower communities to address dysfunctions locally, while simultaneously offering the opportunity to buy into a public option.
Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Representatives Green (D-TX), Wamp (R-TN), and Smith (D-WA) have introduced S 652 in the Senate and HR 1614 in the House, the Community Coalitions Access and Quality Improvement Bill. This legislation funds community coalitions across the United States to develop integrated health care delivery systems. Empowering twenty to thirty diverse communities to solve health care problems from the bottom up, while offering the public and states the ability to buy into a robust public option, will create the grassroots movement we need to build national single-payer. Best of all, because this obscure bill has not been associated with single-payer, it has not developed opposition. A little push on our part could send it sailing through.
On our June 6 Tikkun conference call [the weekly call for Tikkun subscribers and currently paid-up members of the NSP to speak with authors who have written recent articles in Tikkun on topics of domestic and foreign policy, social theory, religion, or mass culture-info on the latest one appears on our website www.tikkun.org], Dr. Roland drew attention to the April 9, 2009, Conyers-Kucinich letter requesting states' ability to buy into a public option. We can shorten the path to single-payer by funding strategically placed community coalitions in states poised to enact single-payer. By integrating care locally, these communities can develop data, grassroots organizing, and media campaigns drawing attention to real problems and solutions. While I also am disappointed that Obama has not done more to enact radical change, I am not ready to give up on him. If he cracks the door open, we can enter.
I have come to believe that it is not enough to walk in the ways of the Lord. We must be persistent and sneaky.
LAUREN REICHELT
Rio Arriba County, NMAaron Roland replies:
Lauren Reichelt's letter is an important and insightful addition to the discussion from one who both understands the pace of political change and the messages of our teachers. I am reminded of my grandfather who was fond of repeating the phrase that is said every year at the completion and resumption of the reading of the Torah: Hazak, hazak, v'nithazek. We must be strong, be really strong, and strengthen ourselves further, for the battle for justice in health care, as elsewhere, will be difficult, and perhaps even never-ending.
Michael Lerner replies:
Far from giving up, we at Tikkun magazine and the NSP have been extremely active in outreach urging support for single-payer. Within the various health care alliances in the religious world, we've continued to push for a public commitment to a single-payer plan. My editorial was meant to help people understand more fully what mistakes have been made, not just by Obama or congressional Democrats, but also by most of the advocates for single-payer reform. Until those are addressed, we are unlikely to gather the mass support needed for a single-payer plan.
Sadly, we've been undermined by some allegedly progressive voices in the religious and particularly Christian Evangelical world that have represented to the White House and to the public that "the religious community is only willing to insist that health care is a central ethical and religious issue, but does not have any specific plan to recommend." This position has been presented to the White House, and essentially it has been heard as saying "whatever you in the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress come up with, we in the religious community will back you." This may serve to make it easier for those religious leaders to keep their credibility and access with the Obama administration and Democratic Party insiders, but it made it harder for our Tikkun/NSP voice as advocates for a single-payer plan to be heard. But we intend to continue to advocate for some variant of the single-payer idea, no matter what does or does not get passed in this session of Congress.
THE RENAISSANCE OF WESTERN POLITICS
Many thanks for Andrew Samuels' excursive article in Tikkun (July/August 2009). As a British Christian, I want to say "Amen" to many of his insights. At one point, however, I want to shout "NO!"
Andrew raises the challenge of Americans not responding militarily to September 11, and says the alternative was to do nothing. Rubbish. Responding legally rather than militarily was, and is, an alternative.
Treat terrorists as criminals rather than an opposing army. They are outlaws who need to be brought under the law. Treating them as enemy soldiers gives them dignity in their own eyes and in the eyes of their local communities. A military response necessarily involves damage to the terrorists' local communities, not least because terrorists ensure such damage by hiding in and behind these communities. This damage strengthens the communities' antagonism to the military power and their ties with their compatriot terrorists. A legal response strengthens the message that terrorists are criminals not to be harbored by their communities and separates out terrorists from their communities through measures like rewards for information.
International terrorists need to be dealt with by international law. It is high time America not only joined the International Court but strengthened the role of the court in combating terrorism. The first objective should be to have international arrest warrants issued for international terrorists. Then work out ways that police forces and communities can enforce these warrants. New developments are needed.
The International Court should be given power to investigate all sources of funding for international terrorists and to cut off their financial support. The court should be able to issue enforceable search warrants throughout the international financial and banking system. Technically this would not be difficult. Cutting off financial support is more effective than military action.
The history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland shows the strength of the legal response. At no point did Britain attack Irish Republican Army (IRA) bases in Eire. The aim throughout was to bring terrorists under the law. Troops were involved, but primarily to support the police and judiciary. The great change in Northern Ireland came not through a military surge but through cutting off funding for terrorists, especially the funding coming from the United States, after September 11. The cooperation of the U.S. administration in stopping IRA funding was crucial. This should be a model for all international cooperation to deal with terrorism.
We British, of all people, know that the legal response is the better response to terrorism. We, of all people, should have pointed the Americans to this alternative, instead of joining Americans in their exaggerated fear and consequent military response.
The difficulty with adopting the legal response is that it goes against cherished myths and beliefs, that it dethrones idols: the myth of redemptive violence; the American escape from corrupt European culture, including biased law; the American tradition of taking the law into their own hands; the Western idolatry of the banking system which must be allowed to preserve its cultish secrecy ...
The legal response to terrorism is not an easy option. But let's not forget that it is an alternative to the military response.
ROGER HARPER
Walsall, England
Andrew Samuels replies:
This deeply felt letter illustrates the problem of getting out of the Western box absolutely perfectly. From the point of view of a search for fresh ideas, launching the bombers or going to law are just not as different as they seem. Both are time-honored white, male, Western ways to go. My suggestion about "doing nothing" was a metaphor for providing the space for critical reflection.
As to Northern Ireland, you could say that things shifted the moment the Brits and the Unionists stopped saying the constitutional arrangements, sanctified by law, were non-negotiable. They got out of their mental and spiritual prison and moved into uncharted waters yet pregnant with the hope of peace.
Imagination needs some odd-sounding articulations before it can regularly inform political discourse.
A NEW IDEA FOR ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Leaving to the reader to work through the arguments presented by Professor Russell Nieli (Tikkun, July/August 2009), I would claim that the proposed New Idea would fail as the others before it, since the plan is not going far enough. Nieli overlooked an important fact that in addition to occupying Arab lands and drinking Arab water, Jews breathe Arab air! That is the fundamental reason for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in the twenty-first century! For peace to come, the Israeli Jews must stop breathing!
To solve the Mid Eastern conundrum, as well as further improve the plan of Professor Nieli, I would propose to Tikkun magazine to initiate a forum for exchange of ideas designed to find the most humane and environmentally friendly way to prevent the Jews from breathing Arab air. The feelings of "empathy" that will arise among the Arabs, if a right solution is implemented, will guarantee peace for generations to come.
F. BRAUER
Fair-Lawn, NJ
Inter-marriage nationhood-style. Russell Nieli has a sober approach to the delicate Arab-Jewish national dispute in Tikkun's July/August issue. But can such combination of land-sharing be viable in the long run-for the Arabs? Much of the Arab obstacles to a somehow binational state indeed involve the "understandable" fear of Israeli supremacy in the spheres of economy and trade. To have a somehow joint state in the disputed Mideast area will exhibit an Arab shortcoming, which again is intolerable to the Muslim feeling of inferiority.
A clean-cut two-state solution was proposed a long time ago. And maybe it is not a viable solution at all. But my feeling is that the Arab/Palestinian fear of competition with the dynamic Israeli entrepreneurship is what really held them back in the days of the Oslo peace plan. Nieli's condominial proposal does not mention these psychological obstacles at all.
KIEL HESSELMANN
Nykoebing Falster, Denmark
Palestinian children suffer from hearing loss from the sonic booms of continual IDF overflights. Nieli's suggestion that the IDF be able to fly over the Palestinian part of the condominium is singularly lacking in imagination. His reason-Israel would never accept the condominium arrangement otherwise-is ludicrous; Israel will never accept the condominium solution he proposes in the first place. As for the IDF, they can fly over the Mediterranean sea, not Palestine.
PATRICIA GORDON
Brookline, MA
God knows any suggestions for a just and immediate resolution of the Israeli/Palestine stalemate is to be welcomed everywhere at any time, but Russell Nieli's article in the July/August issue would benefit from more than a little bit of "realpolitik."
The most unrealistic suggestion offered concerns the thorniest issue of all-military parity, or lack thereof.
"The Palestinian state would be restricted by treaty obligation in terms of the size and capabilities of its armed forces so that it does not pose a serious military threat to the state of Israel, etc." After what they have been through for decades at the hands of Israel's military superiority (thanks in part to the United States), how could any Palestinian agree to this restriction?
Why not suggest instead that Israel restrict its vastly superior military force and cut it down to a size that it does not "pose a serious military threat to the state of Palestine?"
The fact that this is not suggested indicates one huge blind spot in the eyes of those making suggestions for a solution to this horrendous problem.
Why not address, instead, a real "out-of-the-box" solution such as how to get rid of the pernicious ethnic hatred and fear that has been building up between these two Semitic peoples over recent decades of fear and violence? And why has this not been addressed sooner by the governmental agencies of both sides? A courageous minority of Arab and Israeli citizens has been working on this issue for decades, but without sufficient influence on the two governments to overcome the equally pernicious idea that killing and destruction will "overcome" the problem eventually, and that peace will prevail if only one side can wipe out the other side.
The Palestine/Israel problem is a reflection in miniature of every war everywhere anytime, and it would vastly improve the chances of the human race for survival if those who want to make peace were provided with the means, the money, the cooperation, and the support with educational tools, public podiums, meeting places, and electronic devices to work "outside the box" of nationalism, exploitation, and militarism. Inadequately funded, small organizations have been working on-site for years, yet most people never hear of them. Why is that?
JEAN GERARD
Cambria, CA
Russell Nieli replies:
"Military parity with Israel" is not high on any Palestinian wish list that I have ever seen. Palestinian Arabs desire mainly three things: 1) a state of their own; 2) the right of Palestinians to return to-and to settle in-all of Mandate Palestine, including what is now the territory of the state of Israel; and 3) an acknowledgment by Israel and the world of the injustice of Lord Balfour's original declaration (issued without the slightest Palestinian consultation) and of the subsequent injustices involved in the implementation of the Zionist project. For Israelis, however, there is no higher priority than, 1) security against potential military threats posed by their Muslim neighbors; and 2) the preservation of Israel as a Jewish ethno-religious state. For the Orthodox, an additional priority is the right of Jews to settle in Judea and Samaria, the heart of Biblical Israel.
While the priorities of the two peoples cannot be reconciled within the context of either a two-state partitionist or a unitary, one-state solution, they can be reconciled, I suggest in my Tikkun article, if we are willing to think outside the box and adopt something like the two-state condominium arrangement I outline. However, such an arrangement is only possible if Israel is permitted to maintain its current military superiority. At least in the near-term, Israel will never submit to any arrangement that threatens to weaken the relative strength of the IDF vis-à-vis Israel's Muslim neighbors, and it has the strongest historical reasons for acting this way.
Under the condominium arrangement, the Palestinians will have one very powerful source of leverage over a militarily superior Israel: broadly based Palestinian acceptance of the legitimacy of the Jewish state will be the key to overall Muslim acceptance of Israel, an acceptance that will be threatened if Israel uses its military superiority to bully the weaker Palestinians. Since the most difficult-to-adjudicate issues of land and water resources are ultimately placed in the hands of an international court, the condominium arrangement will give Israel powerful incentives not to mistreat Palestinians and thereby risk all the advantages of peace and concord that the condominium arrangement offers. It would be nice if we could live in a world where military power and nationalistic feelings need not restrict our vision, but, alas, as Reinhold Niebuhr taught us, we must address humanity in its fallen state and strive to achieve under given historical circumstances the most just arrangement practicable.
MORE POSSIBILITIES FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE
I am not well informed about all the competing "solutions" to the impasse, but right about now it would be a good idea to have mock or make-believe negotiations of different kinds-young people getting together from different countries and pretending to be representatives from different factions or nations that are interested in resolving the never-ending crisis.
The proposal to condominialize or whatever is full of interesting ideas that need to be discussed, rethought, and formulated in different ways. In the midst of such exploratory talks, student forums, etc., an issue of Tikkun that had two different experts writing about a three-state solution that included Lebanon in a very loose common market and/or in a Swiss federation with Israel and Palestine, might be an important part of stabilization. Triangles being more stable and all that.
What about getting other neighboring states such as Egypt, Jordan, and Syria involved in swaps of small pieces of land so that a slice of Israel and a slice of Lebanon might be made into a corridor to the sea for Palestine? Israel gets some land from Egypt to enlarge the suburbs of Eliat on the Red Sea. Lebanon gets a part of the Golan Heights and Syria gets to use the new southern corridor to the sea?
I'm just babbling about stuff I know nothing about, but: 1) putting a wider three-state solution/Swiss confederation model on the table and literally playing with it, moving pieces around, imagining the cantons (some multicultural, others almost mono-ethnic, etc.); 2) imagining little land deals that might enlarge Israel a bit, creating a larger and more workable Palestine, and working to the economic advantage of neighboring countries over the long term; and 3) giving the UN some "three religions turf" in the heart of Jerusalem for "old world offices," an "East West Center," or a location for the new Global Organization of Democracies that assists the International Criminal Court (ICC) in stopping genocides around the world, might move us all closer to peace sooner.
Maybe we need a complex but more comprehensive solution to a really difficult problem: * a win for Israel and Palestine
* a win for Israel/Palestine/Lebanon
* a win for Syria/Jordan/Egypt
* a win for the UN/the Global Organization of Democracies/ICC
* a win for a world that is tired, alienated, and skin-thickened by genocides and repeated hostilities toward the victims of genocide-Hutu genocidaires are still loose in the Congo and waiting to "finish the job." We need a just solution in the Middle East and imaginative confederations, common markets, etc., so that we negotiate peaceful solutions in Afghanistan (More cantons? Three regions?), Iraq (Two Kurdish cantons or three? A multicultural Kirkuk canton??)
How about imagining what different breakthroughs might look like in terms of just and peaceful solutions in other parts of the world that magnify canton democracy, canton autonomy, local control, "just like they did to get peace in the Middle East so quickly"?
Thanks for Swami Beyondananda! He helps keep us sane.
CHARLIE KIEL
Lakeville, CT
With regard to the Jewish settlements in Palestine, it seems to me the crucial issue is how the settlement got the land. If it was confiscated, there must either be an acceptable payment to the people from whom it was confiscated or the settlement must be closed and the land returned. If the land was fairly obtained, I see no reason why the Israelis who live in those settlements cannot stay when they become part of a fully sovereign Palestinian state. After all, there are a couple of million Palestinians who live in Israel, who are Israeli citizens though their loyalty is to their fellow Palestinians. Daniel Barenbaum has perhaps shown us all the way: at the moment he is the only man in the world with joint Israeli/Palestinian citizenship.
As for Jerusalem, I agree with the demand that it be the capital of Israel and the capital of Palestine. I suggest something like the "Vaticanization" of Jerusalem. Most people know that the Holy See rules the walled city, but they don't know that the Chancellery on the Corso Vittorio Emanuel and the church and palace of St. John's Lateran are also Vatican territory. Further, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem (who lost Malta in 1798) also have territory on the Aventine Hill and the Via del Corso. By treaty the Italian State has policing and juridical authority over the Knights of St. John's territory and over much of the Vatican too. Jerusalem can be settled amicably if people want to be amicable. Jurisdictional issues are really just a matter for lawyers; ordinary people just do "their things" and try to enjoy life.
What I feel about the two-state solution is that given half a chance it will work like a charm. Arab Muslims and Israeli Jews can live together and prosper together very nicely.
JAMES WILSON MARQUIS
via email
OBAMA IN CAIRO
Regarding Mark LeVine's editorial (Tikkun, July/August 2009): you cannot compare our failure to force Israel to end its occupation and oppression of Palestinians, when we provide it with enormous military and other foreign aid, with failing to pressure autocratic regimes toward democracy and freedom when we have no effective means of doing so, with the possible exception of Egypt, which also receives a significant amount of foreign aid. But it would be counterproductive to put too much pressure on Egypt. Instead we should tell Mubarak to open the Rafah crossing permanently or risk losing aid.
Only Israel and India (with respect to Kashmir) are mistreating other people, although there are many regimes that are brutalizing their own people. With respect to the latter, we very seldom have the means to force them to change their behavior without resorting to unacceptable and often dangerous military measures.
Of all the alternative sources of news and views that I substitute for our self-censoring media (except for World Focus), you are still the most pro-Zionist of all.
EDWARD R. BRANDT
Mark LeVine replies:
Why is it "counterproductive to put too much pressure on Egypt?" You are falling into the trap that we can only pressure Israel. Israel, Egypt, and Iran are all part of the same system, even if they play different and even competing roles. Without having one standard for all, we diminish our ability to impact change anywhere, and do an injustice to those who don't happen to be victims of our clients or our own actions.
THE PLANET-SAVING MITZVAH
Daniel Brook presents a compelling argument for Jews to consider vegetarianism (Tikkun, July/August 2009). Jews across America and across the world are realizing that choosing vegetarian foods reduces the suffering of farmed animals, alleviates human health problems, and is better for the environment.
Proverbs 12:10 teaches that "the righteous person regards the life of his animal." In today's world, the overwhelming majority of animals raised for food are confined on massive factory farms where they're subjected to miserable conditions and unbelievable cruelties.
As humans, we have a special obligation to protect the rights of those who cannot speak for themselves. As a Jew-a member of a historically persecuted religious minority-I feel that obligation especially strongly every day. Judaism gives us a great opportunity to work toward the freedom of all who are oppressed, including non-human animals. There's no better way to defend animals than to leave them off our plates.
MAX FISCHLOWITZ-ROBERTS
Saint Louis, MO
Thank you for Daniel Brook's fine article, "The Planet-Saving Mitzvah: Why Jews Should Consider Vegetarianism." In addition to the many reasons and citations from Jewish law referenced by Brook, additional aspects of Judaism require us to refrain from abuse of other creatures.
The code of laws forbidding cruelty to animals, Tsa'ar ba'alei hayim, (the requirement to prevent the suffering of living creatures) is one of the most important aspects of Jewish law.
Indeed, the Jews pioneered the concept of kindness to animals some 3,500 years ago, and it is mandated throughout the Bible and Jewish law. Even the holiest of our laws, the Ten Commandments, requires that farmed animals be allowed to enjoy a day of rest on the Sabbath. So the Almighty must have felt that kindness to animals was not a trivial matter.
Significantly, the first commandments given by the Lord (Genesis 1:22-28) concern the welfare and survival of animals, as well as human responsibilities toward them. God's very first commandment (Genesis 1:22) was to the birds, whales, fish, and other creatures to "be fruitful and multiply" and fill the seas and the skies. His first commandment to humans (Genesis 1:28) was to "replenish the earth ... and have dominion" [stewardship] over other creatures.
It is truly a shanda (a shameful thing) that a kosher label can appear on products resulting from the massive abuse and suffering of billions of factory farmed creatures, many of which spend their entire lives in misery, fear, and anguish, in addition to the often painful way they are killed.
Some rabbis and Jewish leaders have even characterized this as a chillul Hashem, a desecration of the name of the Lord.
It is hard to imagine that abuse of animals would be pleasing to a merciful God. Can this truly be the will of the Lord, whose first commandments concerned animals, who called each animal He created "good" and the Creation itself "very good," who instructed us in the Bible to allow our animals an entire day of rest on the Sabbath, to leave some crops in the fields for the wildlife, to allow oxen to eat while working, and who repeatedly prohibited cruelty to animals?
As Proverbs 12:10 tells us, "A righteous man has regard for the life of his beast." Truly, as Psalm 145:9 states, "His compassion is over all His creatures."
LEWIS REGENSTEIN
Atlanta, GA
I tread into this debate (about "The Planet-Saving Mitzvah") with hesitation, knowing that the stakes are high and the certitudes are higher still in the ostensibly clear-cut case for a vegetarian or vegan diet. Daniel Brook makes a number of strong points in terms of the environmental impact of corporate ranching and feed-lot practices, and the misappropriation of grains to promote animal obesity-and secondarily human obesity-while human hunger flourishes in many parts of the globe. No doubt this is true, and the corroborating biblical and talmudic injunctions against eating meat are vivid and pertinent. Even so, I want to interject some shades of gray into what may seem to many to be a morally black and white terrain.
I should interject that I have considerable sympathy for a vegetarian diet, and followed one consistently for eighteen years, in large measure due to the influence of Leo Tolstoy's writings on the subject. And even today-some twenty-three years after "lapsing"-I am quite content to be vegetarian for days at a time. However, I don't see the issue with the same moral clarity I once did. Let's consider some other factors that have a bearing on the decision to eat meat.
First, I think it is somewhat irresponsible in an article of this length to fail to mention that a strict vegan diet requires supplementation with vitamin B12 in order to avoid anemia and a serious neurological disease. In the current stage of technology, this nutrient is readily obtained from tablets containing B12 derived from bacteria, but there are no plant sources of B12 that can be relied upon to supply this essential nutrient.
Perhaps for this reason, traditional cultures-even those that venerate a "pure veg" diet-did not resort completely to vegan diets, but included dairy products in their diets. And even then, they developed highly evolved cuisines to compensate for the low level of specific nutrients in a "pure veg" diet, particularly B12 and iron. These cuisines are not readily learned or adapted in Eurocentric lands, due to the lack of familiarity and lack of ingredients, and indeed, by the lack of time required to prepare these elaborate cuisines.
Thirdly, many of the environmental benefits of a vegetarian diet can be obtained by reducing meat consumption to a low level, without necessarily eliminating it altogether. It is as much a matter of quantity of meat consumed as it is of moral fiber in terms of the environment impact of meat production.
Fourth, there are producers of grass-fed beef who offer some advantages over feed-lot-fattened beef. Such beef is leaner yet has higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, and has a lower environmental impact-a consideration which need not be dismissed in this discussion.
Fifth, there is no guarantee that, by eating less meat, world hunger will be readily diminished. Admittedly there would be a greater supply of grains, but delivering that grain to areas of need would not necessarily be governed by different economic rules than currently exist. If the goal is to reduce world hunger, reducing meat consumption is a worthy component, but no substitute for the hard work of getting food to the people who need it.
Moreover, as contentious as the subject of diet can be, it avoids what in my mind is an even larger and more sensitive issue: that of human population growth and the need to deliver family planning services to all parts of the globe. Food distribution is only part of the equation of restoring a sustainable ecological balance. Delivering food without reducing human fertility is likely to increase the net ecological damage to the planet. (Note, I am in favor of doing both interventions simultaneously, though both components face major obstacles.)
Seventh, the purely moral issue of killing animals for food is much murkier than Daniel Brook appears willing to acknowledge. In the wild, herbivores are constantly exposed to inclement weather, drought, starvation, deep snow, violent competition between males, insects, parasites, and predation. However in captivity, herbivores are protected from many of these pestilent influences, and in fact, many live longer in captivity and in greater comfort than they would in the wild, even if they eventually are sent to slaughter. Herbivores do not typically die peacefully-nor for that matter do many carnivores. In this biological reality, the stringency of animal husbandry can be gruesome, but less gruesome than life in the wild.
Similarly, most domestic herbivores would not be raised at all were it not for food. Very few people would be inclined to keep a pet cow were it not for milk or meat, and even fewer would keep a pet bull. So in order for these animals to survive in any number-l'chaim-they need to serve a utilitarian purpose.
Finally, the cultivation of plants is not without significant levels of violence and ecological damage. Land must be cleared, trees cut down, habitat destroyed, wild flora eliminated, fauna displaced, insects controlled, and fossil fuels utilized to plow, fertilize, and harvest the fields. There is simply no moral purity when it comes to food production, whether it is animal or vegetable. There are indeed differing shades of gray, but that is exactly my point.
KEITH BARTON, MD
Berkeley, CA
As president of Jewish Vegetarians of North America, I want to express kudos to you and Dan Brook for his very comprehensive article. Becoming a vegetarian is indeed a "planet-saving mitzvah" because a major societal shift to vegetarianism, and preferably veganism, is essential to prevent the world from continuing on its present rapid path to an unprecedented catastrophe from global climate change and other environmental threats.
Methane produced by farmed animals' digestive processes and manure is only in the atmosphere for less than fifteen years, compared to carbon dioxide, which is in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, and it is estimated that methane has about 100 times the global warming effect per unit of gas during its lifetime than carbon dioxide during that period. Also, the impact of carbon dioxide is reduced by the cooling effects of aerosols, which are emitted from the same sources that emit carbon dioxide. Thus, since methane contributes to almost half of greenhouse gases and animal-based agriculture is the main contributor of methane, a major decrease in the number of farmed animals, due to a widespread shift toward plant-based diets, is the most effective way to avoid the potentially disastrous effects of global warming.
I urge Tikkun to continue to use its splendid writing and editing resources to help spread this message widely. The fate of humanity and all of creation depend on it.
RICHARD H. SCHWARTZ
Staten Island, NY
PEOPLE-FIRST HEALTH CARE
I think Americans are more aware than ever of the divide between corporate interests and the interest of the common good. As an advocate for single-payer insurance coverage for all Americans, I agree that the concept is hard for many people to understand. That's why I like the idea of "People First."
Perhaps the problem is not so much that "single-payer" is about economics, as you suggest, but simply that the term is difficult to understand. It might behoove us to call it what it is: "tax-funded health insurance." That way we could argue the benefits of having a progressive tax and an increased tax on corporate profits that would fund a health care reform plan which covers every American.
It is also important to assuage the many people working for private health insurers who fear for their jobs if private insurance policies are replaced by one public insurer. They must recognize two important facts:
1. There will still be room for some private insurance companies to play a role offering supplemental insurance to those who desire coverage beyond the single-payer coverage.
2. Untold numbers of employees will be needed if we ever enact a single-payer plan by virtue of the fact that we will be expanding the health industry's customer file by 50,000,000 people. It will be the greatest boon to our economy since the great manufacturing expansion following World War II.
STEVE BLANK
Health Writers on the Air
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