Health Care - African Style
Lauren B. Pack is a third-year rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. She recently returned from a Rabbinical Student mission with members of seven seminaries to Africa with American Jewish World Service.Forty-three years ago this March, moved by the injustice they found within American society, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Jews traveled south to Alabama for an interfaith meeting of sorts. These Jews saw that the African American community was trapped in a narrow and difficult place. Racism confined them to certain places, certain jobs, certain roles, certain stereotypes. They too were imprisoned in their own narrow Egypt. Yet they longed to begin the dangerous and difficult, yet miraculous journey through their own Reed Sea and into the open wilderness of freedom. In support, others came to help break the entrapments caused by the narrowness of American society at that time. And when Martin Luther King Jr. started walking from Selma to Montgomery, in a way, he recreated the exodus from Egypt. Certainly, in a later discussion about his participation in the 1965 march, philosopher and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel stated that “when I marched in Selma, my feet were praying.”
And surely, as we help others begin their own journey to freedom, and even when we started our own, we know that this is true. The Israelites themselves cried out in joy upon their first steps into the wilderness of freedom with the familiar words of Mi Chamocha.
However, as our world grows smaller and smaller, thanks to the tying force of the internet and other modern conveniences which ease communication, I fear that once again we as a society are falling into Egypt’s narrow straights. Less than thirty-six hours ago, I departed from Africa after participating in a Rabbinic Students Delegation to Ghana. There, we met with a variety of non-governmental organizations, many concerned with the existing and rapidly expanding health crisis in Africa. About 33.5 million individuals are infected with HIV and AIDS worldwide; however, more than two-thirds of these people live in Sub-Saharan Africa, in countries like Ghana, and more than three-quarters of HIV/AIDS related deaths in the world occur within this same region. I am sure that I am not saying anything terribly shocking when I report that the AIDS pandemic in Africa has reached a critical point. But that is exactly the issue – my all-too-brief volunteer expedition with the American Jewish World Service did not uncover any revelatory information that could not be found in past editions of the New York Times or Newsweek Magazine. The issue is that we have allowed ourselves to be bound and pushed into a narrow place of mixed hopelessness and ambivalence.
Egypt once again is before us.
Our willful blindness to the strife caused by the health crisis in Africa has entrapped us – we have created for ourselves our own Egypt, our own narrow place, that like the Israelites express in this week’s portion, this seems preferable. We prefer the discomfort of the known over the risks found in the open wilderness of freedom, and the enormous efforts that it takes to walk out of Egypt. But, many of those living in Ghana and throughout sub-Saharan Africa are trapped in their own Egypt, enslaved by the masters of poverty and disease. For us here in the United States, it is easier to break our bonds of apathy, and in the process help many in Africa begin on their own long path towards the wilderness. Yet, our struggles are tied; there are first steps away from our narrow place that we can consider taking. Within the next few weeks, Congress and the Senate are marking up the renewal bill for PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief. I urge you to take a look at this vital piece of legislation that has such potential to effect change, yet falls short by denying essential educational information about basic preventative methods from HIV/AIDS. This impedes aide monies from achieving their full potential.
Now is the time to act. Now is the time for us to take steps once more to move out of the Egypt of apathy, to escape from our narrow place, in order to help fix the injustice that we know exists in our world and to begin to move once again into the wilderness of freedom. Now is the time, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, to make justice a reality for all God’s children [and] we [should] not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream. Now is the time to take steps away from our narrow places. Now is the time to help others begin to taste the pleasures of freedom from their masters of deadly disease, and to enable others to start to sing the joyful Mi Chamocha which this freedom inspired us to do on the shores of the sea. Now is the time, now is our chance, as Heschel said, to pray with our feet.
However, as our world grows smaller and smaller, thanks to the tying force of the internet and other modern conveniences which ease communication, I fear that once again we as a society are falling into Egypt’s narrow straights. Less than thirty-six hours ago, I departed from Africa after participating in a Rabbinic Students Delegation to Ghana. There, we met with a variety of non-governmental organizations, many concerned with the existing and rapidly expanding health crisis in Africa. About 33.5 million individuals are infected with HIV and AIDS worldwide; however, more than two-thirds of these people live in Sub-Saharan Africa, in countries like Ghana, and more than three-quarters of HIV/AIDS related deaths in the world occur within this same region. I am sure that I am not saying anything terribly shocking when I report that the AIDS pandemic in Africa has reached a critical point. But that is exactly the issue – my all-too-brief volunteer expedition with the American Jewish World Service did not uncover any revelatory information that could not be found in past editions of the New York Times or Newsweek Magazine. The issue is that we have allowed ourselves to be bound and pushed into a narrow place of mixed hopelessness and ambivalence.
Egypt once again is before us.
Our willful blindness to the strife caused by the health crisis in Africa has entrapped us – we have created for ourselves our own Egypt, our own narrow place, that like the Israelites express in this week’s portion, this seems preferable. We prefer the discomfort of the known over the risks found in the open wilderness of freedom, and the enormous efforts that it takes to walk out of Egypt. But, many of those living in Ghana and throughout sub-Saharan Africa are trapped in their own Egypt, enslaved by the masters of poverty and disease. For us here in the United States, it is easier to break our bonds of apathy, and in the process help many in Africa begin on their own long path towards the wilderness. Yet, our struggles are tied; there are first steps away from our narrow place that we can consider taking. Within the next few weeks, Congress and the Senate are marking up the renewal bill for PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief. I urge you to take a look at this vital piece of legislation that has such potential to effect change, yet falls short by denying essential educational information about basic preventative methods from HIV/AIDS. This impedes aide monies from achieving their full potential.
Now is the time to act. Now is the time for us to take steps once more to move out of the Egypt of apathy, to escape from our narrow place, in order to help fix the injustice that we know exists in our world and to begin to move once again into the wilderness of freedom. Now is the time, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, to make justice a reality for all God’s children [and] we [should] not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream. Now is the time to take steps away from our narrow places. Now is the time to help others begin to taste the pleasures of freedom from their masters of deadly disease, and to enable others to start to sing the joyful Mi Chamocha which this freedom inspired us to do on the shores of the sea. Now is the time, now is our chance, as Heschel said, to pray with our feet.