Washington – He has cited statistics. He has held town hall meetings. Now President Obama has turned to Jewish tradition for support in his campaign to overhaul health care, urging rabbis to help make the case in their holiday sermons.
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Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, begins at sundown on Sept. 18, starting the 10-day period when Jews believe their fates for the coming year will be decided. Indeed, that is also around the time when the fate of health care reform — the president’s prime effort — could be determined.
“I am going to need your help,” the president told a telephone audience of about 1,000 rabbis today, according to the Twitter feed of Rabbi Jack Moline of Alexandria, Va., who added that Mr. Obama advised the group to share stories of health care dilemmas with congregants to illustrate what is at stake in the current debate.
Mr. Obama even recited one of the central prayers of the Jewish New Year. “On Rosh Hashana will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die; who will die at his predestined time and who before his time,” goes one translation of the prayer he read.
During the hourlong session, the president laid out the “broad moral principles underlying health care reform,” according to David Saperstein, head of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the chief organizer. (The group always invites policy experts to help rabbis develop material for high holiday sermons; this year, the organization invited the president to talk specifically on health care.)
For the rest of his talk, the president connected the religious new year, traditionally a time for reckoning and renewal, with what he described as a moment of reckoning for the health care system. The prayer he recited is thousands of years old, he said, and yet the suffering it describes — people dying before their time, by plague and by famine — still persists.
“We have the opportunity to quench the thirst and ease the hunger of those who are suffering here in America,” Mr. Obama said, according to one rabbi. (Participants were asked to keep the proceedings confidential; some described the call on the condition they not be quoted.)
Many religious leaders prefer not to make overtly political pitches to their congregations, and one rabbi asked Mr. Obama how to reconcile the sanctity of the high holidays with the partisan politics of the health care reform fight. The president responded, another participant said, by framing it as a moral rather than a political question, stressing the 47 million Americans who lack insurance.
Reid Cherlin, a White House spokesman, said in a statement: “There will certainly be rabbis and congregants on all sides of the debate, but one thing common to all Jews is Tikkun Olam — the commitment to making the world around us a better place — and today no issue is more central to that work than making our health care system work better for all Americans.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Obama spoke at a similar session with Christians, Muslims, Jews and representatives of other faiths. No word yet on which and how many prayers the president needed to recite then.
The president again shows his political skills. Providing basic health care to all people is definitely a moral issue for jews and what better time to enage on this issue than the yamim noraim. Hopefully, most rabbonim will heed his call for help.
For such rabonim i believe there is a posek,vayhi ra’av baoretz milvaad hara’av harishon
now he’ll get all the liberal jews Who voted for him to beginning with to back him again. they will never learn.
Just anther way to increase our taxes. I would love that the healthcare should be paid instead off school taxes or maybe obama should pay OUR tution allso? Tell him that our gov is for the peaple and by the peaple. As I would say I trust the first 400 peaple in the telephone book quicker then congress. Good luck Obama keep pushing healthcare and watch your raitings drop more more more.
Keep it up
I hope the Rabbi’s told Obama that they’ll help him get his health care reform passed…as long as Obama gets off Israel’s back
So when he pulls the plug on bubbe and zayde, he will be fulfilling mi lo v’kitzo.
He can say, look it says in the davening exactly what I’m doing here. A genious, this guy.
I am sorry, but this is pathetic. Yes, health care needs to be reformed, but not by making stupid deals with the drug companies & “chapping heise lukshen” so he can prove he fulfilled his campaign promise. And leave Rosh Hashonah alone, Mr. President.
As long as these “rabbis” have what to speak about in the “High Holy” sermons. The article states that they always invite policy experts to help them form their sermons. I doubt any of us will be hearing these “sermons” in our shuls. B’H our Rabbonim don’t need “policy experts” to give them what to speak about. Why don’t we discuss Michael Jackson’s (un)timely death? I mean that’s also some sort of a moral issue to make sure such terrible things don’t happen again!
The issue is not the details of “Obamacare”-the issue is the responsiblity of man to assure that his fellow man doesn’t die due to inadequate health care. The US spends by far the most of any country in the world for healthcare and yet has one of the worst health records eg lifespan of any developed country.
The moral issue which theTalmud knew about “tov shebrofim legehenom” has 2 explanations one due to arrogance of physicians and the second more relevant one for a health care debate. There are times when people won’t be able to afford healthcare andthen the physicians won’t treat them andthus the people will die because of the physicians neglect and thus tov shebrofim legehenom..
The principle is clear-the applications to present day American politics may not be and it is possible the details may be one that a Rav should not speak on yea or nay-but the principle that we have a responsibility to ensure that all receive lifesaving care is clear.
Gag me with a shofar. Shameless! He goes to the Kotel and leaves a note the size of the Declaration of Independence, so it can be retrieved. He hosts a seder in the WH for a photo op…And now, he has this phony moralistic meeting with clergy. This is the guy who surrounds himself with people like Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Samantha Power and other anti-semites. And he uses capos like Emanuel and Axelrod for cover. Did anyone read or hear the Cairo speech? Health Care – Shmealth Care, it’s all about federal control of our lives, embracing tyrants, diminishing success, and bashing freedom-loving Eretz Yisrael. I believe the stereotype of “Smart Jews” is over. We are becoming Jewicidal.
Mr. Obama: please do not use my Holiday as your political football.
check wiki. under health care, the WHO (run by the UN) ranked us in the 30’s and Italy the second.. you should know that in Italy (for those who need links.. its in that article..) most Doctors accept patients only teo days of the week..
in Canada and in the UK there are long lines for some procedures..
Cuba lost many of its Doctors.. when they reformed they had about 3,000
I read a lot of ‘studies’ why the our health care is the worst compared to other modern countries. its because we dont have universal health care… got it?! its not because our Doctors are from a lesser caliber… nt because we have less technolagy (actually the wiki has it that the USA is the biggest investor in Medical techonolagy…
the Mirror, Mirror on the walls report, states clearly, that with sick People the USA out rated all other countries, (that means number 1) only in treating healthy People we are bad, (cuz we pay and they get it for free.. I mean pay it in their taxes…)
in all other countries, the Political debates (the wiki artical..) are based on cutting lines.. giving you more medications.. watching your privacy.. we dont want to have their problems….
oh, the WHO puts and South Africa in one catagory.. when traveling to Africa, you might find Hospitals like John Hopkins.. I wonder…
for people who get their info from fox news
Fox news distorts the news never mentions the person asked him why is he (Jewish) supporting Nazi policies
Doocy finds fault with “rude” Frank, not protester who compared Obama to Hitler
August 19, 2009 1:24 pm ET — 153 Comments
During the August 19 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy repeatedly defended a protester who claimed Rep. Barney Frank and President Obama support a “Nazi policy” on health care and held up a sign of Obama with a Hitler mustache. Doocy did not note the content of the protester’s remarks, saying only that “somebody asked [Frank] a question,” and criticized Frank’s response to the protester as “rude,” giving “attitude,” and demonstrating that he might spend “a little too much time in Washington, D.C., away from real people.”
Doocy defends protester against “rude,” out-of-touch Frank
Doocy calls Frank’s response to question “rude” and giving “attitude.” Doocy, while discussing Frank’s response to the Obama-Hitler protester, did not note the content of the Obama-Hitler protester’s question, nor that she held a picture that compared Obama to Adolf Hitler. Instead, Doocy falsely claimed that Frank’s “rude” response was to two different people instead of the single Obama-Hitler protester.
Doocy said of Frank:
DOOCY: Well, give him credit for showing up. But let’s face it, he was downright rude. Somebody asked him a question —
BRIAN KILMEADE (co-host): Smug.
DOOCY: OK, somebody asked him a question, then he said, “On what planet do you spend most of your time?” And then to somebody else he said, “Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table.” Barney, they showed up at the senior center in Dartmouth last night for some answers. Give them some answers, don’t give them attitude.
Doocy sarcastically derides Frank as “sweet talker” and “[a]ttacking the same people who put him in office.” In a later segment, Doocy played a cropped clip of Frank responding to the Obama-Hitler protester that omitted the content of the protester’s remarks. Doocy stated of Frank’s response:
DOOCY: Meanwhile, a health care confrontation like you’ve never seen before. Congressman Barney Frank starts attacking the same people who put him in office.
FRANK [video clip]: Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.
DOOCY: Oh, yeah, he’s a sweet talker. Is this really the way Democrats are defending their plans for health care — referring to them as dining room tables?
Sorry Obama but I wont be davening for govt healthcare and you aint too high on my list either!! Taxes are too high as it is and the USA – if the pro healthcare crowd – would open their eyes and ears to hear what you say, dont want to pay higher taxes like you socialized friends do in Europe. We cant afford you!!
How can those already unable to afford health care afford the premiums, co-pays and deductibles that will be thrust upon us? This isn’t going to help, it is just going to bleed small business, and force us to buy insurance that we can’t afford and isn’t any better than saving the same amount and paying cash for discounted services. Better to allow hospitals to charge monthly fees for “membership” like some physicians are doing in NYC and Boston.
for those you are afraid of the government use private insurance and be happy
Alittle hypocritical that it is the left that opposes giving tax deductions for yeshiva tuition because of separation of church and state, yet they feel it is appropriate to have reverand obama’s political propaganda espoused from the pulpit on the high holidays. No?
good comeback
makes no sense at all
my rav gives a drasha, not a political appeal
My religion says “Venishmartem es nafshosechem meod”, I interpret that to mean I can use my own healthcare providers, and decide whether or not I want to be insured or get shots or take medicine etc. I go the natural route and that is not covered by insurance. I say NO to Obama’s healthcare plan!
So called rabbis twittered to by our Prez are almost enitrely Reform and Conserv clergy that got signed up by Obama hyperorganziers into “Rabbis for Obama” He’s preaching to the choir, as our gentile friends say. Ask the Rav of your shul or your rebbe if they got a Twitter from the Prez lately. The reform crowd think Darfur is more important than his health care plan anyway. Maybe they’ll start losing patience with his chutzpah and the bad advice he is getting from Rahm and Axelrod.
I’m a practicing MD and run into young people who can afford health care and have CHOSEN not to purchase it, betting that the good health of their age group will save them from big financial loss, or maybe they think they’ll never get really sick.