Israeli health care is in the best Jewish tradition

We have learned the hard way that no matter how long our society has been in recent decades, some things will never change.

The same measures that saved humanity during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic can save us now in 2020: Hygiene, social distance, wearing a mask and personal responsibility.

But now we must also thank the graduates, who are the four Israeli health maintenance organizations. And with what appears to be a very successful vaccination campaign already, we need to extend our apologies to them.

With all due respect to masks, and after spending millions on government public service calls telling us to wash our hands, it was the HMOs, the oldest remnant of Jewish tradition, that came through.

Long before the Spanish cold, Jewish communities around the world knew that caring for the common good binds everyone.

All the women who suffered through childbirth, all the children who were injured in play, all the old men who fell and fell gave him the opportunity to fulfill God’s command to care to others around us and make prayers for their good health.

This has been a fundamental tenet of Jewish life through the ages, and with the achievement of Jewish national goals, it has become a major part of the emerging state.

Jewish communities have always raised money for those among them who are less fortunate. Charity boxes have long been present in every synagogue – catering for the poor, orphans, and most of the sick.

In 1911, the pioneering Zionist movement that had begun to settle the land accepted the proposal of Berl Katznelson, one of the founders of Labor Zionism, and introduced that truly Jewish demonstration of social responsibility to liberate Palestine. pre-state.

The early social workers established a kupa, a common fund, whose money would provide health care for their members.

That same perception led to the establishment of Israeli HMOs. Since then they have been criticized by the public and underfunded by governments refusing to recognize their importance as a waste of money that is not relevant to a market economy.

It is therefore poetic justice that it is the very organizations that are vaccinating the Israelis that are destroying this pandemic.

Our government must apologize for keeping them out of the chambers where decisions were made in the early days of a coronavirus crisis. We must thank them for making Israel a leader among nations for per capita vaccines that have already been administered, and we must assure them that we will protect them from potential politicians, in name free markets, try again to cut their wings.

We need to keep true to our tradition of caring for the weakest of us and appreciating the work done by our health professionals not only to preserve our health but also our moral compass.