ROSH HASHANAH AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Parashat  Nitzavim begins with a call for ALL the Jewish people to stand together.  

The men, the women, and the children are all to be a community.

We thrive in our community.  Our community supports us and we work with others for the betterment of all.   We derive many benefits, including education, spiritual strength, prayer, social and welfare institutions, and others.  The larger society assures our peace and security, among other perks.   We partake and we pay.  We have a community state of mind.  This is a good thing.

Health care is a good illustration of this interaction.  We go to our doctor for preventive care.  We rely on our doctor to heal us when we get sick.  There is an extensive system available to aid in this process.  Medical specialists, hospitals, labs, physical therapists, chiropractors, nurses, dietary and exercise programs, counselors, the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, the insurance companies, and many other structures and practitioners and support personnel may be called upon to help heal or manage illness or contribute to maintenance of health.  All of this cumulatively forms a community built to care for health in one way or another.

 It’s a massive undertaking.  Put together in a patchy form without the ideally thoughtful and planned integration which might be optimal, ours is still the best health care system in the world.  This I believe despite the denigrating assessment often given to American health care.  There is incredible science and technology and caring and commitment woven into this system.  It is impressive and effective, notwithstanding its limitations and faults. Many more people from around the world seek healing in the United States than anywhere else. By far, most medical advances have been made in the U.S.A.

It is easy to believe that all our health needs will always be met with such a system.  It is easy to think that we can expect to be cured of whatever ails us.  For most of us, this is our experience throughout our early lives.  This experience and that of many of our friends and family reinforce our expectations from the community of health providers.

As a doctor, I spend considerable time teaching people ways that they can treat their own acute and chronic illness.  From colds to high blood pressure, from pain syndromes to sleep disorders, from allergies to arthralgias – there are litanies of self-help solutions.  Although I may not seem to be talking about life threatening illness now, such problems also benefit from a lifestyle of prevention.  I teach methods for preventing illness and plans for staying healthy.  Most illnesses form over a long period of time.  Most illnesses are chronic and require long-term solutions.

Surprisingly and with the best initial intentions, many people do not follow my advice as given.  For example, different programs of exercise can improve the quality of sleep.  Better sleep leads to more energy, greater mental clarity, weight loss when obesity is the problem, improved blood pressure control in people with hypertension, fewer infections, less pains from most causes, and other health benefits.

For many people there is little room for compromise or straying from the plan.  Not if they want to improve, prevent, and feel better.  For example, many musculoskeletal problems are improved significantly with appropriate stretching.  Usually this requires a daily commitment.  Once a week may be less time consuming, but it often will not yield the desired results.

Most people follow this advice sporadically.  They then return to my clinic with a list of excuses: not enough time, other commitments, the job, the family.  Then there are the unspoken and embarrassing excuses.

The larger issue for health stems from the fact that we set patterns within ourselves by our lifestyles.  These are patterns of how our bodies function.   They develop over many years.  They become an integral part of a person’s organic nature.

Depending on how long these lifestyle habits have existed, it can take months or even years to counteract the effects. 

Someone could have Hepatitis C virus infection that has been causing liver damage for 20 years.  Taking the new Hepatitis C drug may eradicate the virus, but it will not heal the liver.  The destructive process in the liver may have already caused irreparable damage and may have become autonomous to a degree.

Similarly, if a person is a chronic long-term cigarette smoker, he will have done a lot of damage to his body.  Stopping smoking will prevent more direct injury to the lungs and other affected organs.  But it will not restore the body to as pristine a state as if there had never been all the cigarette abuse.

Yet people still expect me – as their doctor – to make the problem better.  They want quick solutions that do not require a great amount of effort and time and self-denial.  Well, of course there are other approaches to take.  These involve medicines and other interventions that do not address the chronic nature of the problem and just put off the symptoms for a later date. Patients are taught about lifestyle changes that will improve their health. There is advice for all but the most advanced problems.

The point is not how doctors care for patients.

The point is that – with our community state of mind – we expect others to solve our problems.

And these are realistic expectations that our society should help us in times of need.  We should be safe and secure, have redress for our grievances, have a place to go for comfort, and other community functions.

The idea is that chronic harmful habits – of either omission or commission – lead to chronic repercussions.  

Though we may look to the community for answers and to share responsibility, we also have to look at ourselves.  We must actively take care of our bodies.  We must actively take care of our souls.

The soul and the body are intricately woven together.   Just as we create and nurture patterns of our physical health, so are we responsible for the patterns that we have in our spiritual health.  Just as we can resolve, learn, and then act to take better care of our bodies, so we can also find the path to spiritual well-being.

One cannot have a healthy body without a healthy soul.  And one cannot have a healthy soul without a healthy body.  

Rosh Hashanah is the time to look inward.  Though we are still part of the community, it is the time to seek the fault within ourselves.  We have to accept responsibility.  We have to admit that we are personally to blame.

We need to seek out in ourselves how we can assign blame for what is not right.  

We need to ask of ourselves:

What did I do wrong to contribute to things not having worked out as I thought they should have? What have i not done that I should have been doing to enhance my health?

What can I do to prevent further misadventure?

What was MY role?

What did I say?

But patterns of physical and spiritual dysfunction or inadequacy cannot be overcome in just a few days.  It is not up to God to alter these patterns.  God will no more make us good people and repair our souls for us than God will heal our chronic illness.

God is not sitting in front of a book and altering a person’s destiny because that individual fervently prays and gives charity and regrets his past and resolves to do differently. 

Rosh Hashanah is a time to teach us to stop blaming others or our jobs or the world for our problems.  This is a time when we look inward to accept responsibility.  

At Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, God is not punishing us for our actions and thoughts.  We have been punishing ourselves.

We punish ourselves when we neglect or harm our bodies.

We punish ourselves when we are selfish or unkind to others.

Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we pray for forgiveness.  Or, maybe we are praying to reduce the severity of the decree.  Or maybe we are praying to be able to fortify ourselves to withstand the future.  

I believe our prayers are about clearing our minds of the constant distracting dialogues and excuses.  This allows us to hit a reset in life.  It emboldens and stimulates us to introduce new determination to make ourselves healthier.  By overcoming distractions and excuses, we can focus on taking responsibility for making ourselves healthy.   Our High Holiday experience is helping us to become resolute and develop a focal point within ourselves that will help us to change the course of our lives.  Rosh Hashanah is about setting that resolve.

Then we have to do it.  We must approach our task as if we still have the full option to heal and repair ourselves.  

God may be forgiving, but that will not alter our physical and spiritual problems.  God’s forgiveness can give us the strength we need to change.  

The Torah is about how we can look at ourselves and improve.  

In parashat Ki Teitzei, it talks about the rebellious son.  It describes a son who is put to death because he acts in such a way that will likely always be evil.  This son will not listen to his parents or his elders and is considered a hopeless case.

The sages say that this penalty could never be carried out because of a long list of qualifications that are gleaned from the words of the Torah.

But the Torah is about self-improvement.

But I think this wayward son represents the child within each adult.  Each of us harbors our own immature drives and desires.  Though we have aged and had much learning and experience, the child we were still dwells within us.  That foolish youth still lurks, seeking to break out.  It is like the Amalek, like the Yatzer Hara, like the unthinking animal that is a part of our nature.   It is part of the reason we have gone astray.  It is what we must discover within ourselves to be able to heal ourselves.  

Beginning with Rosh Hashanah and heading into Yom Kippur, as we accept personal responsibility, we also recognize that we have this rebellious child within that we must try to reason with and put in line.  

We must build upon the strength that the holidays have given us to extend this introspection into the rest of the year.  We must actually overcome our inertia and take better care of our bodies and our souls.  This period is just the start of that process.  We did not get where we are in 10 days and we won’t get out of a rut in 10 days.  But we have a moment in time that we can start building the ramp up.

We must remember to continue looking inward.  Whether it is relationships with family or friends, issues with a job, or any of the other many endeavors in which we partake, we must always be prepared to seek and accept our own responsibility and begin the process of self-correction.  Nothing else is possible to accomplish if we do not focus on healthy lifestyle habits.

  Taking the  time and energy to learn how to be healthy and then putting that knowledge to practical application is the prime directive.