THE GREAT EQUALIZER

-- By Rabbi Mark Popovsky

Earlier today I began making the first calls on my list in order to organize the high holiday services at the hospital where I work—reserving a room, recruiting volunteers, ordering packets of honey… A prayer service in a hospital is a funny thing. Last year, as we finished and attendees filed out of the conference room where we davvened, one woman sheepishly approached me. “Rabbi,” she said, “I’m not a patient here.” This information did not stand as a surprise to me as she wore conspicuous finery among a crowd a people in hospital pajamas and scrubs. “Oh. How did you come to be with us today?” I asked, following her lead. She explained that she had attended a hospital prayer service several years back when she was caring for her husband who was ill at the time and that she has only prayed in hospital ever since. “No more membership dues or $1000 seats for me.” My first thought was that she may have fallen on hard financial times or be experiencing a bout of hyper-frugality as she aged. I didn’t know what to say. Gently wishing to extract myself from the conversation, I offered “Well, I am glad you felt comfortable coming here. Everyone is always welcome.” “No,” she interrupted me sharply, “it’s not about feeling comfortable. It’s about feeling equal, feeling human.”

During the remainder of the conversation, she explained how objectified and depersonalized she felt when caring for her husband in the hospital. Staff would walk in and out at their convenience. They would always stand over the bed, never sitting at eye level with her or her husband. They usually didn’t introduce themselves and even less often asked her name. There was a clear hierarchy of power, she was near the bottom and her husband in the bed with the humiliating gown was one rung lower. She said that she was so overwhelmed at the time that she had no interest in attending services when the holidays rolled around. She only came to the service because her husband nagged her to. What she found was a very different power dynamic in the room. She sat next to an attending physician on one side and a social worker on the other. All on the same size chairs, standing and sitting together at the rabbi’s command. She realized that for the duration of this Jewish experience, salaries, the lengths of the white coats and the titles on badges didn’t determine who had the power. Everyone stood equal before God. She even shook hands with other attendees after the service ended.

For someone so interested in justice and equality, I felt a bit embarrassed that I had never considered this aspect of the Jewish holidays before. The dynamics in the hospital where she had this experience are not specific to that hospital or to the medical world alone. They reflect the much broader and equally rigid divisions in our society—divisions of economic class, social status, educational level and more. Jewish ethical tradition, like most ethical traditions, demands that we work to break down such social divisions but what I recognized following the conversation above is that Judaism provides us with an opportunity to practice living a life without these divisions in schul before making us go out and create it in the world at large.

Many of the elderly patients I visit in the hospital speak to me about how painful it is for them no to be able to attend synagogue anymore. Our society tends to assess a person’s value based on his or her productivity. It is no surprise then that even the best of us treat the elderly as less than full and equal members of society. Jewish tradition on the other hand reminds us that the elderly, the poor and all other vulnerable populations are just as obligated to prayer, good deeds, Sabbath observance and other mitzvoth as those with the advantages in life. Instead of making excuses and easing the burden of observance, our sages maintain that the mitzvoth fall on all Jews, regardless of social situation, because, again, we all stand equal before the Almighty.

As the year progressed, I lost sight of these messages at times, feel into making the same judgments about people as I had made before, and I probably even unconsciously treated some people the way that the doctors treated the woman above. My reason for writing this now is to inspire my own renewed effort to keep these rather simple insights at forefront of my thought as we begin 5768.

Shanah tovah.

Rabbi Mark Popovksy is the Coordinator for Jewish Chaplaincy at New York Presbyterian Hospital -- Weill Cornell Medical Center and is a lecturer at the Weill Medical College of Cornell.