Sermon for Temple Emmanu-El Social Action Shabbat 2/8/2008
Speaker: Stefan Kertesz, MD

Please note: information for persons wishing to participate in Birmingham's single day service project "Homeless Connect", note the contact information provided at bottom.

The Drive for Tikkun Olam

Shabbat Shalom

Tikkun Olam, the phrase we sometimes translate as "fixing the world" is my charge for this evening.

I've worked as a primary care doctor for persons who are homeless for 11 years, and generally I've been in paid positions for it. I love the work I've been allowed to do. If that is Tikkun Olam, then I have to admit that Tikkun Olam can sometimes be very enjoyable.

But Tikkun Olam is not always enjoyable, and its not just about good deeds.

Judaism has different words for the good things that we are commanded to

pursue:

Tzedakah (which

sometimes signifies charity),

Gemilut Chasadim (acts of loving kindness),

and

Tikkun Olam.

Tikkun Olam is different. It isn't just about being nice.

Tikkun Olam often occurs in Jewish texts to describe things done for the sake of preventing chaos. People can't change their names and identities, or marital status becomes confused. The world requires order. And Tikkun Olam, in its greater sense, refers to the restoration of the world we strive for when we fix the great problems that tend to chaos.

What must we fix? Many things, but our reading on Yom Kippur from Isaiah

58 points the way.  As we fast on that holiest day, our own prayers seem to challenge the value of the fast:

Is such the fast that I have chosen? the day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? ...It continues....

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the fetters of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free...to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house?..

This is a biblical injunction, read on the holiest day of the year, to bring in the homeless. And we have 864 literally out on Birmingham's streets every night, a number that is rising, not falling.

The Bible has 36 injunctions to welcome the stranger. Why? One answer is because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. But I suggest that we are reminded 36 times because unlike many other demands of Torah, this one requires that we face our fear.

We know the fear. It's that feeling of wanting to turn away when a person on the streets actually asks us for money. Most homeless persons don't panhandle by the way, but there is fear there.

We know the fear when we see passionate opposition to any organization or any effort that seeks to bring the homeless in from the cold, and set up a new program of rehabilitation. They'll argue, typically, that to offer rehabilitation and housing here, in this neighborhood, will cause unique disorder to us and to ours. Better we should all tolerate the chaos of unregulated life on the streets than take a tiny step and share the challenge of reducing the chaos. Fear (isn't it obvious) is not logical.

People will organize to fight against programs for the homeless while they tolerate liquor outlets and adult entertainment venues in their own backyard. The latter are associated with community problems, but we are often less afraid of the middle class vices and foibles we think we understand, than of the "stranger" in our midst.

So what will it take to embrace the stranger as part of Tikkun Olam?

Many things, but sometimes it requires anger.

Let me tell you an anger story. I'll share the medical history of one of my patients because she told this tale publicly many times. It's in the Boston Globe.

Ellen Dailey was a woman in her 50's who I met one night in a Boston shelter. She later told me she had been a secretary for the schools and became homeless when the landlord sold her rental unit out from under her, and her medical problems got worse and she couldn't get back into housing. She decided not to inform her 2 grown sons, both serving in the US Army in Germany at the time, out of fear that they would go AWOL. She spent 3 years on the streets, selling newspapers.

I met her when she turned up at a shelter clinic saying she was dizzy. I took a quick look at her and she had a big growth in her neck, her thyroid, and I felt pretty sure the thyroid was indirectly making her dizzy. Boston's a little different from Birmingham in that there, the homeless actually do have health care. But her care was a mess, because she had 2 Harvard specialists, one for the heart and one for the thyroid, and neither seemed to have put together that the thing in her neck was affecting the thing in her chest. I was annoyed that at 8:00 at night, the primary care outreach doctor was forced to clean up after 2 specialists at the Massachusetts General Hospital. And out of annoyance and a little anger, on my behalf and Ellen's, I decided to fix that little problem right then and there. I paged one of those specialists at 8:00 at night, with Ellen sitting in front of me, and gently chewed her out and said, "get this thyroid out and stop delaying."

Anger is what I felt, and initially I was a little ashamed that I acted so presumptuous, annoyed and self-important at 8:00 at night.

But what happened to Ellen?

She noticed an outreach doctor get angry on her behalf and take immediate action. When she got better and got back into housing she joined a variety of national and local boards. She told that story about me to several entering classes at Harvard Medical School. She tended  to make me sound like a genius, but what I think what really impressed Ellen the most was that someone got angry on her behalf. And Ellen too was angry, not just on her own behalf, but on behalf of all the homeless, even the ones who are recovering from drugs, or who drink to stop the voices. Ellen was 6 feet tall, and very eloquent. She wasn't afraid to talk down the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and she wasn't afraid to point out that even at Boston hospitals, it bothered her greatly that the nurses always treated her nicely until they saw that her primary care organization was  a homeless service organization. She was angered by prejudice, and she told them so.

The biggest challenge to embracing the stranger is fear. And confronting fear requires a few things. It requires some facts. I have cared for homeless patients for 11 years and never been attacked. A rehabilitation facility was set up next to ACIPCO pipe plant and despite their employees' fear, there has been no disorder. A feeding program in Boston sits adjacent to the Ritz Carlton and a fancy theater, and there has never been any problem. So we challenge fear with facts.

But we also challenge fear with anger, and sometimes anger is a crucial part of Tikkun Olam. Now as an aside, let me say that if you want to help with money, talk to me and I'll point you toward the organizations that do good work and need the money. If you want to help with a day of work for Birmingham's upcoming day of service, let me know.

But with homelessness in our midst and over 300 communities across the country working to end it, this is also time to be angry, maybe as angry as Gideon when he broke the idols, andlet it be anger in a way that speaks of love for the oppressed and for the oppressor alike, as Martin Luther King showed us in this very city.

We must not worship at the altar of prejudice and fear of the stranger if we are to fix this world. We must be angry when we see injustice and let the world know it.

Shabbat Shalom

Stefan G. Kertesz, MD

On April, 5, 2008, Birmingham will host a day of public service, called "Homeless Connect", for persons who wish to help for a day and be of public service to homeless individuals, modeled after similar events across the country. Persons wishing to provide specialty services (haircuts, medical, dental) call Michelle Farley at 254 8833. Persons wishing to join as a volunteer, go to www.handsonbirmingham.org and click the "Special Events" tab on the left.

Back