Judaism and the Culture of Life

Judaism and the Culture of Life

On March 30th [2005], twelve days after Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was removed in Pinellas Park, Fla., Pope John Paul II had a nasal feeding tube inserted to demonstrate his firm belief that "even in the frailty of the last hour, human life is never meaningless or useless." Schiavo died the next day; the Pope was given last rites. He died two days later. In what one commentator called the "extraordinary confluence" of these events, Christians saw clear evidence of "God's timing." They suggested that it was neither meaningless nor useless that "the Pope has died at precisely this moment."

Such language is apt to make Jews and other moderns cringe. There is no word for coincidence in Hebrew. And Jews are likely to share the view that coincidences are just not worth talking about. After all, the word has been perverted from its orginal use. Coincidence first entered the English language in the seventeenth century as a means of denying any causal connection between unrelated events. The word was a particular favorite of Sir Francis Bacon, who advanced scientific rationalism against the claims of faith. Rather than muttering about "extraordinary confluences" and "God's timing," modern Jews are more apt to speak in the language of the Washington Post's headline: "Pope's Feeding Tube Brings End-of-Life Questions Closer."

Certainly that is how Terri Schiavo's case was discussed in the Jewish community, when it was discussed at all. Dr Daniel Eisenberg, for instance, wrote that Schiavo's "life and death had a profound impact on the American psyche and brought to the forefront the unresolved debate regarding how we treat severely disabled people. . . ." Bemoaning the "great deal of ignorance in the world regarding end-of-life issues," Dr Eisenberg set about to correct the deficit of knowledge about "the intricacies of neurological impairment. . . ." In the mean time, rabbis scrambled to locate the traditional Jewish sources on the right to die.

Now, I don't intend to offer yet another commentary on the Schiavo case this evening. We've all heard about as much as we can take on that. But I am interested in the Jewish reaction. And in particular, I want to examine how the Schiavo case throws light upon Jewish thought. The issues regarding the institution or removal of life support were not at question in the Schiavo case; the question was whether Terri Schiavo should be viewed as a full person with the rights of any human. And what worries me is that Judaism—at least official Judaism —has little or nothing to say on that question.

Other than Agudath Israel and Rabbi Daniel Lapin's Toward Tradition, Jewish organizations were strikingly silent on Terri Schiavo's ordeal. As an English Jew said in writing to the Jerusalem Post, "Where is the international Jewish condemnation of the starvation of Terri Schiavo? Why did only Christian groups stand up and fight for her rights?"

Indeed, after Agudath Israel issued a public plea to Michael Schiavo to "allow [his] wife to continue to live," Rabbi Avi Shafran, the organization's director of public affairs, said that he received a "flood of calls." Although some of the callers were "observant Jews, gratified that we had articulated a straightforward Jewish take on the matter," far more were Christians, and they voiced a "single sentiment, in different words": namely, "You know, I never realized there were Jewish people who cared about 'life' issues."

Almost the exact same thing could have been said about Jewish reaction to the death of the Pope. Even though he was the world's best-known and most outspoken voice on "life issues," John Paul was eulogized instead, by Jews, as if the Jews had been his exclusive concern. Characteristic was the statement released by the OU—the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America: "The historic and landmark contributions that he made to Catholic-Jewish relations were pioneering and invaluable. The Pope's denunciation of antisemitism as a sin against God, which he made as he traveled around the world, is all the more important in light of the alarming trends we see today."

Apparently, there were few Jewish people who cared that the Pope cared about "life issues." Where Terri Schiavo and John Paul were concerned, Jews preferred to avoid the issue altogether. But the Schiavo case was not a right-to-die case, nor did John Paul's final days bring end-of-life questions closer. Unless the need for food and water is proof that someone is about to die, Terri Schiavo was not in a terminal condition; her right to die was not at question here. Nor was John Paul's legacy the denunciation of antisemitism, as if the real threat to the Jews comes from suicidal bomb-carrying Catholics.

Instead, the deaths of Terri Schiavo and John Paul coincide over the issue of life. In the Schiavo case, the central question was not about the end of life, but about life as such. When does life become unworthy of life? And John Paul's lasting legacy—the achievement for which he will be most remembered—was to have directed a stream of fresh thought at the question; to have mounted a powerful defense of life that is worthy of life. The phrase that became so familiar among those who championed Schiavo's cause was John Paul's phrase. When President Bush said, for example, that "It should be our goal as a nation to build a culture of life, where all Americans are valued, welcomed, and protected," he was quoting the Holy Father. That may be reason enough for some Jews to spit the phrase out of their mouths. When American Jews hear talk about "the culture of life," they think immediately of abortion; and abortion rights are more precious to many of them than the state of Israel. But Terri Schiavo was not a fetus, and to deprive her of food and water was not to perform a D&C. And still the Jews were largely silent. That the people for whom pekuah nefesh, saving the life of another person, is a sacred duty that annuls almost all other laws—that the people who were deemed unworthy of life during the Nazi Holocaust—did not answer this call to defend the culture of life raises the question of what exactly is meant when the Jews cry "Never again!"

John Paul first advanced the phrase "culture of life" in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae—"The Gospel of Life"—issued in March 1995, exactly a decade ago, when he was 76. The pastoral letter was addressed "To the Bishops, priests and deacons . . . and all people of good will," and begins, "The Gospel of life is at the heart of Jesus' message." Thus Jews might be tempted to look upon the encyclical as irrelevant to them. But to dismiss it out of hand would be a mistake, because the Pope speaks in the Jews' own language—the language of Torah.

In his encyclical, John Paul argues that modernity, or what we might call the post-Holocaust era, has become a "struggle between the 'culture of life' and the 'culture of death.'" The "heart of the tragedy being experienced by modern man," he says, is just this: "the eclipse of the sense of God and of man, [which is] typical of a social and cultural climate dominated by secularism. . . . Those who allow themselves to be influenced by this climate easily fall into a sad vicious circle: when the sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man, of his dignity and his life; in turn, the systematic violation of the moral law, especially in the serious matter of respect for human life and its dignity, produces a kind of progressive darkening of the capacity to discern God's living and saving presence."

The "culture of life," then, simply refers to a confidence in God's presence—what the Torah calls panim Hashem, the "face of the LORD." In his distress, for example, the Psalmist cries out, "Et paneykha Hashem avakesh [O LORD, I seek your face]" (Ps 27.8). The evil man thinks that God hides his face (Ps 10.11), but God does not hide his face from the afflicted (Ps 22.25). It comes as little surprise, then, to find the Pope citing the Hebrew bible—specifically, the book of Genesis—to clinch his argument about the culture of life. After Kayin has murdered his brother Hevel, he is punished by Hashem. Kayin groans, "Gadol avoni minso. [My punishment is too great to bear!] Heyn geyrashta oti hayom [since you have banished me this day], umi-paneykhah esater [and from your face I shall be hidden] v'tayiyti na v'nad b'erets [and I shall become a fugitive and wanderer on earth]—kol motsi y'hargeyni [anyone who meets me may kill me!]" (4.1314). The Pope then explains: "Cain is convinced that his sin will not obtain pardon from the LORD and that his inescapable destiny will be to have to 'hide his face' from him." And hidden from God, he will find himself at the mercy of men. Thus "when the sense of God is lost," John Paul concludes, "the sense of man is also threatened and poisoned. . . ."

At the heart of the Schiavo case the wrong question was being asked. The usual question was, What did Terri want? Did she want to be kept alive in an incapacitated state or not? The legal controversy then boiled down to whether her husband Michael was right when he said No or whether her parents were right when they said Yes. But as the bioethicist Eric Cohen points out, the moral question would have remained the same even if Terri's husband and parents had agreed. The legal controversy thus obscured the moral question. Even though she was not in a terminal condition, Terri Schiavo could have been threatened with death if and only if she were no longer seen as fully human. In a televised debate with another bioethicist, Bill Allen came right out and said so. Asked if he thought Terri Schiavo was a person, Allen replied: "No, I do not. I think having awareness is an essential criterion for personhood. Even minimal awareness would support some criterion of personhood, but I don't think complete absence of awareness does." In John Paul's terms, someone could speak in this way only if he believed that Terri Schiavo was hidden away outside the presence of God.

The Pope's encyclical Evangelium Vitae was then a courageous and powerful response to perhaps the most important question of our time. As it was phrased several years ago by the French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, the question is: "What is human?" When does a person cease being a person who is protected by the Toraitic injunction lo tirtsa, "You shall not murder"? What is it that makes someone human as distinguished from merely homo sapien? What, in short, is man? The bioethicist movement has not hesitated to supply an answer. Peter Singer of Princeton University argues that unless an organism is self-aware over time, it is a non-person. The University of Manchester's John Harris has defined a person as "a creature capable of valuing its own existence."

Even as these answers have begun to steer public policy, Judaism has had little or nothing to offer in reply. The story is told of the Hasidic master who sat down to write a book called Adam, but gave it up to write on halakhah instead. Halakhah—Jewish law—is concerned with the problem of being a Jew, not with being a man. This is true even of such apparently moral and natural laws as "You shall not murder." For a Jew, the law has binding force not because it is moral and natural, but because it is covenantal—it was given at Sinai. It falls upon the Jews as a responsibility by virtue of having been chosen by God: If we obey him faithfully and keep his covenant then we shall be his treasured possession among all the peoples (see Exod 19.5). We obey the law in order to maintain a relationship with him. And in this sense, "You shall not murder" is no different from "You shall not take a mother [from its nest] together with her young" (Deut 22.6). The categorical imperative, as phrased by the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant—act always so that your law could hold universally—is nonsense to the Jews. We do not refrain from eating McDonald's cheeseburgers because we are willing to see them prohibited throughout the world. On the contrary. We go out of our way to discourage other people from behaving like us. We act always so that our law holds only for the Jews. Even universal moral precepts like "You shall not murder" are, among us, merely particularistic tribal customs.

One reason that Judaism has been largely silent on the question "What is human?" is that the question dates from the Enlightenment, and the Enlightenment was inclined to answer by describing a universal human "essence" which smelled suspiciously European and Christian. The Enlightenment slogan "Be a man before you are a Jew" struck Jews as merely a demand that they divest themselves of their Jewishness. Small wonder there has never really been a Jewish humanism, because humanism was founded upon a pseudo-universalism which assumed the culture of the dominant group was a universal culture. And the Jews were unwilling to commit that mistake. Thus Calev ben-David, writing in the Jerusalem Post, said that "Social conservatives such as those fighting to keep Schiavo alive are often fond of citing the 'Judeo-Christian tradition.' . . . But there are . . . some clear theological differences between traditional Judaism and Christianity when it comes to the so-called 'quality of life' issues including such hot-button topics as abortion, stem-cell research, and passive euthanasia. . . . This is not to argue for any kind of 'Jewish' position regarding the Schiavo affair even if she herself were Jewish," ben-David concluded. "Quite the opposite: Since the whole question of what Terri Schiavo's own desires were . . . regarding her current condition is still in dispute it is impossible to draw any general conclusions from this tangled and heart-wrenching case." The Jewish habit of mind has long been to avoid general conclusions about the human.

Yet if John Paul is correct then it follows that to evade the question of man is to flee from the presence of God. Perhaps an observant Jew can take refuge in the claim that the first mitsvah is anokhi Hashem eloheykha, "I am the LORD your God"; and to obey the mitsvot, then, is to abide in God's presence—whether or not you've given any thought to the question "What is human?" But this is to ignore the question of what is owed to someone like Terri Schiavo, who stands outside the covenantal system of the mitsvot. Does she also stand outside God's presence? Is God's face hidden from her, despite the words of the Psalmist? If not—if even a woman incapable of valuing her own existence nevertheless retains the tselem elohim, the "image of God"—then the question continues to rattle: What makes her human?

The view that she may not be fully human has not been without its Jewish proponents. Martin Buber is perhaps the first Jewish philosopher who comes to mind when considering the question of personhood. Buber insisted that genuine personhood means autonomy fulfilled in inter-personal dialogue. Yet Terri Schiavo was neither autonomous—after all, she was dependent upon others for her care and feeding—nor was she capable of meaningful dialogue with others. On Buber's view, the brain damaged and incapacitated may slide rather easily from being a Thou to becoming an It, from being the subject of her own drama to becoming an object of someone else's designs. I can remember my own awakening from some such philosophical nightmare. I was expounding the humanistic precept that no one is born human; a person must learn to be human. After all, I said cheerfully, don't I recall my mother's telling me to sit up straight and not to chew with my mouth open? Well then, one of my colleagues replied, what about those who are incapable of learning?—what about, for instance, the severely mentally retarded? With a feeling of horror I realized that I had arrived at the logic of Nazism.

You'd think that the Holocaust would have spelled an end to all that. Certainly John Paul thought so. Born in a Jewish house, whose best friend growing up was a Jew, a young Pole who watched his Jewish friends and neighbors rounded up and deported never to return, the Pope never forgot what he owed to the Jews. And so he offered them something far more valuable and lasting than a denunciation of antisemitism. He called for a halt to the Enlightenment project of searching for a universal human "essence" founded upon autonomy and rationality, because he understood that it threatened and poisoned the Jews.

You'd think that more Jews, who know something about the Holocaust, might have agreed with the Pope, and might have joined him in defending the culture of life. For as it turns out, Jewish literature has not been completely silent on the question "What is human?" One of the most profound meditations was offered in the Holocaust memoir translated into English as Survival in Auschwitz, originally published in Italian in 1958 as Se questo e un uomo—“If This Be a Man.” Its author was Primo Levi.

Levi described Auschwitz as an "exceptional human state," but a human state nevertheless. In "ordinary life," he wrote, a man rarely "loses himself. A man is normally not alone"—not entirely—"and in his rise or fall [he] is tied to the destinies of his neighbors; so that it is exceptional for anyone to acquire unlimited power, or to fall by a succession of defeats into utter ruin." In the death camp, however, things are different: "here the struggle to survive is without respite, because everyone is desperately and ferociously alone." Thus the typical man, the human essence of the death camps, was the Musselmann. This was camp argot for the inmate who was doomed to the gas chamber, as the overwhelming majority of inmates were. Levi's description is worth quoting in full:

"All the musselmans who finished in the gas chambers have the same story, or more exactly, have no story; they followed the slope down to the bottom, like the streams that run down to the sea. On their entry into the camp, through basic incapacity, or by misfortune, or through some banal incident, they are overcome before they can adapt themselves; they are beaten by time, they do not begin to learn German, to disentangle the infernal knot of laws and prohibitions until their body is already in decay, and nothing can save them from selections or from death by exhaustion. Their life is short, but their number is endless: they, the Musselmänner, . . . form the backbone of the camp, an anonymous mass, continually renewed and always identical, of non-men who march and labor in silence, the divine spark dead within them, already too empty really to suffer. . . . [I]f I could enclose all the evil of our time in one image, I would choose this image which is so familiar to me: an emaciated man, with head dropped and shoulders curved, on whose face and in whose eyes not a trace of a thought is to be seen" (p. 90).

The Holocaust has changed the meaning of humanism for all time. After Auschwitz, the essence of man is that he can be reduced to a Musselmann—the non-man in whom in the divine spark is dead, who is distinguished by being utterly alone. When we consign the likes of Terri Schiavo to the ranks of non-persons, because they lack autonomy and minimal awareness—because they are too empty even to suffer—all that we are really testifying to is our abandonment of them. They are utterly alone, these severely incapacitated Musselmänner, only because we have failed to rise to their defense; because we have failed to ask, not whether they are still human, but whether we are. The Holy Father reminds us, however, that while we may have abandoned them, God has not. Yet once we have lost the sense of the personhood of the afflicted, our own capacity to discern God's living and saving presence has been permanently darkened. If we Jews are to seek the face of God again, we must join with Pope John Paul in defending the dignity of the human person—that is, in building a culture of life.

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