At what cost do we save a life?

By Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel

CHULA VISTA, California — Gov. Andrew Como said something that recently caught my attention.  He recently remarked, “I did everything we could do. … This is about saving lives. If everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.”[1]

Jewish tradition might seem to concur. “God created the first human being alone in order to teach us that whosoever kills a single soul is considered as though he has destroyed an entire world. By the same token, anyone who preserves a single human soul, it is as if that person sustained a whole world.”[2]

So, admittedly, on the surface Cumo’s remark sounds reasonable, but we could argue that his statement reflects an unrealistic view of the world and of life. The “one life” argument has some practical limitations

But here is an alternative approach I would like you to consider;  there are 16,438 car crashes per day in the US. There are approximately 1.25 million people killed in car crashes each year. On average, that’s 3,287 deaths a day. In addition, there are between 20-50 million people are injured or disabled. More than half of all road traffic deaths occur among young adults ages 15-44. Each year nearly 400,000 people under 25 die on the world’s roads, on average over 1,000 a day. Over 90% of all road fatalities occur in low- and middle-income countries, which have less than half of the world’s vehicles. Road crashes and road traffic deaths cost USD $518 billion globally, costing individual countries 1-2% of their annual GDP.[3]

Based on Como’s advice, it is obvious motorists pose a far greater danger than the coronavirus. Perhaps he should consider banning all motorists from using their cars. This approach would certainly save over a million lives, not to mention those who have been injured. If Como is really interested in saving lives, he has a much larger target to go after.

Part of living involves taking a measured chance in the decisions we make.  Obviously, at a time of this pandemic, special caution and effort must be made to minimize the potential spread of the contagion. Washing our hands, wearing facemasks, and maintaining a distance of six feet is prudent as it is practical. But I do not believe confining people to their home is necessarily the best approach to this problem. In Sweden, the Swedish people have been advised to adopt a number of safety precautions. For example, these are the following guidelines enacted: no gatherings of more than 50 people (revised down from 500 last Friday), avoid social contact if over 70 or ill, try to work from home, table service only in bars and restaurants.

This approach seems more adultlike than the guidelines many states have enforced. It also helps the Swedish people make a gradual transition to normalcy—something we will also have to do at some point.

I found the social commentator Dennis Prager’s comment on Como’s remark significant:

It is hard to imagine a more morally absurd sentiment. Anyone who thinks rationally knows it is not worth depriving millions of people of their incomes, forcing thousands of companies to go out of business, causing recovering addicts to lapse back into addiction and much more economic and social damage to ‘save one life.’ As we are fighting a “war” against the virus, I used a war analogy to make my point. I noted that if we had fought World War II with the attitude that we cannot lose one life, we would never have fought the Nazis or the Japanese. I further noted that we do not make any social policy based on saving one life. For example, every time we raise the speed limit, we know thousands more people will die.[4]

As Prager observed, death is a part of our human experience in this world. Nobody wants to die, and we must do everything we can to avoid dying for naught. We take a chance on dying the moment we go outside of our homes; we take a chance whenever our country sends its young people to fight for the preservation of our freedom. Our country needs to find a way to reengage normalcy. The coronavirus pandemic has become for all countries of the world—a new world war, or WWIII, except the enemy here is not a nation, it is a disease that all humanity must work together to conquer. And with any war, people die.

But the good news is once we succeed in conquering the disease, the international relationships between nations—especially nations that are in conflict with one another—will take one a positive and meaningful step. If Israel were to find the cure for COVID-19, this could confer a heroic status as the Savior of the Islamic world.

Sometimes I think the pandemic has exposed our insecurity with mortality. When a forest fire destroys herds of wild animals in Africa, surviving zebras and lions do not ask, “Why do bad things happen to good zebras or lions?” But because of our intelligence, we ask the question because in our cleverness, we have figured out how to cheat death or at least postpone it from happening in our lives. Yes, other animals recognize they can die; their instincts serve as a warning system to flee from danger. But even these wonderful creatures are oblivious to the reality that they will inevitably die. Human beings are unique in this sense.

Marcus Aurelius, writes in his Meditations “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”  He also said, “You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” In other words, we cannot always control the events that intersect our lives; we can only control how we react. Rabbinical wisdom concurred with Marcus Aurelius, Ben Zoma asked, “Who is mighty? He who conquers his inclinations.” If my understanding is correct, I believe he is telling us the same thing. We must not let our insecurities and phantasms get the better of us. Ultimately, we are responsible for each of our souls.

Had Marcus Aurelius been familiar with Ecclesiastes, he might have concurred with its proto-Stoic wisdom:

There is an appointed time for everything,

and a time for every affair under the heavens.

A time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant.

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to tear down, and a time to build.

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them;

a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces.

 A time to seek, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away.

 A time to rend, and a time to sew;

a time to be silent, and a time to speak.

 A time to love, and a time to hate;

a time of war, and a time of peace.^[5]

Lastly, while death is to be avoided whenever possible, there is a certain risk we take simply by living—especially when we live beyond ourselves in a heroic manner. As we are sequestered in our homes, we ought to use the time to contemplate our earthly journey. Finding or rediscovering the inner peace with our own soul is the perfect recipe for conquering and transforming the chaos of the outer world into something meaningful and purposeful. Should we lose that ability, we will succumb to darker forces of our being that yearn to find expression. Conversely, when we survive a dangerous ordeal, we can better savor the beauty of life that God has given us. And be thankful that we have made it to see yet another beautiful day of creation.

The Chinese pictograph for crisis also symbolizes opportunity.

Part of the social distancing is akin to the act of tzimtzum, a mystical and Kabbalistic term that signifies God’s withdrawal from Himself that allowed the space of this reality to come into existence. Creating space for ourselves is vital for our spiritual connection with the divine, and that is exactly what the act of prayer involves—withdrawing from our outer world so we can turn toward our inner world. We can use this time to heighten our awareness of God, our community, and ourselves.

Marcus Aurelius further said, “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

On a personal note, this period of crisis has given me something I have not had in decades: a mini-Sabbatical. As most of you probably know, the Sabbath is a time where we focus more on the miracle of being, rather than having (to borrow an idea from Erich Fromm). For many of us who subsist on five to six hours of sleep, having eight hours of sleep has felt like a healing experience for my body and soul. More importantly, a good night’s sleep help builds up our immune system.

NOTES

[1] https://nypost.com/2020/03/20/todays-coronavirus-update-trump-closes-borders-new-york-locks-down/

[2] BT Sanhedrin 37b; JT Sanhedrin 4:12, 22b.

[3] (Source: https://www.thewanderingrv.com/car-accident-statistics/)

[4] https://www.creators.com/read/dennis-prager

^[5] Ecclesiastes  3:1–8.

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Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista, California.  He may be contacted via michael.samuel@sdjewishworld.com