People of Faith CT

Senator Joseph Lieberman
United States Senate
 
Senator:
 
We are rabbis, cantors, and other committed Jews. Many of us were
delighted in 2000 when you were nominated for Vice-President and
proclaimed to all that you were an observant Jew, carrying into the
highest level of public service the values of the Jewish people.
 
Now we see with deep distress that you have announced that you will not
support the bill before the Senate to  bring health care in America
even part way toward the universal and affordable coverage that is
assumed in every other industrial country, including Israel.  You have
announced that you intend to join a quasi-filibuster against even
taking an up-and-down vote on the bill if it contains either a "public
option" provision or one extending the universally praised Medicare
system to some younger people.
 
Doing this would thwart the will of a majority of the Senate, the
majority of the American people, and the majority of the American
Jewish community.
 
In our eyes, this is not the behavior of an "observant" Jew. "Tzedek
tzedek tirdof, justice justice shall you seek,"  is among the Torah's
most important commandments. And in pursuit of justice, no autonomous
Jewish community has ever allowed the poor to go without healing. It is
clear that the present health insurance system based on private
insurance companies is broken in every aspect except assuring enormous
profits to itself. It costs Americans the highest medical costs in the
world while providing mediocre health care as measured by life
expectancies, newborn death rates, and other indices across the
developed world.
 
We recognize that major health insurance companies are headquartered in
Connecticut and that you may view your obligations to them as
constituents as an important political responsibility. Yet thousands of
Americans die each year unnecessarily because they are refused coverage
by or are unable to purchase insurance from these same companies.
 
So we believe your obligation of pekuach nefesh, saving life, saving
the lives of the flesh-and-blood citizens of Connecticut, shaped in
flesh and blood in God's Image and subject to damage of that same flesh
and blood that requires healing, is an even higher obligation than you
owe to your insurance-company constituents. Indeed, two-thirds of your
flesh-and-blood constituents support a health-care bill that includes a
strong public option.
 
We therefore call you to do tshuvah - to turn yourself again toward
fulfilling the commands of Torah and meeting the needs of the American
people. Then we will be happy once again that you are bringing the
values of an "observant Jew" to the public service of the American
people.
 
Signed,

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