Finding the Right Diagnosis

Three Jewish moms are bragging about their sons.  The first says, “My son is an amazing doctor.  When the Surgeon General has a question, my son is the one he calls." The second says, “That’s nothing.  My son is an amazing lawyer.  He has such a busy practice that people are happy to wait months to get advice from him.”  The third says, “That’s nothing.  My son is a successful businessman.  Three times a week, he sees the most expensive psychiatrist in town.  And guess who he spends most of his time talking about?  Me!”

Like the businessman in the joke, we may find ourselves exerting enormous effort to try to get to the root of a problem. The origin of the word diagnosis is the Greek word for “to know.”

One could say that diagnosis is about knowing what the issue is and then knowing how to proceed.

Both are often not so easy – knowing what’s wrong, and knowing what to do about it.

The Torah describes the ancient Kohen, the priest, as a diagnostician.  He diagnosed skin rashes and other disorders, using the instructios that God gave to Moses and Aaron as a kind of manual.

Once the person was diagnosed, the “treatment” offered was a sort of quarantine.  A certain number of days that the person spent outside the community at which point, the Kohen would diagnose again to see if the person could be brought back into the community.  All along, the Kohen would determine if the person was tahor, fit for participation in the communal ritual, or tamei, unfit.  

Doctors know that even with a precise manual, diagnosis can be complicated.  You hope to get it right, but sometimes the situation is different, or more complicated, than what you thought.

Leaving the medical realm, diagnoses are called for all the time.

Experts offer conflicting diagnoses of trenchant political challenges all the time.

The way out of the recession is to spend more, and thereby create more opportunity for growth.

The way out of the recession is to spend less, and thereby reduce the deficit.

Secretary of State John Kerry is probably not too surprised to discover that the Israeli-Palestinian talks are barely on life-support.

What’s the proper diagnosis of this situation? 

Yeshayahu Leibovitch, noted Israeli philosopher, said right after the six-day war that occupying the West Bank would bring about disaster.  In the film, Gatekeepers, which we showed a few weeks ago here, a number of leading Israeli security officials, former heads of the Shin Bet, said, decades later, that Leibovitch was pretty on target.  If you like that view, read Ha’aretz and the Forward and you’ll find plenty of support for it.

Benjamin Netanyahu claims that the obstacle to peace is primarily the unwillingness of the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.  If you like that view, read The Jerusalem Post and the Wall Street Journal for support.

Is the release of Palestinian prisoners going to help?  Is the release of Jonathan Pollard going to help?

There is such frustration and mistrust on both sides that it’s hard to be optimistic.

In a recent article called “The Quiet Rise of the Israeli Center,” (Times of Israel, March 23, 2014) Yossi Klein Halevi wrote that the Israeli majority is actually in the center.  They support a two-state solution and are terrified of a two-state solution.

Here’s a quotation from the article, to give you a sense of his thinking:

"A centrist has two nightmares about Israel’s future. The first is that there won’t be a Palestinian state. The second is that there will be.

A centrist shares with left-wingers the agonizing question: How could the Jewish people find itself as occupiers of another people?

Yet a centrist rejects the notion that Jews are occupiers in the land of Israel. We are certainly occupiers of another people – and attempts by right-wingers to deny that reality only undermine their credibility among centrists – but we are not strangers in any part of this land. Yes, we will need to compromise with a competing national claim. But any territorial withdrawal, however necessary, will be a wound to our being, a sacrifice of cherished parts of our homeland."

I actually find Yossi Klein Halevi’s diagnosis compelling, maybe because it confirms the experience that I often have, namely, that I feel frustrated among right-wingers and frustrated among left-wingers because their diagnoses seem to occur in a vacuum, or an echo chamber if you prefer, not sufficiently mindful of the countervailing realities.  I want to say to each group, yes, but you’re leaving something important out.

The struggle that Yossi Klein Halevi underscores, one that I also found in Ari Shavit’s book, The Promised Land, strikes me as a much more realistic, and therefore promising, approach to an exquisitely complex situation.

In the Russian gulag, where he spent nearly a decade, Natan Sharansky, then known as Anatole, would play chess with himself, in his own mind, in order to keep himself focused.  His Russian captors tried mightily to destroy his resolve and he kept himself focused and sane.

I heard him speak on a number of occasions when he was navigating Israeli politics, first as a member of Knesset and later as head of the Jewish Agency.  He said that in many ways, Israeli politics has been more challenging for him than Soviet prison was.  Clearly, he doesn’t face the same physical danger.  But in the Israeli political scene, there are multiple viewpoints and no uniform diagnoses of the problems, much less potential solutions.

He’s been charged with coming up with a solution for how the Kotel should be organized – one part for men, one part for women, one part mixed.  Except that some people view the Kotel as an outdoor orthodox synagogue, rather than an international site for the Jewish people.

I for one take the latter view and would love to see more pluralism at the kotel.  And I urge those who share my view to advocate for it, as I have done.  But it’s not the only view and within Israel, among those who are speaking the loudest, it may not even be the majority view.

In his leadership over this issue and others, Natan Sharansky is playing chess, but he’s not the only player.

Good luck to all of us who look around the Shabbat table and say, “Gee, I have the perfect diagnosis.  If only this one would do this, and that one would do that.  If only my spouse would recognize his or her shortcoming.  If only my mom or dad would just lay off.  If only my brother or sister would take a leave of absence from the house. 

We have no shortage of diagnoses, the world according to each of us, but who’s listening, first of all, and second of all, suppose, sitting around the table, is a second opinion that doesn’t quite concur, or a third?

And if you can’t agree on the diagnosis, then how do you figure out a course of treatment?

If we don’t want to spend endless hours and resources talking about our mothers, yet we also don’t want to succumb to simplistic diagnoses, I want to suggest the following, which won’t surprise you.

Let’s not be afraid of the struggle.  Maybe the answer isn’t always tamei or tahor, impure or pure.  Maybe the annoying second opinion has something to teach us and might even temper our view.  Maybe we’re only seeing a partial view to begin with.

Maybe the “course of treatment” involves moving forward with a commitment to re-evaluate from time to time, as the ancient Kohen did. 

Diagnosis involves wisdom, humility and flexibility for doctors and statesmen, parents and children.

With a nod toward the Greek origins of the world, I pray that our careful diagnosis will yield a greater depth of knowledge, one that will inspire a more refined and thoughtful course of action.

Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on April 5, 2014