What Makes Us Human?

Professor Be’er, Minister Rav Ya’akov Litzman, K’vod Nasi Medinat Yisrael leshe’avar, Mr. Shimon Peres, beloved friends, thank you so much for this wonderful honour, by which I'm deeply moved. 

I want to thank President Shimon Peres for his wonderful, exemplary healthcare lifestyle, because at the age of 92, I was thinking to myself, we should all be so young at the age of 92. But actually, I think I should be so young at the age of 67, and I suddenly realised the secret of Mr. Shimon Peres, we are as young as our ideals. If we never lose those ideals, we will not grow old.

Friends, thank you very much for these tributes, but as a wise man once said, ‘Compliments are fine so long as you don't inhale.’ So I thank you. 

Friends, all I wanted to do today, very simply, because I so admire the Rambam Hospital for its remarkable work in healthcare, in medical research, in medical technology, in dealing with children, in dealing with victims suffering from trauma, in reaching out way beyond the Jewish community and embracing equally all communities - Muslim, Christian, Druze, Israeli, Arab.

I wanted to say that its work is not only great because it is great in itself, but because the greatest rabbi of 2,000 years, the Rambam himself, Moses Maimonides, is sitting in Heaven enjoying every minute and every detail of your work. 

You see, he had this extraordinary gift of number one, being the greatest codifier of Jewish law. Number two, of writing the greatest work of Jewish philosophy. But number three, being one of the great doctors of his age, the physician to the Sultan in Cairo and author of a great many textbooks, and if a rabbi knows how to keep your soul well and your body likewise, that is a doubly impressive achievement. 

So I just wanted very simply, in the name of the Rambam, to share with us one of his teachings, not perhaps as well known as it ought to be, which has an enormous bearing on the work of the Rambam Hospital - and of the world generally - in this difficult and turbulent age.

Let me begin with a very simple question. According to Maimonides, who was the first codifier of Jewish faith, how many principles of faith are there? Everyone knows there were 13 Principles of Faith. The only trouble is that Maimonides' first book, “A Treatise of Logic,” Milot HaHigayon, is divided into 14 chapters.

His commentary to the Mishnah sets out 14 principles for counting the mitzvahs. His great law code, the Yad Chazaka, is comprised of 14 books, and in the last book of “The Guide of the Perplexed,” where he goes through all the 613 commandments of the Torah, he divides them into 14. Moreover, his birthday was the 14th of Nisan.

So when the Rambam did anything, he did it in 14s, not in 13s. And I searched - pishpashti uMatzati, and I discovered that, according to Maimonides, there are indeed 14 Principles of Faith. 13 of them appear in one section of his work, and the 14th in Chapter Five of Hilchot Teshuva, where he says “It is a fundamental principle of Jewish faith that we have free will, that if we choose, we can be as righteous as Moses, and if we fail to choose the good, we can be as wicked as Yeravam.”

In other words, free will is an item of Jewish faith. 

And the reason people think Maimonides said there were only 13 principles is because those 13 principles are about what is God, but the 14th is about what makes us human. 

And the short answer that Maimonides gives is very profound. That we actually have the choice as to whether to build a better world or regress into an older and much worse one.

This defines our humanity. 

As a result, it means that unlike all other life forms which adapt to their environment, we can adapt the environment for us. 

It means that whereas all life forms are driven by drives and desires, we alone can judge whether or not to indulge this drive or this desire.

Of all the three million life forms known to science, in this universe of 100 billion galaxies, each with 100 billion stars, we are the only life form thus far known to us that can ask the question, ‘Why?’ 

Or as I put it once, science and religion should work hand in hand, because science takes things apart to see how they work, and religion puts things together to see what they mean. 

And that is what makes us distinctively human. 

The great paradox of the growth of science since the 17th century is that the higher our scientific achievements have gone, the lower has sometimes been our evaluation of humanity.

As Sigmund Freud pointed out, it was Copernicus who first taught us that the Earth is not the centre of the universe. It was Spinoza who said, maybe we aren't as free as we believe we are. It was Marx and Freud who said, we are driven by economic forces and subconscious desires. And finally, it was Darwin who led the way to some - not, I think, the real disciples of Darwin - but some who say, we have no free will at all, we are genetically determined. 

And the result is, today, there are some scientists - not anywhere in the Rambam - but some who say there is nothing special about being human. We share 98% of our genes with the primates, with Bonobos. In fact, alpha males among the primates and among rabbis are probably very similar. That our highest aspirations are only electrical impulses in the brain. That we are mere material organisms - or as Richard Dawkins, my favourite atheist puts it - a human is merely a gene's way of making another gene.

I think we are in danger of losing our humanity if we go down that road. Maimonides was very clear. He said, Judaism is based on two things, Tikkun HaNefesh and Tikkun HaGuf, the perfection of the soul and of the body.

And whereas the perfection of the soul is the higher aspiration, perfection of the body must come first in time and in our priorities, because in his words, “it is impossible to think spiritual thoughts if we are ill and wracked with disease.” And that's why he encouraged us to engage both in refuat haNefesh and refuat haGuf, in healing of the body and the soul. 

Now, this becomes tremendously important today as technology moves us ever so rapidly forward.

We know, for instance, that end-of-life decisions are becoming very, very serious throughout the West. The blessing of additional life expectancy has brought with us a sudden encounter with Alzheimer's and with dementia. We know that in China recently, for the first time, there was genetic intervention into a human embryo, germline genetic intervention that could alter the entire course of human evolution.

Besides which, AI, artificial intelligence, is such that it is so distinguished that I am given an inferiority complex by my mobile phone, which is so much smarter than I am. The end result is that with advances in digital medicine, advances in constant monitoring of health, the new Apple Watch is a wonderful good conscience because if you've been sitting for an hour, it tells you to get up and take some exercise. It's as bad as my mother, bless her.

And one way or another, we are moving so fast towards constant monitoring, computer-based diagnosis, genetically individualised treatment, all of which is an unmediated blessing.

It is a wonderful and sensational advance in our ability to give dignity to life and extend the possibilities and hopes of life. But what Maimonides would be telling us while he was congratulating us for all these advances, never forget that we are still human.

Never forget that the personal contact between patient and doctor, patient and nurse, makes a difference. 

You have a wonderful series of clowns here in the children's hospital because we now know that laughter is therapeutic. Jews have always known that laughter is therapeutic.

And the end result is that Rambam is showing us exactly what it is to engage both in refuat haGuf and refuat haNefesh at the same time, the healing of the body but also of the soul. 

And when medicine reaches out - as President Peres said, beyond borders - beyond these artificial divisions, then it is healing more than just the body. It is healing the soul as well.

If there is one thing that medicine teaches us, it is that our shared humanity and our shared vulnerability precedes our religious differences. 

And it is in a place like the Rambam that you see this so very clearly. Therefore, I bless you, I thank you, and I hope you will continue this wonderful tradition of Maimonides, the 14th principle of Jewish faith, that every life is sacred, that “kol haMatzil nefesh achat k’ilu hitzil olam maleh,” save one life and you save the universe. 

To remind us yet again that within us is the breath of God Himself.

That is spiritual as well as medical work. 

Having just come up from your underground medical facility - which we pray will never be used - but we know is your way of rescuing a blessing from the curse that was the missiles launched at this hospital in the 2006 Lebanon War. Never before have I felt so powerfully the choice before humankind in the 21st century.

On the one hand, the power to damage and destroy life. On the other hand, the power to heal and enhance life. And that is the choice that the first Moses, not Moses Maimonides, but Moses, our Teacher, left us with at the end of his life.

“Hinei natati lifneichem haYom et haBracha ve’et haKlala.” Behold, I set before you today the blessing and the curse. Life and death.

“U'vacharta b’chayim,” choose life, so that you and your children may live. You have chosen life. May you continue to inspire us and be a blessing to the world.