Electing to walk in God’s paths

Having just returned from the United States, I was amazed at the relative calm of our just-completed Canadian political campaign. What’s going on with our cousins to the south is nothing less than a hate-fest, as opposed to a close look at opposing platforms.

At the risk of being naïve, I looked.

Thinking this way, I was reminded of a drashah on parshat Ki Tavo. Coupled with luminous blessings comes the phrase, “If you will keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his paths.”

What does it mean “to walk in God’s paths?” Surely humankind is not capable of doing so. The rabbis knew this and so taught: “The verse means to teach us that we should follow the attributes of the Holy One. As God clothes the naked, you should clothe the naked. The Torah teaches that that the Holy One visited the sick; you should visit the sick. The Holy One comforted those who mourned; you should comfort those who mourn. The Holy One buried the dead; you should bury the dead.” (Sotah 14:a)

In other words, we must do the right thing for those who cannot do for themselves.

Today in North America, we see the results of what happens when the most vulnerable are not attended to: vast inequality of wealth, with the gap growing larger. Health care in the United States is beyond the ability of 47 million people to afford. Billions are being spent to fight wars, while at home, people ousted from their homes by Hurricane Katrina three years ago (not to mention the thousands who are losing their homes in the mortgage crisis) wait in vain for help. And should I mention the people whose retirement savings have been eroded, if not wiped out, by unchecked goings-on on Wall Street?

OK, that’s the United States’ problem. What about us?

We, too, have a growing income gap, with homeless and mentally ill people roaming our streets, and families so broken that their children seek the street as refuge.

Examining the daily coverage of the campaign and the speeches of the candidates, I looked for a party with a plan to address the social issues of the day.

On Sept. 22, I read that the Liberals would increase spending on social housing, foreign aid and medical care, while the Conservatives said they will get tough on young offenders. (That says to me: go into jail a young thug, come out a seasoned criminal.)

Let me give you a few examples of how I saw “walk in God’s ways” in our recent campaign.

In the early 1990s, the federal government abruptly cancelled all plans to build affordable (then called social) housing. I don’t know what happened in Toronto or Montreal, but Vancouver’s ability to provide housing for vulnerable, low-income families virtually disappeared. The province never stepped in to address the issue, and today you read headlines about homelessness, tent cities and despair on our streets.

So I want a government that will house the vulnerable.

If you live on the streets, you will turn to anything that will dull the misery you feel. I will not support a government that closes supervised drug injection sites. In the 1990s, when I worked for the Vancouver Health Board, at least 200 people – two hundred! – were dying of drug overdoses on our streets each year. Hundreds more were taken to emergency rooms, then turned out to fend for themselves once again. That figure has dwindled as the InSite supervised injection site has saved lives and directed many to treatment programs.

I want a government that will tend to the sick in heart and body.

Yes, I want my government to support Israel, but that’s not my first criterion for who gets my vote. Realistically, I know that Canada’s voice at the table is very, very small. Any Middle East solution will not happen because we support it, but because larger nations enforce it, and because Israel and the Palestinians accept it.

So I decided to use my vote this year to tell our government to remember that we, as a civil society, have a responsibility to emulate the attributes of God. Only then are on we the right path to being human.