Patients, heal thyselves

Editorial

In this issue, readers will find stories from a broad range of topics in the area of health. There are tips to keep your heart healthy, including a heart-smart recipe, there's an examination of the growing interest in magnetic therapy and a look at how pilates works. There is basic information on acupuncture from a naturopath and on arthritis from a chiropracter. And there is a plea from a writer with firsthand family knowledge about the importance of getting diagnostic testing for prostate cancer and breast cancer.

As wide a range of health-related topics as this is, there is one thing that stands out as being a common thread. In all these stories, particularly on the last topic – that of cancer – there is a strong emphasis on taking the responsibility for your health into your own hands. This can manifest itself in many ways. You can change your diet to eat more healthily; you can get on the Web or visit a library to look up information on specific healing technologies to determine if they might work for you; you can talk to your doctor about mammograms and about preventing or managing arthritic pain; and you can talk to certified instructors or specialists for initial consultations to see if what they are offering in the field of medicine or health is something with which you feel comfortable.

In every case, the importance of picking yourself up and being active in your own health research is paramount. After all, you're not going to expect a pilates instructor or an oncologist to be going door to door in your neighborhood like an Avon representative, ringing on doorbells and dragging people away for a regular check-up.

Of course, not everyone has accepted or acted on the idea of preventive health; too many people wait until they their lower back starts to nag at them or their blood-pressure gets way out of control before making an appointment with a health practitioner. But the basic concept of "patient, heal thyself" is gaining ground and, thankfully, having tremendous positive effects.

The area of health is not the only one where this motto rings true. We can look at it in the context of our own Jewish community as a whole.

Within the concept of personal responsibility lies a larger issue of maintaining a healthy population. A healthy population means lower absenteeism, less grief and better hospital care for those who find themselves with a major health crisis. In turn, this aids the larger society in both a social way (healthier, happier people) and in an economic sense (lower health-care costs and reduced losses to the economy).

This concept of mutual responsibility can be extrapolated to other aspects of Canadian life. Citizen participation in society, through volunteerism, political activity and cultural endeavors, benefits the figurative health of the whole society.

It is a lesson the Jewish community knows well. Klal Yisrael (the idea that all Jews are responsible for one another) is a guiding principle that has underpinned Jewish communal life worldwide for millennia.

Jewish Canadians have an excellent record of involvement in most areas of social endeavor – business, law, medicine, volunteerism, social services, and so forth. But, as Nisson Goldman, chair of Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, laments elsewhere in this issue, Canadian Jews are not getting involved in noticeable numbers in the most public of social endeavors: politics.

There are a couple of excellent Jewish members of Parliament and legislatures in eastern Canada, but, since Bernie Simpson left provincial politics, there has not been a Jewish presence in the B.C. legislature nor in the caucus we send to Parliament. There is a case to be made that working behind the scenes can bear excellent results. There is another case to be made that nobody can speak forcefully for a community except a member of that community. The Canadian sociologist Morton Weinfeld beautifully summed up the position of Canada's Jews with the title of his book Like Everyone Else ... But Different. Well-intentioned politicians like MP Stephen Owen and MLA Val Anderson have close ties to the Jewish community. But that's not the same as intuitively understanding the needs and passions of an identifiable group by belonging to it. Canadian Jews – and British Columbia's Jews in particular – have abandoned politics in droves.

But the time is destined to come when the unique perspective of the Canadian Jewish experience will be needed in this country's legislatures, and it won't be there.

As part of a larger community, we have an obligation to ourselves and others to maintain healthy bodies. We have another obligation as well: to work toward a healthy and vibrant body politic, within our own community and in the larger forum of elected government. Call it holistic. Call it good citizenship. Call it what you will, but it's time for the Canadian Jews to take charge of our communal health.

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