successful in the struggle against poverty with health care? Health care in earlier times was simple and limited. The complex procedures which have been developed in the last decades did not exist. A physician could help, but within clearly defined limits and such care was given to rich and poor alike. The great philosopher physician Moses Maimonides set an example along with hundreds of others before and after him. Medical expenses were limited, therefore individual tzedakah could take care of poor patients. The Jewish communities sometimes also became involved through paying for the education of a young man who would return and serve his home town a its physician. No complex system of dealing with the problem of health care was necessary. By the time it was needed Jewish self-government had dissolved as Jews became part of the modern state. Most larger Jewish communities established Jewish hospitals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which cared for the indigent and also provided a setting where Jewish physicians could practice as they were excluded from other hospitals. These Jewish hospitals were abandoned or became part of national systems when health care was nationalized in much of Europe and for other reasons in North America . Had the open society in which Jews are full and equal citizens not developed, the Jewish community would probably have followed the path used for dealing with poverty and moved from individual responsibility to communal concerns. We will trace the slow development of this path through the ages as it may influence our current thinking.
The Jewish premise of the supreme value of every human life provided the basis upon which concern for poverty and now health care rests. The Bible sees human life as a divine gift(Job 33:4), and Judaism equates each life to the divine initial act of creation. Each human being is to be viewed as similar to Adam and Eve, the first indispensable human beings, so no human life