June 28, 2012 | 7:49 pm

When Anger Overtakes us - D’var Torah Hukat

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

Recall the last time you became really angry, blindingly, uncontrollably angry, so filled with rage that you couldn’t think straight.

What did you do about it? Did you act out or say anything? When you calmed down did you feel justified in what you’d felt and satisfied in having said or done what you did? Was there a positive result to whatever you said or did, that is, did the relationship get stronger and better, or did your relationship with the person with whom you were angry deteriorate?

I ask these questions because this week’s Torah portion tells of an incident in Moses’ life when his anger had serious consequences for him and the people of Israel. The incident took place following the death of his sister Miriam, when he and his brother Aaron were still in mourning. The children of Israel had taken the occasion to complain bitterly about having no water. Moses and Aaron appealed to God, and God told Moses to gather the people, speak to a rock, and water would flow thus sating the people’s thirst.

Moses, however, was so overwrought with grief and was so aggravated at the people’s incessant complaining that instead of speaking to the rock he struck it twice with his rod. Water gushed out, as God had promised, but God was incensed by Moses’ defiance and punished him harshly:

“Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them.” (Numbers 20:12)

To deny Moses the privilege of entering the Promised Land was devastating to a man who had dedicated his life to God and the people; and we ask what sin could hold such a consequence?

The rabbis offer a number of ideas. Maimonides said that Moses’ bitter language did not become his position as leader. The Talmud says that Moses lacked sufficient faith. Nahmanides thought that Moses showed hubris when he accepted credit for providing water in God’s place. And Rashi said that Moses lost his temper. 

I want to focus on Rashi’s interpretation. Isn’t rage part of being human? After all, we all get angry.

There are many contemporary parallels to Moses’ fury. One is “road rage” when a driver becomes so infuriated at another driver that he seeks vengeance. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has estimated that “road rage” is a factor in 28,000 highway deaths every year.

Studies of the approximately 16,000 murders annually in America reveal that a majority are committed by people who know personally the victim thus defining it as a crime of passion.

Of course, not all anger results in violent acts. Language is a powerful weapon when used skillfully against our adversaries. The old saying “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me” is wrong. What we say and how we say it can do serious damage.

There are times, of course, when anger is justified, such as against those who misuse their talents for evil ends, in the face of ingratitude, lies, slander, theft, mistreatment of the poor, cruelty, and false claims in God’s Name. (see A Code of Jewish Ethics, volume 1, by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, pages 258-262).

Besides righteous indignation, the tongue can cause serious damage to marriages, friendships, and relationships between co-workers, as well as inspire fear in the home, work and school settings and destroy trust.

Holding onto our anger also has a terrible effect. Mark Twain said that “anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

If we follow Rashi’s interpretation, despite his strength as a leader, prophet, liberator, legislator, judge, and military chieftain, Moses lost the promise because he could not control his rage.

Tradition asks what constitutes real strength: Eizeh hu gibor? – Who is strong? Hakovesh et yitzro – Not the one who has physical strength, public or familial power, but “the one who controls his/her passions.” (Mishnah, Pirkei Avot 4:1) The Vilna Gaon understood the term yitzro as “his anger.”

In this sense, Moses showed a core weakness when he lost his temper before the people. If Moses was so capable of losing control, then so much the more so that each of us needs to check our rage when ever it shows itself, be it on the highway, within the home, among friends, at work, and before strangers. If we are able to do so, we and everyone around us will be the better for it. 

Shabbat shalom!

June 26, 2012 | 6:00 am

There is More than One Way to be a Jew in Israel

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

It is important that those interested in a pluralistic democratic Jewish State of Israel support the recent Israeli Supreme Court Ruling granting state recognition and funding for Reform and Conservative rabbis in Israel. This is why I am posting this recent letter from Anat Hoffman, the Executive Director of Israel’s Religious Action Center.

I responded already to Anat’s request to send an email to the Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Shlomo Amar, protesting his inappropriate and illegal intrusion into the Supreme Court’s ruling, and I ask you to do the same by clicking this link and helping us flood his office with thousands of emails.

Please do not delay. Take action on behalf of democracy and religious pluralism in the Jewish State.

The following is Anat’s letter plus a suggested response:

Dear Friends of IRAC,

This is a monumental time for liberal Jewry in Israel. After seven years, our petition for Rabbi Miri Gold, requesting state recognition and funding for Reform and Conservative rabbis in towns around Israel was passed. For the first time in Israel’s history, the state has given legitimacy to the liberal Jewish movements in Israel.

Unfortunately, not everyone here is celebrating with us.  The Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Shlomo Amar announced that he is calling upon his fellow Orthodox rabbis to prevent the implementation of the High Court’s ruling.  He sent a letter to hundreds of Orthodox rabbis in Israel calling on them to object to the state’s intention to recognize and fund Reform and Conservative rabbis, and invited them to an emergency meeting today at the Chief Rabbinate’s office in Jerusalem.

In his letter, Rabbi Amar lamented “the hand given to the uprooters and destroyers of Judaism who have already wrought horrible destruction upon the People of Israel in the Diaspora by causing terrible assimilation and the uprooting of all of the Torah’s precepts. And now they seek recognition in the Land of Israel as well, to be destroyers of the religion… This will not pass!” “No one may be absent from the gathering,” he added.

We have sent Rabbi Amar a letter to remind him that the Chief Rabbinate is not authorized to intervene on this issue and that his attempt to foil the decision is illegal and inappropriate in a democratic country based on the rule of law.
Rabbi Amar is not acting out of the best interest for Israel, but rather out of “Sinat Hinam,” senseless hatred.  His words go against the most fundamental values in Judaism and against “Klal Yisrael,” (the unification of the Jewish people). The reality is that most Jews, from all denominations, want Israel to be the physical and spiritual home for the entire Jewish people.
Today, as the Chief Rabbi holds his meeting against our movement, we will be standing outside his office in protest. You too can play a role: I want you to flood his office with emails telling him that pluralism is the only way to have a state that is strong, prosperous, and democratic.

B’Tikva,
Anat Hoffman
Executive Director, IRAC
Action Alert: Email Rabbi Amar

Here you can email Rabbi Shlomo Amar to tell him that Israel needs to continue down the path to pluralism. You can use our letter or write your own. When you have finished please post it on your Facebook and Twitter page and forward to as many of your friends as you can.

Dear Rabbi Amar,

In a recent letter to your fellow Orthodox rabbis you wrote “the hand given to the uprooters and destroyers of Judaism who have already wrought horrible destruction upon the People of Israel in the Diaspora by causing terrible assimilation and the uprooting of all of the Torah’s precepts. And now they seek recognition in the Land of Israel as well, to be destroyers of the religion…”

This is a hateful statement that only serves to further divide the Jewish people both inside Israel and all around the world. I urge to you open your eyes to the future and engage in a constructive way with all Jews who want to see a strong, prosperous, and democratic Jewish state.

You would be well served to enter into a dialogue with the Reform and Conservative rabbis and lay leaders who you believe are trying to destroy the State of Israel. They are willing to work with you and other Orthodox leaders to create a Jewish state that represents the best of our shared heritage. Unfortunately, a dialogue only works if both sides are willing to engage. Are you?

L’shalom,
Friend of IRAC

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June 24, 2012 | 7:42 am

It is Forbidden to Despair

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

My friend Marty Kaplan writes frequently for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal and Huffington Post on media, politics and public policy – and his articles often shine a bright light on ill-fated trends, such as money in politics and its impact on our political system, democracy and the world. The most recent article he titled “The End is Nigh. Seriously.” which he published in both The Jewish Journal and Huffington Post

In response, I wrote to Marty the following:

“I too deal with the dark underbelly of life at the micro level, mostly regarding sadness in people’s lives, as you do on the macro level. My question to you is this: How do you get up in the morning? I have the same question frequently. For me, what keeps me hopeful and balanced are my wife, children, the spirituality that comes through our religious texts, and good people I love like you. What is it for you?”

He responded this way (I share it with his permission):

One of the comments on the Moyers interview [Marty was interviewed at length recently by Bill Moyers on his public television show – see here] that I got most frequently was: “How can you understand all these terrible true things, and still keep smiling?”’

I suppose Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s injunction against despair should be enough to keep me going, but it’s not. My comforts are like yours: my kids, friends, radical amazement*. It’s not the fate of the world that darkens me; it’s the brokenness of the human condition. 

Sometimes I try to take refuge in the Buddha’s insight: “Life is suffering.” But I can’t quite achieve the non-attachment—the renunciation of desire—that that kind of enlightenment requires.

All of which brings the absurdism of Samuel Beckett to mind: “You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” That’s me, in 11 words.

I wrote back:

“The exact quote from Rebbe Nachmen is Lo tit’ya-esh - Assur l’hit’ya-esh – ‘It is forbidden to despair. He also said, ‘Remember: Things can go from the very worst to the very best…in just the blink of an eye.’”

It is told that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, among the 20th century’s greatest religious thinkers and teachers, once entered his class of rabbinic students at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York and very excitedly proclaimed – “I saw a miracle this morning! I saw a miracle this morning!”

“Rabbi,” his students asked, “What was the miracle?”

“The sun came up!”

Perhaps overcoming despair each day is as simple as this - that beyond our stupidity, cruelty and insensitivity there is still enough wonder in every moment to lift the heart.

*Marty referred to “radical amazement” in his response to me.  Rabbi Heschel wrote about this at some length, as follows:

Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious person’s attitude toward history and nature…Such a one knows that there are laws that regulate the course of natural processes; [and] is aware of the regularity and pattern of things. However, such knowledge fails to mitigate one’s sense of perpetual surprise at the fact that there are facts at all. Looking at the world he would say, “This is the Lord’s doing, it is marvelous in our eyes” (Psalms 118:23).

Radical amazement has a wider scope than any other act of humankind. While any act of perception or cognition has as its object a selected segment of reality, radical amazement refers to all of reality; not only to what we see, but also to the very act of seeing as well as to our own selves, to the selves that see and are amazed at their ability to see.

The grandeur or mystery of being is not a particular puzzle to the mind, as, for example, the cause of volcanic eruptions. We do not have to go to the end of reasoning to encounter it. Grandeur or mystery is something with which we are confronted everywhere and at all times. Even the very act of thinking baffles our thinking, just as every intelligible fact is, by virtue of its being a fact, drunk with baffling aloofness. Does not mystery reign within reasoning, within perception, within explanation? What formula could explain and solve the enigma of the very fact of thinking?

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June 19, 2012 | 7:13 am

A Weekend with Thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

My wife and I happily flew to Sacramento last week to attend our younger son David’s graduation from UC Davis. We had booked a few rooms at the more than 500 room Hyatt Regency Hotel adjacent to the Sacramento Convention Center, settled in for a weekend of celebration when suddenly the hotel filled up with hundreds of folks wearing “Safeguard Your Heart” name-tags.

It was a blistering hot at 105 plus degrees, but the men and boys wore suits, white shirts and ties and the women and girls were formally dressed in skirts and pant suits all weekend long. The children were neatly clad and scrubbed. Everyone appeared consistently happy and content.

On the elevator I asked a young man, “What is the name of your group?”

“We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses!”

As it happened, thousands of an estimated 5.7 million American Jehovah’s Witnesses had come to Sacramento for their annual national conference.

Though I had met some of these folks over the years when they would come to my door to teach and preach to me, I really knew little about their beliefs and practices. After sharing a hotel with so many happy followers, however, I became curious. Here is some of what I learned plus my thoughts about the meaning of their seeming “happiness” and sense of certainty in their faith.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are unlike most Christian denominations. They follow first century New Testament texts, reject the doctrines of the trinity and immortality of the soul, and do not observe Christmas or Easter because they are post-testament holidays. They do not celebrate birthdays or observe national holidays claiming that such phenomena are inspired by Satan to draw unsuspecting Christians away from the True faith.

Jehovah’s Witnesses read the Bible literally, but at times also symbolically. They place their emphasis on God rather than Jesus Christ, and believe that Jesus is the only direct creation of God as his “only begotten son.” Everything else was created through the Christ.

They believe that the end of days is fast approaching and only those will be resurrected who follow the “true faith.” Every other religion is false.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are morally conservative and politically non-aligned. They stay clear of politics, forbid sexual relations outside of marriage, consider homosexuality a grave sin, and equate abortion with murder. They eschew gambling, drunkenness, illegal drugs, and tobacco. They teach that the Bible requires true Christians to be kind, good, mild, humble, subservient, and reasonable. They refer to their body of beliefs as “the truth” and see themselves to be “in the truth.”

Their families are patriarchal and their denomination is autocratically led by an all-male religious leadership that maintains discipline, demands obedience, compels commitment, forbids independent thinking, and insists on conformity. Those who violate communal belief and behavioral norms risk “disfellowship” and “shunning.” However, if an individual is judged adequately repentant, he/she can be reinstated.

One has to ask why would so many people would subject themselves to such dogma and strict doctrine?

Kathryn Schultz, in her book, Being Wrong, describes the basic human need that yearns for this kind of a lifestyle. She says that

“…[certainty] feels good. It gives us the comforting illusion that our environment is stable and knowable, and that therefore we are safe within it. Just as important, it makes us feel informed, intelligent, and powerful. When we are certain, we are lords of our maps: the outer limits of our knowledge and the outer limits of the world are one and the same…Seen in this light, our dislike of doubt is a kind of emotional agoraphobia. Uncertainty leaves us stranded in a universe that is too big, too open, too ill-defined…facing our own private uncertainty can … compel us to face the existence of uncertainty in general – the unconsoling fact that nothing in the world can be perfectly known by any mere mortal, and that therefore we can’t shield ourselves and our loved ones from error, accident, and disaster.”

Rabbi Leonard Beerman offered these thoughts on the occasion of his 90th birthday last year:

“I live with uncertainty and doubt. But what I have learned is that doubt may be the most civilizing force we have available to us, for it is doubt that protects us from the arrogance of utter rightness, from the barbarism of blind loyalties, all of which threaten the human possibility.”

To those who conclude that doubt and faith are incompatible, consider the words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

“There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.”

Oh – by the way, our son’s graduation was a peak moment in our lives, and I feel a measure of certainty when I say that Satan had nothing to do with it!

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June 14, 2012 | 7:47 am

An Israeli Climber Saves a Turkish Climber on Mount Everest

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

Mount Everest. Photo by Wikipedia/Kerem Barut

Ever since the disaster on Mount Everest in 1996 as documented by Jon Krakauer in his bestselling book Into Thin Air, I have wondered what kind of person would need to climb the tallest mountain in the world (29,029 feet; 8,848 meters).

I once asked my brother who is an avid naturalist and hiker, likes altitudinous places, and who is adventurous but not crazy, if he had ever considered climbing Everest.

Thankfully, he said, “No!”

“Are you certain?” I pursued.

“Yes. No way!” And so I stopped worrying.

May is the time of year when people who like pushing beyond their limitations may try for the summit of Everest. The Guardian reported last month a remarkable event that took place on the mountain: an Israeli climber, Nadav Ben Yehuda, saved a Turkish-American climber, Aydin Irmak, and “carried [Irmak] on his back for eight hours.”

To appreciate the magnitude of this selfless and highly unusual feat, which Ben Yehuda characterized as “automatic” (he is a former IDF soldier and was trained never to leave a fellow soldier injured or dying on the battleground), note this passage from the blog accompanying the article describing the physical and mental effects on a human being at that elevation and the ethical challenges that come with being there:

“The biological reality of climbing 8000m+ high mountains is that when you’re in the death zone you are burning 13,000 calories a day. The lack of oxygen will have you suffering from hypoxia, it will prevent you from eating as all your blood will be diverted to keep your muscles oxygenated, you will most likely be hallucinating. You do not have a few days in the death zone, you have one day and if you have to stay overnight up on the mountain you are most likely dead anyway. You are starving, you are dying on your feet, and most people can barely manage to lift one foot ahead of the other on the ascent. If you stop to help someone and they can’t walk then they are dead and any effort you make to save them could see you dead as well. It is grim, it is horrible, but that’s the way it is. Oxygen bottles help but they’re heavy and need to be carefully rationed. You get a trickle of extra oxygen to help you along but it is nothing like breathing seaside air. The real problem with Everest is that it’s filled with amateur climbers who don’t respect the mountain and the risks involved. The ethical dilemma isn’t whether or not to stop and help someone on Everest. At that point it’s too late. People will do what they can but unless they possess superhuman features then what they can do is very little. No one is getting carried down off the mountain. The dilemma as I see it is whether to attempt the climb in the first place, knowing that it is littered with bodies and that it’s going to be filled with amateur climbers who will put themselves, their Sherpas, and their fellow climbers at risk.”

Nadav Ben Yehuda is an extraordinary individual to have even attempted to climb this mountain. That he saved another human being in the way he did is even more unusual. And given the enmity created between Turkey and Israel by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is one of the world’s most relentless and unfair critics and haters of Israel, the story is even more noteworthy.

However, it is likely that Nadav had no idea that Aydin is an American-Turk. Nadav was simply a climber and he saw another climber in desperate need. Selflessly, he responded and saved a life at the risk of his own.

From whence came his strength on that mountain to carry another human being for eight hours? Who knows?

From whence came his moral fortitude to dispense with the ethic that says ‘each man for himself?’ Clearly, his training as a soldier in the IDF buttressed by the ethics of his nation that emphasizes that the fate of one is the fate of all.

From the top of the earth, far above the fray of distrust, politics and tribe, Nadav Ben Yehuda acted the life of a tzadik, a wholly righteous man!

To Nadav Ben Yehuda—Kol hakavod! You make me proud!

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June 11, 2012 | 9:13 am

An Emerging One-State Israel-Palestine Reality

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

A resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not look promising, though it is still possible. The window for a two-state solution is rapidly closing, and conversation is shifting to consider the meaning of an emerging one-state reality. Though polls show that both Israelis and Palestinians still favor a two-state solution, facts on the ground and politics are allowing the status-quo to take root, and the status-quo supports a one-state reality. This will be good for no one!

The two articles below spell out in detail how time is running out, and describe the dynamics now operating in and around this conflict. They are both worth reading.

The Problem

The Palestinians are trapped by their own politics in refusing to sit down with Israeli negotiators thus suggesting that their motivation is to wait and let events and demography undermine Israel as a democratic Jewish state.

Israel is trapped by the most extreme right-wing government in its history that gives lip-service to the two-state solution while at the same time developing policies and facts on the ground that undermine the path to a two-state solution.

The United States is distracted by our presidential campaign, and nothing of significance is expected until after the election, if at all. Both political parties and candidates are striving to show that they are the most “pro-Israel” thus playing to the most extremist and fundamentalist forces in American and Israeli politics.

The relative calm out of Gaza and the West Bank, due to the exhaustion of the Palestinian population to violence, the positive effects of the Israeli security fence in stemming terrorist attack against Israeli civilians inside Israel, and the intensified security cooperation between Fatah and Israel in the West Bank, give the illusion to Israelis that the status-quo is not so bad after all.

Israeli and international pre-occupation with the Iranian nuclear threat has distracted America’s and the Quartet’s attention away from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As time passes the dozens of small illegal Jewish “outposts” that dot the landscape of the West Bank are solidifying and a significant portion of the settler population is becoming more radicalized thus making the peaceful emergence of a contiguous Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state of Israel difficult to imagine.

Many moderate Palestinian and non-violent two-state advocates have come to the conclusion that a one-state reality with a one-person, one-vote democracy represents the best way for Palestinians to get their Palestinian state on the one hand and to undermine the Jewish state of Israel on the other. For Jews, a one-state eventuality either means the end of the Jewish state or the end of a democratic Israel.

Analyzing the Problem

The articles below describe and analyze the various alternatives:

  Sit and Wait;
  Unilateralism;
  Transitional arrangement towards a two-state final status solution;
  Imposed solution;
  The Jordanian solution;
  Regional Solution.

The conclusion to the article written from an Israeli perspective published in the New York Times (“Israel-Palestine: Policy Alternatives given the Infeasibility of Reaching a Final Status Agreement”) is:

“The Israeli interest dictates operating in two parallel yet at the same time integrated, complementary main policy efforts. The first is to strive energetically to an agreed solution, even partial or gradual, with the Palestinians, based on the two states principle. The second one is to initiate policies and actions that will create a reality of two states for two peoples. We recommend making progress along these two parallel tracks, in agreement and coordination with the Palestinians if and when possible, and unilaterally, based on an Israeli independent decision.”

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/2012/Israeli-Palestinian-Research-Group-summary.pdf

The conclusion of the second piece by Khalil Shikaki, a moderate Palestinian analyst, published by the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center (NOREF) (“The future of Israel-Palestine: a one-state reality in the making” – May 2012), states in its Executive Summary:

“With no agreement on a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in sight, one-state dynamics are gaining momentum – a development that will be difficult to reverse or even contain. In the medium and long term, no one will benefit from such a development. Indeed, all might lose: an ugly one-state dynamic has no happy ending, and such a solution is rejected by Palestinians and Israelis alike. Instead, the emerging one-state reality increases the potential for various kinds of conflicts and contradictory impulses. The international community too finds itself unprepared and perhaps unwilling to confront this emerging reality, but in doing so it imperils the prospects for peace in the region – the exact thing it seeks to promote.”

http://www.peacebuilding.no/Regions/Middle-East-and-North-Africa/Israel-Palestine/Publications/The-future-of-Israel-Palestine-a-one-state-reality-in-the-making

After the American presidential election it will be necessary for the United States to move forward with a muscular diplomatic effort to bring all parties to the table and settle this conflict once and for all before it is too late.

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June 8, 2012 | 4:52 pm

Reform Judaism in Israel Today!

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

The Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism (IMPJ) is growing dramatically and drawing into Jewish life Israelis from every corner of the country. Once Reform Judaism in Israel was understood as a transplant movement from the United States. Today, it is an Israeli movement inclusive of 40 congregations, a kibbutz movement, an active youth movement, and social justice movement (led by the Israel Religious Action Center) and many of our congregations in Jerusalem, Mevasseret Zion, Modin, Tel Aviv, Ramat Hasharon, and Haifa. Thousands of Israelis are being inspired as Jews in ways that heretofore have not been available to Israelis.

Watch this Youtube of its recent convention (with English sub-titles). Among the speakers are some of Israel’s top progressive political leaders, Rabbis (now 101 Israeli rabbis among whom are 30 women), lay leaders, teens, and young families.

I can attest personally to the dynamism that is Israeli Reform Judaism. It is the movement of the future in Israel. We are winning not only the hearts and minds of secular Israelis, but also important political battles as in the recent case before the supreme court of Rabbi Miri Gold to be treated equally as a regional rabbi.
It’s all good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reKUwT225CQ&feature=youtube

Shabbat shalom

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June 5, 2012 | 2:54 pm

How an Annual Physical Checkup Saved My Life!

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

The “annual physical for healthy, asymptomatic adults is an inefficient gauge of health [and] more likely to find false positives than real disease.” (“Let’s (Not) Get Physicals,” by Elisabeth Rosenthal, Week in Review, New York Times, Sunday, June 3, page 1).

The article reports that the United States Preventive Services Task Force no longer recommends prostate specific antigen blood tests, routine EKGs, and frequent Pap smears. An earlier report said that regular mammograms are also unnecessary.

This Task Force says that harm is caused by many unnecessary medical procedures and that these tests and procedures drive up the cost of health care in America that spends twice the amount per person in comparison with other developed countries without making people better. Indeed, it says that based on the science and statistical analysis, side effects from many tests and procedures end up causing greater harm to the patient than the good they address.

Had I personally followed this Task Force recommendation and an earlier one released in May on the PSA test, I’d be dead today, or near death.

My story in brief: Three plus years ago my wife Barbara said to me, “John – you need to call the doctor as you’ve not had a physical for more than a year.” I was 59 years old then, in pretty good shape and almost never got sick.

“I’m fine,” I said.

She insisted, “Get a physical - and while you’re at it, get your PSA checked!”

I relented, called my doctor and scheduled an appointment. The year before my PSA was normal, and so I wasn’t worried. This time, however, there was a dramatic change. My numbers had more than doubled. While digitally examining me, my doctor felt a mass. He ordered a more specific test to determine whether my raised PSA number was a false positive. It came back positive again. He recommended a biopsy, and the results confirmed that a cancerous tumor was growing in my prostate measuring 9 on the Gleason scale. 10 is almost always fatal; 9 is often fatal. I was in trouble.

What had happened? Wasn’t prostate cancer slow-growing? Why suddenly did I have elevated levels and a large tumor?

My brother, an oncologist, surmised that my tumor was probably growing slowly over several years and remained undetectable, but suddenly it became aggressive, grew quickly and had reached a dangerous state.

In the United States nearly 200,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer annually. Of those 25,000 die from the disease.

Was I one of the 25,000? I feared the worst until after the surgery and my surgeon gave me the good news that he successfully removed the tumor in time. Had I waited another three or four months for a check-up, it might have been too late as the rate of the tumor’s growth meant the likelihood of it having spread beyond the prostate.

My surgeon said that my margins seemed clear, but to be certain my radiology oncologist recommended eight weeks of radiation as a prophylactic to kill microscopic cancer cells that might still be lurking. The total hospital bill topped $150,000, most of it paid by insurance.

I can say without a doubt that I am alive today and “cancer free” because my wife was vigilant and urged me to go for an annual physical examination, and that I had asked for a prostate specific antigen blood test even though I was asymptomatic. The physical and this blood test are the very two items this US Preventive Services Task Force said were unnecessary.

I do not, consequently, take seriously the Task Force’s recommendations. Most responsible doctors I know also reject the view that annual physicals are unwarranted, that PSA tests are useless, that Pap smears, mammograms, and other regular tests are unnecessary.

Dr. Mark Litwin, chair of urology at UCLA, following yet another U.S. Preventive Services Task Force report on the usefulness of the PSA test (LA Times May 23, 2012) said that the real problem is not the test but the rush to treatment. He does not believe that the PSA test should be dumped. “Therein lies the crux of the problem,” he said. “The issue is not so much should an individual be screened—it hinges more on should an individual be treated.”

So – here is my point in writing: If you have not had a colonoscopy lately, have avoided PSA tests, digital exams, mammograms, EKGs, stress tests, or any other ongoing ache, pain or seemingly innocuous symptom, pick up the phone, call for an appointment with your physician, and get yourself checked out.

It could save your life. It did mine!

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