Sick and Dying

Hospital-acquired infections killed 48,000 people and ramped up health care costs by $8.1 billion in 2006 alone, according to a new study by Archives of Internal Medicine.

In Israel, in modern Hebrew the hospitals are called Bait Cholim/House of Sickness; the word hospital comes from the word hospice a euphemism for a place to die–sickness and death hidden in sterility. Happy is the person who gets sick and dies at home.

Having to live at any cost robs the next generation and sets a bad example of ego and arrogance. Life is not about how long we live but how well we live–what actions we can proudly take into the next world where what we did is set out before us.

In the middle and the end of the Torah, the Five Books of Moshe are written The Curses, 49 different stages of sickness visited upon the human being to help bring about cleansing and repentance; if one sickness is eliminated a more difficult sickness will take its place. The problem is not sickness, but way we treat sickness as haphazard instead of predicated upon human action.

The Cabala connects Chomim/Sickness to Cholem/Dream; sickness is a nightmare that either passes or is passed–either you live through it or you die. It is said, Doctors were sent into the world to help the Angel of Death.