In lieu of cancer testing, deputy health minister reportedly opts for reciting Biblical verses
According to the report, Dr. Shlomo Lewkowicz, the head of a cancer awareness organization, invited [Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, a long-serving ultra-Orthodox MK from United Torah Judaism] to get tested as part of a campaign aimed at the ultra-Orthodox public, but was told that the deputy minister “would suffice with reading Psalms.”
Hope you like dying, then. Because that’s what will happen if you have a genetic predisposition to colorectal cancer and don’t bother to get checked out on a regular basis. I should know because I lost a family member to this very thing. What makes the situation in his case even more baffling was that he wasn’t even a believer so the standard “God will provide” crap didn’t apply. He just didn’t like doctors … because they never give you good news … so he didn’t go. Ended up killing him.
This guy is being given the same warning, and has decided that God will apparently provide. He may want to re-think that strategy, since God will also presumably be providing the cancer too.
Lewkowicz also claimed that, citing so-called modesty issues, ultra-Orthodox newspapers and websites had refused to run advertisements promoting colonoscopies [...] In response, Lewkowicz’s organization ran a series of humorous notices in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem promoting free colonoscopies but, he said, they were quickly taken down.
And apparently this is a culture-wide phenomenon. The notices were taken down by members of the ultra-orthodox community because – and I’m not making this up – they’re not big fans of preventive medicine. See, in America, I can kind of understand people not wanting to go get screenings like this since a significant percentage of the population doesn’t have insurance. So hey, why spend money you don’t have, right? But these are free of charge. It’s clearly not a matter of money; it’s that warped “traditional” sense of religious modesty – what motivates them to make those stupid “girl proof” glasses but have no problem with sucking out circumcision blood with their mouths – that prevents them from doing anything about early detection of an entirely preventable disease.
