Jewish Values Research Articles

The Historical Traditions of the Jews of Kochi

Three very different types of data must be considered in any attempt at constructing a history of the ancient Jewish community of Kochi in Kerala. There are scant historical data—a third-century patristic letter, a ninth-century Muslim travelogue, an eleventh-century royal charter engraved on copperplates, a twelfth-century Hebrew tombstone. There are numerous motifs from Kochini folklore, especially the intriguing Malayalam songs of Jewish women. Finally, there are indigenous narrations by which the community presents itself to the outside world. Even taken together, these three types of data do not yield a comprehensive history. But what they do reveal is perhaps more significant; they chart the community's crafting for themselves a niche within the social framework of Kerala. In sum, in their narrations they create an identity that resonates exceptionally well with both Indian and Jewish values, themes and motifs.

The role of education in Jewish continuity: a response to Jonathan Sacks

Contrasting explanations of Jewish survival form the backdrop to this article. For Jonathan Sacks (1994) the crucial factor has been the role played by Jewish education; indeed, he claims that the demographic threat currently facing Anglo‐Jewry is largely the result of the community having neglected the Jewish education of its children over the past 200 years. He advocates reinstating this communal responsibility as the sovereign Jewish value in order to deal with the threat. In my view, the influence that Sacks attributes to education and particularly to Jewish schools is overstated. It stems from a misreading of modern Anglo‐Jewish history and from a failure to take fully into account the ways in which Jewish schools impact on their pupils’ ethnic and religious identity. These considerations apart, I contend that prioritising education will not necessarily strengthen the commitment to Jewish continuity that is the sine qua non of survival.

The Jewish Settlements in the West Bank: International Law and Israeli Jurisprudence

MANY WHO CARE ABOUT ISRAEL have learned to stop caring about international law. After all, for forty years, Arab states, members of the Non-Aligned Movement and the former Soviet Union, have ceaselessly and atrociously manipulated international law so as to turn Israel into a pariah state among the nations. The UN's infamous resolutions equating Zionism with racism are only the best known examples.1 Each spring, when the UN Commission on Human Rights rolls out its allegations of Israeli human rights violations, this political body holds Israel to a far higher standard than it does states that have demonstrated far less commitment to the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter.2 For good reasons, many who love Israel have honed their contempt for international law.3 It can be hard to remember how much energy and optimism Jewish leaders invested in the development of international law in the two decades immediately following the Shoah. Those leaders recalled all too well what had happened when the first international legal system, the League of Nations, had disintegrated and left Nazi Germany without check, to treat its citizens in its own way. Now, it is hard to remember that it was the American Jewish Committee that convinced the states' representatives at the San Francisco Conference in 1945 that human rights should become one of the pillars of the UN's mission. Or that it was Rend Cassin, president of the Alliance Isradlite Universelle, who drafted the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Or that a Polish Jew, Raphael Lemkin, coined the term genocide and pushed through the UN Genocide Convention. Or that two generations of American Jewish leaders saw international law as one of the cornerstones of their Never Forget/Never Again program, consistent with core Jewish values like tikkun olam, ger lo tilhaz, b'tselem elohim, kevod haberiyyoth, mippene darkhe shalom, and ben adam l'havero.

Texts in Tension: Negotiating Jewish Values in the Adult Jewish Learning Classroom

Texts in Tension: Negotiating Jewish Values in the Adult Jewish Learning Classroom

The Ma'ale School: Catalyst for the Entrance of Religious Zionists into the World of Media Production

IN 1989, THE MA'ALE SCHOOL of Television, Film, and the Arts was founded in Jerusalem with the primary purpose of providing religiously observant Jews with the opportunity to receive the appropriate training that would prepare them to become engaged in the world of Israeli film and television production in a manner that is informed by the spirit of religious Zionism.' Until now the school has received little scholarly attention, and it still maintains a relatively low profile in Israeli society as a whole. Ma'ale, however, merits careful consideration for three main reasons: (i) The establishment of Ma'ale has constituted an important new stage in the development of the relationship of religious Zionists to modernity in general and to the secular majority culture in Israel in particular. (2) The school represents the first sustained attempt to arrive at a synthesis between traditional Jewish values and the relatively new visually-oriented field of media production, thereby raising important questions about the relationship between Judaism and the visual arts in general and film and television production in particular. (3) The films produced at Ma'ale as graduate projects attempt to explore issues of Jewish religiosity in ways that had been largely absent from the history of Israeli film and television production until the founding of the school, thereby suggesting the potential for the emergence of religiously-oriented trends in the world of Israeli media in the future.

I Am My Brother's (and Sister's) Keeper: Jewish Values and the Counseling Process

The author writes a rejoinder to M. S. Kiselica's (2003) article “Anti‐Semitism and Insensitivity Toward Jews by the Counseling Profession: A Gentile's View on the Problem and His Hope for Reconciliation—A Response to Weinrach (2002),” which is part of a dialogue in the fall 2003 Journal of Counseling & Development on anti‐Semitism in the counseling profession. M. S. Kiselica supports the notion that Jewish concerns are inextricable from multicultural counseling. The author has asserted that there has been a critical mass of anti‐Semitic behavior within the counseling profession, including the American Counseling Association, for more than 3 decades. The author's perspective may be viewed as an application of the Torah's dictum “I am my brother's [and sister's] keeper.” The author also argues that while culture may influence behavior, it does not determine it exclusively.

Intolerance and tolerance in the Jewish tradition and contemporary Israel

In this paper the author relates Jewish cultural resources to the structuring of intolerance and tolerance in the Jewish tradition. The role of collectivist and primordial orientations are highlighted not only in the definition of intolerance but in the construction of patterns of tolerance as well. Because of the decisive role of these orientations, the distinction between public and private spheres plays a large part in the contemporary structuring of tolerance in Israel. However, they receive a character which is inverse to the American Protestant pattern: Jewish religious values are to find expression in the public sphere, whereas the private sphere of the individual becomes the legitimate arena for secular belief and behaviors that are not in accord with Orthodox Judaism.

Ethics of Globalization and the AIDS Crisis from a Jewish Perspective

This essay explores what Jewish ethics has to say about globalization in relation to the AIDS crisis. Special attention is paid to the consequences in affirming current intellectual trends to transcend traditional limits in both society and thought for rethinking traditional Jewish values. The discussion proceeds from two presuppositions. The first is that there is an intimate connection between ethics, science, and politics. The second is that the history of Jewish ethics involves three distinct forms that are generally correlated but rarely identical in content and moral judgment. These three forms are law, wisdom or virtue, and covenant. The discussion considers related issues of accidental connections in time between the bubonic plague and Zionism and between AIDS and homosexuality in relation to moral–theological issues related to divine providence and distributive justice.

Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating (review)

Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating, by Naomi GraetzNaomi Graetz has written fascinating, instructive, and important book which provides an exciting example of the application of rabbinic scholarship and of feminist analysis to the study of contemporary social problem in the Jewish community. In the process, she has developed methodology for approaching the multiplicity of voices found in rabbinic literature.Jews have wanted to believe that they constitute kinder and gentler people, often, as Nietzsche pointed out, confusing degraded circumstances for superiority while denying their own abusive and dysfunctional behavior. The fact remains that beyond the myths, Jewish leaders, especially rabbis, have continually concerned themselves with questions of their own authority and expressed willingness to enforce it with physical coercion, and have allowed members of the Jewish community to use similar means to impose their will upon others.Accordingly, Graetz locates violence at the core of Jewish values, starting with the Bible itself. Although there are no specific cases of wifebeating in the Bible, Graetz amply supports her assertion that the biblical family was a very tough neighborhood to grow up in, providing particularly compelling study of the violent metaphor against women found in the prophecy of Hosea.More than the writings of most professional halakhic scholars and other feminist writers, Graetz's book will serve to put many of the long-neglected classics of rabbinic scholarship on the agenda for popular discussion. It will also enrich feminist discourse by bridging the gap in discussions which often leap from the Bible to generalizations about the Talmud to modern women writers and activists.Graetz cites not only the major texts of rabbinic literature, such as Mishnah, Tosefta, Talmud, Geonim, Maimonides, and Shulhan Arukh, but also figures such as Meir of Rothenburg, Simhah of Speyer, Jonah of Gerona, Solomon Adret, David ibn Avi Zimra, Solomon Hakohen, Hayim Palaggi, Abraham Papema, Eliezer Papu, David Pipano, Eliezer Waldenberg, Moses Feinstein, and Ovadia Joseph, now daily proof that the realm of distinguished rabbinic scholarship is not cut off from partisan politics in the Jewish community.Experts, particularly those intent on maintaining the inaccessibility of the field of rabbinic studies and especially those who reject Graetz's conclusions concerning the potential for violence within the Jewish tradition, will direct themselves exclusively to slips in citation, translation, and interpretation. However, having examined every text that she mentioned, I find that when she errs, her reading usually minimizes the potential for violence against women.For example, an even stronger case for the impact of biblical metaphorical violence against women can be made by invoking Ezekiel 16, where God's behavior is described as jealous, violent, bloody rage against his metaphoric adulterous bride, the people of Israel. Also the image of the adulterous wife's nose being cut off in Ezekiel 23 remained feature of rabbinic halakhic discourse throughout the generations.Graetz brings abundant evidence to prove her point that rabbinic texts offered formative laws and principles in support of wife-beating, but there is much more available. For example, to strengthen the conclusions she reached concerning the citation from the Tosefta Baba Kama 9 could also be added Niddah 1:6. Here husband's beating his wife is casually mentioned as one of the reasons that woman could experience vaginal bleeding prior to onset of her menstrual period, along with being sick, jumping, or carrying heavy load, non-judgmental rabbinic recognition of the fact that wife-beating could be regular aspect of life for Jewish woman.In fact, in the chapter in which she offers the rabbinic materials opposed to wifebeating, on several occasions she reads materials against wife-beating which actually approve of it. …

The Impact of Jewish Values on Marketing and Business Practices

Judaism, which relies on the Torah for its written law, has had a great impact on marketing and business. The Torah is replete with precepts dealing with business, and the Talmud, the source of Jewish oral law, elaborates and expands Torah law. The process is ongoing, and rabbinical authorities today build on the decisions of their predecessors to apply Jewish law to modern problems. Some of the issues examined in this article include honesty in the marketplace, fair pricing, employer-employee relations, and environmental issues. Jewish law is not only concerned with practical legal advice but in encouraging individuals to go beyond the requirements of the law and practice the “way of the pious.” Judaism does not have a negative attitude toward business and wealth—indeed, most of the Talmudic sages had occupations, and some were quite wealthy—but riches must be acquired honestly and used to help the poor, the needy, and the stranger.

Secular Sermons and American Accents: The Nonfiction of Bellow, Ozick, and Roth

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Emma Lazarus's words affixed to the Statue of Liberty heralded an affinity between American and Jewish values and identities. At the same time, however, Henry James's negative comments about the Yiddish language of these immigrants at Ellis Island and on the Lower East Side of New York undermined the acceptance of Jews into the American mainstream. In their own essays Saul Bellow, Cynthia Ozick, and Philip Roth admire James but challenge his antisemitic sentiments by adopting a range of rhetorical strategies that combine elitism and egalitarianism to reaffirm the overlapping of American and Jewish identities. Their moral seriousness in conjunction with their ironic attitudes simultaneously questions rabbinic authority; their nonfictional jeremiads synthesize and reinvent a Jewish-American covenant. Their secular sermons remain true to American tradition while seeking new frontiers of thought.

The primal scream of Glückl and the Frauenbibel

This article analyzes the “cry from the heart” of Bertha Pappenheim through her German version of the Yiddish Memoirs of Glückl von Hamel and the renowned “female Bible” (Tsenerene). Involved here is the placing of this output in the framework of her private life — a somewhat hysterical one, winning her the name of “Anna O” in psychoanalytic literature — and in the context of her feminism and social activism (among other things, she was the head of a Jewish orphanage in Germany and an investigator of Jewish cultural values in Eastern Europe). Her work shows how a tradition of biblical commentary can inspire both vernacular creativity and sacred literalism — inventiveness in the sense of a creation of a new form of Yiddish called Taytshsprakh (“language of commentary”) and “interlineal literalism” in Walter Benjamin’s sense. Most particularly, Pappenheim’s work as translator brings out the proud nature of a Jewish response to Hitler and helps to define the field of Jewish translation.

How Do I Decide?: Practical Reason, Particular Judgments, and Holistic Concerns in Jewish Ethics

The particular judgments of practical reason play crucial roles in Jewish ethics, in applying rules, balancing concerns, and specifying the realization of values. While acknowledging the elusive character of practical reason, the paper develops an account in which these judgments are not only acceptable stopgaps, but may offer valuable contributions. It builds on Aristotle's classical discussion of phronesis , intelligence or practical wisdom, and Richard Boyd's contemporary account of the role of trained judgments in both science and ethics. In the model presented, the particular judgments of practical reason reflect both specific situational circumstances and more general values and holistic concerns. Particular judgments both are shaped by Jewish values and norms, and present new input that enriches the system of Jewish ethics, leading to its refinement and growth.

Unfinished Rabbi: Selected Writings of Arnold Jacob Wolf (review)

148 SHOFAR Fall 1999 Vol. 18, No.1 before the end of World War II when only the bigots and the uninformed would have regarded Jews as "insiders" in the United States or elsewhere. Leonard Dinnerstein Judaic Studies University of Arizona Unfinished Rabbi: Selected Writings of Arnold Jacob Wolf, edited by Jonathan S. Wolf. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998. 266 pp. $27.50. It would not be flippancy to describe Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolfas an intellectual gadfly, an ofttimes lonely, prophetic voice calling out for social activism, or to characterize him as a goad to the individual and collective conscience of American Jewry. Unfinished Rabbi: Selected Writings ofJacob Arnold Wolf, edited by his son, Jonathan S. Wolf, is a chronicle of a man who for over 40 years has been a Hillel rabbi at Yale University, a congregational rabbi, a university professor, and always, in the highest sense, a teacher of Judaism and Jewish values. Ordained as a Reform rabbi, Rabbi Wolf never compartmentalized his Judaism within stringentideological boundaries. He was increasingly concerned with the erosion of Halacha, Jewish law, within modem Jewish life, and so, even though a member of the Reform Central Conference of American Rabbis, he also joined the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly. A daring pioneer and innovator, Rabbi Wolfhelped to develop the National Federation ofTemple Youth's Camp Leadership Institutes and was one of the founders of the UAHC's highly successful summer camp at Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. As rabbi ofCongregation SoleI in the greater Chicago area, he led the congregation into creative paths of liturgy, leadership, study, and social activism. Among his most controversial actions as a rabbi was his becoming the president of Breira, a short-lived Jewish organization which in the mid-1970s courageously called for the establishment ofa Palestinian state and early on took on the unpopular role ofsupporting "land for peace" as the only viable alternative to years of bloody Arab-Israeli conflict. Though the writings in Unfinished Rabbi go back to the 1960s, there is still much in the book that is relevant and worthy of our attention. Thus in a speech he gave in . 1994, Rabbi Wolfstated, "It is time to demythologize the black-Jewish dialogue, to stop pretending that we have exactly the same proximate goals or strategies. What we do have is a desperate need for one America instead ofa nation divided into rich and poor, black and white." In an article in the periodical Sh 'rna, which he wrote in 1973, he anticipated the current discussion over the future course of Zionism by raising such disturbing Book Reviews .. ~. 149 questions as "Did Zionism mean to create an American-style supermarket on the Mediterranean built by Arab masons and carpenters?" In that same essay he excoriated the Orthodox· establishment in Israel for "its veto over free religious expression by Israeli Jews," and he castigated Orthodoxy for adding to the militarism of many religious citizens of Israel. In a portrait of Yeshayahu Leibowitz written in 1981 in Sh 'rna, Rabbi Wolfcontinuedhis attack on Orthodoxy in Israel, stating, "Religious Jews have become a mere sect instead ofa model. Therefore the established synagogue must be disestablished." Again, he spoke out in favor oflsrael's disengaging itselffrom the occupied territories. It should also be mentioned that his portraits ofsuch distinguished thinkers as Jean Paul Sartre, Mordecai Kaplan, and Martin Buber, among others, are among the highlights of this challenging, provocative and very illuminating book. Rabbi Wolf, as a Reform rabbi, teacher, writer, and theologian, has always sought to engage Jewish minds and hearts in a dialogue based upon his unshaken conviction that only a radical politics firmly rooted in meaningful and substantive Jewish piety and practice deserves to be called "Judaism." There are those who refer to Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf as a "prophet become rabbi," and indeed, Unfinished Rabbi resonates with such a voice. The American Jewish community is fortunate to number a Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf in its ranks. Hopefully, others will continue to pursue the questions he has raised and so strengthen and sustain American Jewry and American Judaism. Rabbi Samuel Weingart Temple Israel West Lafayette, Indiana From Patriarch to Priest: The Levi-Priestly Tradition from Aramaic Levi...

INTRODUCTION: RE-MAPPING ANGLO-JEWISH LITERARY HISTORY

[I]t is not enough to make the Jew respected, but to have JUDAISM rightly reverenced; and to do this, there must be a JEWISH LITERATURE, or the Jewish people will not advance one step. — Grace Aguilar, The Jewish Faith (1846)THE ESSAYS COLLECTED in this issue of Victorian Literature and Culture seek to introduce Victorianists to some of the many Anglo-Jewish writers of nineteenth-century England. What differentiates this moment in Anglo-Jewish scholarship from most previous considerations is that we do not purport to fill a falsely constructed “void” of Anglo-Jewish literary silence; on the contrary, this collection seeks to amplify the fullness of nineteenth century Anglo-Jewish literary life. In 1846, Grace Aguilar, the important Anglo-Jewish writer and theologian, called out for the production of a “Jewish literature” that would aid the “right reverence[e] of Judaism,” and “advance” the Jewish people in Victorian England. All too aware of the way exclusion from Hebrew literary and religious texts often precipitated assimilation, conversion, and more generalized alienation from Jewish religious life, Aguilar sought new tools to combat Jewish religious apathy. Detailing the subtle conversionary and theological assumptions that so-called secular — yet clearly Christian — literature often performed, Aguilar reasoned that a Jewish literature could provide Jewish readers — and especially Jewish women — with literary pleasure and a simultaneous sense of Jewish values and ethics; likewise, such a literature could recast the generally negative images of Jewish people and Judaism which pervade the long history of English literature.1 With her emphasis on a Jewish literature, then, Aguilar sought to claim the cultural and ideological power literature held in Victorian England for specifically Jewish uses. Significantly, Aguilar’s tone in the statement above suggests that she saw no such Jewish literature in past moments of Anglo-Jewish history; Aguilar’s intensive production of such a literature in a variety of genres was her own response to this desire for Jewish literature.

Principles and concepts of brain death and organ donation: the Jewish perspective.

The harvesting of organs for transplantation is dependent on a stringent definition of brain death. Different societies have had to struggle with their cultural heritage, adapting it to conform to the advances in medical science and the need of the sick. In this article, the development of the concept of brain death as it applies to organ transplantation in Judaism is outlined. The ability of traditional Jewish values to address themselves to the challenges of modern medicine can serve as a basis for cultural cross-fertilization and comparison in modern societies.

Principles and concepts of brain death and organ donation: the Jewish perspective.

The harvesting of organs for transplantation is dependent on a stringent definition of brain death. Different societies have had to struggle with their cultural heritage, adapting their traditional attitudes to conform to the advances in medical science and the needs of the sick. In this article, the development of the concept of brain death as it applies to organ transplantation in Judaism is outlined. The ability of traditional Jewish values to address themselves to the challenges of modern medicine can serve as a basis for cultural cross-fertilization and comparison in modern societies.

Influence of Physicians’ Religious Values on Inservice Training Decisions

Survey responses of board-certified physicians were compared as a function of their self-identification with Liberal Protestant (LP), Conservative Protestant (CP), Liberal Catholic (LC), Liberal Jewish (LJ), or Agnostic (Ag) values. Respondents rated approval/interest to vignettes describing an inservice which reflected either Evangelical Christian, Liberal Protestant, Humanist (Hu), or Hindu values. Other items asked respondents to provide demographic and religious-value related information. CPs were generally more approving of all vignettes than LPs, LCs, LJs, and Ags. Hu vignettes were more approved than the other 3 vignettes. Physicians generally were more approving of vignettes related to their own values. Ags were least similar to parental values relative to the other 4 groups and less dedicated to their beliefs. CPs may be most likely to be accepting of the professional work of others yet least likely to have their theistically identified professional activities approved. Methodological issues, the Slippery Slope hypothesis, the possible importance of belief in an absolute authority, and professional implications were reviewed.

Insecure Prosperity: Small Town Jews in Industrial America, 1890- 1940 (review)

Reviewed by: Insecure Prosperity: Small-Town Jews in Industrial America, 1890–1940 Lee Shai Weissbach Insecure Prosperity: Small-Town Jews in Industrial America, 1890–1940. By Ewa Morawska. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996. pp. xxv, 370. Ewa Morawska’s superb study of the Jewish community of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the half century before World War II represents social history at its best, for while it tells a very interesting story of specific people in a specific place, it is always careful to consider that story in a larger context. In many cases, for example, the book introduces statistical analyses to help clarify how the experiences of various individuals fit into a more general pattern, and the study repeatedly discusses the nature of Johnstown’s Jewish history in terms of significant trends in American Jewish life more generally, especially as they were manifested in major urban areas. One of the principal points made in the book is that, just like their counterparts in big cities, early twentieth-century Jews in Johnstown were engaged in creating a new way of life that borrowed both from Old World Jewish values and traditions, and from modern American mores and lifestyles, but that in Johnstown this process proceeded less rapidly than it did in metropolitan areas. Older patterns of employment and education were more slowly altered in Johnstown, for example, as were older patterns of religious observance and family relations. Morawska’s book covers a wide range of interesting and important topics, often in great detail. It discusses the European origins of Johnstown’s Jews; the migration patterns that led them to the city; their residence patterns within the city; their economic life; the structure and function of their families; the role of women within the household and within the community; the place of the synagogue in local Jewish affairs; and the participation of Jews in the larger social and political arena. Fundamentally, this book is the story of how first- and second-generation Johnstown Jews, constituting their own ethnic entrepreneurial niche in a town dominated by steel production and coal mining, attempted to achieve the twin goals of securing a certain material comfort, and of creating a satisfactory communal existence in which their ethno-religious identity as Jews figured prominently. The title of Morawska’s book refers both to the precarious nature of the economic success achieved by Johnstown’s early twentieth-century Jews, and to their sociocultural marginality within their small-town milieu. Morawska is apologetic about leaving out of her story some matters that she might have investigated more fully (conflicts between congregational [End Page 274] factions, for example, or between larger and smaller merchants), and she laments that as an inquiry into the role of gender, at least, her analysis remains “unsatisfactory.” But Morawska’s contrition is quite unnecessary, for her book is so chocked full of well-presented information and insightful analysis that problems such as the ones she mentions are hardly noticed. The success of her book is strengthened by the inclusion of thirty-one photographs and various maps, and it is generally very well written, although historians may find disconcerting Morawska’s decision to follow a practice common in sociology and refer to her subjects only by their first name and the initial of their last. Insecure Prosperity is based on an extraordinary amount of research. The author spent nearly a decade and a half on her project and has brought to bear on her subject a truly prodigious amount of secondary reading on a wide array of related topics; her bibliography would have run to sixty-five pages had there been room to publish it. Morawska’s research on the Jewish community of Johnstown itself involved the mining of just about every resource that can be imagined, from East European memorial books to U.S. census materials, from synagogue minutes to court and tax documents, from Dun and Bradstreet credit reports to college records. In addition, Morawska conducted hundreds of interviews, and, indeed, certain sections of her volume, such as the chapter on the worldviews of Johnstown’s Jews, rely more heavily on what she was told by her informants than on any other material...

Ethical issues in nephrology—Jewish perspectives

Halakhah is the generic term for. the whole legal system of Judaism, embracing all the laws, practices, and observances of Judaism. The sources of authority in Halakhah are composed of two elements: (i) the written law, a composition of 613 positive and negative commandments of Sinaitic origin, which are included in the books of Pentateuch; (ii) the oral law, which includes the interpretation of the written law, as well as logical deductions, rabbinical positive and negative enactment, decrees and customs. These are included in the Talmud and in post-talmudic rabbinical sources, primarily codifications and responsa. Jewish medical ethics, in the sense of normative Jewish law and philosophy applied to practical medical issues, is derived from and based upon the halakhic sources and deliberations. In recent years, Jewish medical ethics has yielded an ever-growing body of discussion, writings, and research on relevant Jewish values and laws, so that a voluminous body of literature now exists in this field. Jewish medical ethics is characterized by and distinguished from secular medical ethics in its range, in its mode of application, in its methods of analysis, in its principles, and in its end point. With respect to underlying principles, many of the Jewish moral and legal principles and rules have significant bearing upon the practice of medicine. Obviously, they cannot be described in any detail in this article. It is, however, worthwhile to mention a few fundamental principles: • Judaism ascribes to commitments, obligations and duties rather than to rights and pure hedonism; beneficence and altruism are promoted over mere nonmaleficence. • Judaism, in general, is opposed to absolutizing any single precepts; rather a golden path, a middle way, is always advocated and encouraged. When conflicting values are encountered, each case must be considered individually, a casuistic approach is