BACKGROUND Bedside rounds have long been a time-honored component of medical education. Recently, there have been various recommendations that residency-training programs further incorporate bedside teaching into clinical curricula. OBJECTIVES To compare these current attitudes regarding bedside education with the position of traditional Jewish law and ethics. METHODS Relevant medical journ...

While Judaism espouses the infinite value of human life, Judaism recognizes that all life is finite and, as such, its teachings are compatible with the principles of palliative medicine and end-of-life care as they are currently practiced. Jewish medical ethics as derived from Jewish law, has definitions for the four cardinal values of secular medical ethics: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficen...

Although prenatal screening is routinely undertaken as part of a woman's antenatal care, the ethics surrounding it are complex. In this paper, the author examines the Jewish position on the permissibility of several tests, including those for Down's syndrome and Tay-Sachs disease, the latter being especially common in the Jewish community. Clearly, the status of the tests depends on whether ter...

Introduction Karaism, a messianic Jewish movement founded in the Middle Ages, sought to redefine Jewish religious practice by re-centering it on the “Written Law” (i.e., the Hebrew Bible) in its entirety, and rejecting the “Oral Law” as codified in the Mishnah and Talmud. The Karaites also reversed the structure of the traditional Jewish canon, placing biblical study and the sub-disciplines rel...

Had he not created the first systematic and comprehensive code of Jewish law (Mishneh Torah) would his successors in that project, R. Jacob ben Asher, author of the Arba’ah Turim, and R. Joseph Karo, author of the Shulhan Arukh, have had the vision and courage to embark on what would have been, if not for Maimonides, a revolutionary innovation? The Mishneh Torah is revolutionary in three ways: ...

©FSRH J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 2009: 35(1) Jewish law Jewish law consists of two sections: written law and oral law. The foundation of the written law and the origin of its authority is the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. The Torah is traditionally believed to have been given in a theophany on Mount Sinai and to contain the literal direct word of God. After the destruction of th...

This article presents the approach of Jewish law to the major issue of medical confidentiality and patient privacy. For an extensive discussion of Jewish medical ethics and an in-depth presentation of the Jewish view of 39 major issues in medical ethics, the reader is referred elsewhere [15]. Briefly, the Jewish view toward medical ethical subjects is predicated on the general principle of the ...