Ethnographic methods were used to study daily occupations and weekly routines of four young Orthodox Jewish couples living in Los Angeles. Data from interviews and participant observation demonstrate the importance to the couples of fulfilling God's commandments [Hebrew, mitzvot], which organize and sanctify the otherwise mundane activities of daily living, such as eating, bathing sleeping, and...

OBJECTIVE To assess reasons for low uptake of immunization amongst orthodox Jewish families. DESIGN Qualitative interviews with 25 orthodox Jewish mothers and 10 local health care workers. SETTING The orthodox Jewish community in North East London. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Identification of views on immunization in the orthodox Jewish community. RESULTS In a community assumed to be relativ...

Reproductive technology offers a bewildering number of options for infertile men and women to have children, including ovary and testis freezing, transplantation, in vitro fertilization (IVF), donor sperm, donor eggs, stem cells, gestational surrogacy, genetic diagnosis of embryos, and, of course, birth control. These technologies cut to the very core of personal and religious belief systems. T...

Because the effects of religion or religiosity on physical activity (PA) and sedentary activity (SA) are unknown, weekend accrual of PA and SA was measured among Jewish adolescents (N = 437) attending religious day schools in two large cities in the western United States. Participants completed the Self-Administered Physical Activity Checklist and demographic and religious questionnaire items. ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Culturally competent medical care for the dying patient by families and health care professionals is a challenging task especially when religious values, practices, and beliefs influence treatment decisions for patients at the end of life. This article describes end-of-life guidelines for hospital health care professionals caring for Orthodox Jewish patients and their f...

During 3 months in 2004, 38 recent referrals to a Community Mental Health Clinic in North Jerusalem, a substantially Ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, were evaluated by the Explanatory Model Interview Catalogue. This questionnaire, which includes a 13-item scale measuring stigma towards mental illness, was adapted and translated into Hebrew. Patients with a more religious upbringing expressed...

Culture may particularly influence community attitudes towards mental illness, when the illness itself is shaped by a cultural context. To explore the influence of culture-specific, religious symptoms on Orthodox Jewish community attitudes, the authors compared the attitudes of 169 Orthodox Jews, who randomly viewed one of two vignettes describing either religious or nonreligious obsessive–comp...

Mucolipidosis type IV (MLIV) is a neurodegenerative lysosomal storage disorder that occurs in an increased frequency in the Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) population. The frequency of the disease in this population has been established by the testing of 66,749 AJ subjects in the Dor Yeshorim program, a unique premarital population-screening program designed for the Orthodox Jewish community. A carrier r...

Dr. Kittisupamongkol highlights medications as one of the many factors contributing to the disruption of blood glucose homeostasis in the critically ill patient. Commonly prescribed medications in the ICU likely influence glucose and insulin metabolism.1 Our survey was meant to elucidate critical care clinicians’ opinions about hyperglycemia, its frequency, and the factors they believe influenc...

OBJECTIVE To report on the oral health status and oral health behaviours of five-year-old Charedi Orthodox Jewish children attending schools in London, UK. BASIC RESEARCH DESIGN Cross-sectional survey. METHOD Clinical examinations mirroring the 2015 National Dental Public Health Epidemiology Programme for England for five-year-olds and a parental questionnaire on oral health behaviours. P...