Judaism and Health

Description

The first state-of-the-art, comprehensive resource to encompass the wide breadth of the rapidly growing field of Judaism and health.

"For Jews, religion and medicine (and science) are not inherently in conflict, even within the Torah-observant community, but rather can be friendly partners in the pursuit of wholesome ends, such as truth, healing and the advancement of humankind."
—from the Introduction

This authoritative volume—part professional handbook, part scholarly resource and part source of practical information for laypeople—melds the seemingly disparate elements of Judaism and health into a truly multidisciplinary collective, enhancing the work within each area and creating new possibilities for synergy across disciplines. It is ideal for medical and healthcare providers, rabbis, educators, academic scholars, healthcare researchers and caregivers, congregational leaders and laypeople with an interest in the most recent and most exciting developments in this new, important field.

CONTRIBUTORS:
Rabbi Rachel Adler, PhD • Rabbi Richard Address, DMin • Ronald M. Andiman, MD • Barbara Breitman, DMin • Rabbi Anne Brener, LCSW • Shelly Thomas Christensen, MA • Rabbi William Cutter, PhD • Rabbi Stephanie Dickstein, LMSW • Rabbi Nancy Epstein, MPH, MAHL • Elizabeth Feldman, MD • Rabbi Naomi Kalish, BCC • Rabbi Lynne F. Landsberg • Jeff Levin, PhD, MPH • Judith Margolis, MFA • Adina Newberg, PhD • Kenneth I. Pargament, PhD • David Pelcovitz, PhD • Steven Pirutinsky, MS • Michele F. Prince, LCSW, MAJCS • Rabbi Stephen B. Roberts, MBA, BCC • David H. Rosmarin, PhD • Fred Rosner, MD, MACP • Rabbi Julie Schwartz • Devora Greer Shabtai • Rabbi Mychal B. Springer • Rabbi Shira Stern, DMin, BCC • Rabbi David A. Teutsch, PhD • Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, MD • Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, LCSW • Rabbi Nancy Wiener, DMin

Foreword
Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, PhD xi
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: Judaism and Health
Jeff Levin, PhD, MPH, and Michele F. Prince, LCSW, MAJCS xix
Part I
Judaism, Medicine, and Healing

History of Jews in Medicine and Healthcare
Fred Rosner, MD, MACP 1
At the Bedside in the Babylonian Talmud: Reflections on Classical Rabbinic Healers and Their Approaches to Helping the Suffering
Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, LCSW 8
An Overview of Jewish Bioethics
Rabbi David A. Teutsch, PhD 20
Words Worth Healing
Rabbi William Cutter, PhD, and Ronald M. Andiman, MD 38
Spiritual Resources for Jewish Healthcare Professionals
Elizabeth Feldman, MD 54

Part II
Jewish Pastoral Care and Caregiving
Jewish Healthcare Chaplaincy: Professionalizing Spiritual Caregiving
Rabbi Naomi Kalish, BCC 69
Jewish Pastoral Care
Rabbi Mychal B. Springer 81
Pastoral Care in a Postmodern World: Promoting Spiritual Health across the Life Cycle
Rabbi Nancy Wiener, DMin, and Barbara Breitman, DMin 93
Seminary-Based Jewish Pastoral Education
Rabbi Nancy Wiener, DMin, Rabbi Julie Schwartz, and Michele F. Prince, LCSW, MAJCS 108
Judaism and Caregiving
Rabbi Stephanie Dickstein, LMSW 128
The Jewish Professional as Personal Caregiver
Rabbi Stephen B. Roberts, MBA, BCC 141

Part III
Jewish Approaches to Coping with Challenge
Tradition, Texts, and Our Search for Meaning
Rabbi Richard Address, DMin 157
Bad Things Happen: On Suffering
Rabbi Rachel Adler, PhD 169
Judaism and Disability: R'fuat Hanefesh—The Healing of Our Souls, Individual and Communal
Rabbi Lynne F. Landsberg and Shelly Thomas Christensen, MA 174
Judaism and Resiliency
Rabbi Shira Stern, DMin, BCC 190
Doing Kaddish to Turn Mourning into Dancing
Rabbi Anne Brener, LCSW 205
Creativity and Healing in a Jewish Context
Judith Margolis 219

Part IV
Judaism, Psychology, and Health
Judaism and Addiction
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, MD 239
Gratitude: Perspectives from Positive Psychology and Judaism
David Pelcovitz, PhD 251
Jewish Religious Coping and Trust in God: A Review of the Empirical Literature
David H. Rosmarin, PhD, Devora Greer Shabtai, Steven Pirutinsky, MS, and Kenneth I. Pargament, PhD 265
Population Research on Judaism, Health, and Well-Being
Jeff Levin, PhD, MPH 282

Part V
Jewish Communal, Organizational, and Policy Perspectives
A Program Assessment of the Field of Judaism and Health: Program Review and Key Stakeholder Interviews
Michele F. Prince, LCSW, MAJCS 301
Three Jewish Lenses for Work and Health
Rabbi Nancy Epstein, MPH, MAHL, and Adina Newberg, PhD 323
Jewish Ethical Themes That Should Inform the National Healthcare Discussion: A Prolegomenon
Jeff Levin, PhD, MPH 336

Notes 352
Suggested Reading 398
Credits 399
Index 400

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Torá
• Jewish history
• Jewish philosophy
• Judaism
• Religion
• Torah

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 07 novembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781580237932
• Langue: English

Extrait

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For Sam Karff, my first rabbi (J.L.)
For my beloved husband, Jeffrey Prince (M.F.P.)
Contents
Foreword
Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, PhD
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Judaism and Health
Jeff Levin, PhD, MPH, and Michele F. Prince, LCSW, MAJCS
Part I Judaism, Medicine, and Healing
History of Jews in Medicine and Healthcare
Fred Rosner, MD, MACP
At the Bedside in the Babylonian Talmud: Reflections on Classical Rabbinic Healers and Their Approaches to Helping the Suffering
Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, LCSW
An Overview of Jewish Bioethics
Rabbi David A. Teutsch, PhD
Words Worth Healing
Rabbi William Cutter, PhD, and Ronald M. Andiman, MD
Spiritual Resources for Jewish Healthcare Professionals
Elizabeth Feldman, MD
Part II Jewish Pastoral Care and Caregiving
Jewish Healthcare Chaplaincy: Professionalizing Spiritual Caregiving
Rabbi Naomi Kalish, BCC
Jewish Pastoral Care
Rabbi Mychal B. Springer
Pastoral Care in a Postmodern World: Promoting Spiritual Health across the Life Cycle
Rabbi Nancy Wiener, DMin, and Barbara Breitman, DMin
Seminary-Based Jewish Pastoral Education
Rabbi Nancy Wiener, DMin, Rabbi Julie Schwartz, and Michele F. Prince, LCSW, MAJCS
Judaism and Caregiving
Rabbi Stephanie Dickstein, LMSW
The Jewish Professional as Personal Caregiver
Rabbi Stephen B. Roberts, MBA, BCC
Part III Jewish Approaches to Coping with Challenge
Tradition, Texts, and Our Search for Meaning
Rabbi Richard Address, DMin
Bad Things Happen: On Suffering
Rabbi Rachel Adler, PhD
Judaism and Disability: R fuat Hanefesh -The Healing of Our Souls, Individual and Communal
Rabbi Lynne F. Landsberg and Shelly Thomas Christensen, MA
Judaism and Resiliency
Rabbi Shira Stern, DMin, BCC
Doing Kaddish to Turn Mourning into Dancing
Rabbi Anne Brener, LCSW
Creativity and Healing in a Jewish Context
Judith Margolis
Part IV Judaism, Psychology, and Health
Judaism and Addiction
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, MD
Gratitude: Perspectives from Positive Psychology and Judaism
David Pelcovitz, PhD
Jewish Religious Coping and Trust in God: A Review of the Empirical Literature
David H. Rosmarin, PhD, Devora Greer Shabtai, Steven Pirutinsky, MS, and Kenneth I. Pargament, PhD
Population Research on Judaism, Health, and Well-Being
Jeff Levin, PhD, MPH
Part V Jewish Communal, Organizational, and Policy Perspectives
A Program Assessment of the Field of Judaism and Health: Program Review and Key Stakeholder Interviews
Michele F. Prince, LCSW, MAJCS
Three Jewish Lenses for Work and Health
Rabbi Nancy Epstein, MPH, MAHL, and Adina Newberg, PhD
Jewish Ethical Themes That Should Inform the National Healthcare Discussion: A Prolegomenon
Jeff Levin, PhD, MPH
Notes
Suggested Reading
List of Searchable Terms
About the Editors
Copyright
Also Available
About Jewish Lights
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Foreword
Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, PhD
As the title of this book indicates, its subject is Judaism and health. But why should we expect Judaism to have anything distinctive to say about health? What is wrong with American secular understandings of health?
There is nothing particularly wrong with American secular understandings of health. One should recognize, though, that what passes as the secular viewpoint in Western nations is not, as is often assumed, therefore objective and true. Instead, what we call secular is actually the perspective of Western liberalism, influenced by philosophers like John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Claude Montesquieu. Like every other perspective on life, the Western liberal perspective has its strengths and its weaknesses, and it is not any more objective than any of the other ways of thinking about our world, ourselves, and, specifically, our health.
Every religion and secular philosophy (such as Western liberalism, existentialism, and communism) offers its particular lens on life with its own distinctive understanding of who we are as individuals and as a community and what kind of persons and communities we should strive to be. Even though all the viewpoints we know were created by human beings and seek to describe human beings, there is a remarkable diversity in how the various religions and philosophies of the world depict both what kind of being we are and what kind we should strive to be. For example, is the ideal person married? In some religions the ideal person is celibate (for example, Buddhist and Catholic priests and monastics); in others (like Judaism), the ideal person is married; and in yet others (for example, some forms of current American secularism), that is a matter of individual choice with no moral judgment one way or the other. Is the ideal person educated? In some religions (like Mormonism or Buddhism) and some secular philosophies, only the elite are to know the secrets of the religion or ideology and the community attached to it; in others (like Judaism), every person is to strive to learn the entirety of the tradition, and parents have the duty to initiate their children into that process, a process that continues one s whole life. Is the individual at the center of value or is the community? American liberalism would assert the former; communism would assert the latter; and Judaism would assert the importance of both.
These differences in general viewpoint have a direct impact on how the various religions and philosophies of the world understand the role of medicine and health. The differences are rooted in each tradition s fundamental understanding of the human being in the first place.
For example, Western philosophy (beginning with Plato) makes a sharp distinction between body and mind: the body is the animal in us and the mind the distinctly human in us. Christianity sees a similar dichotomy between body and soul. If one begins with either of those views, the body is simply a machine that supports the mind or soul, and caring for the body is at best an instrumental value, something one does in order to have the physical abilities to accomplish some other goal (learning accurate ideas and developing the life of the mind in the case of Plato; saving the soul from its sinfulness in the case of Christianity). If one begins instead, as Judaism does, with the view that the body, mind, emotions, and will (the latter three constituting a person s identity or soul ) are all integrated within us and each affects the other constantly, then care of the body immediately involves care of the soul as well, and care of the person becomes an absolute value.
Are medical interventions a forbidden human attempt to change what God or nature has wrought, as in Christian Science and some forms of natural law theory? Or are healthcare personnel nothing less than the agents and partners of God in the ongoing act of healing, as they are in Judaism? Furthermore, if one sees individuals as isolated beings, each with unalienable rights, as the U.S. Declaration of Independence states, then healthcare should focus on the welfare of each individual instead of the health of the familial or communal context in which that person lives, except as it affects a particular patient. If on the other hand one sees the individual as enmeshed in a web of tight and often irrevocable relationships with family and community, as Judaism does, then the family and the whole society must be taken into account in all healthcare decisions for any individual, and we as a community have a duty to each other to provide both preventive and curative healthcare. 1
Judaism has a distinctive view of healthcare, not only because of the long history of Jews valuing and engaging in healthcare, but also because of deep ideological commitments that shape the Jewish approach to life in general and to health and medicine in particular. These Jewish convictions are very much in evidence in each chapter of this book, as the editors have brought together essays that describe not only a Jewish approach to medical care of the body but also how Judaism would have us care for the soul and for each other.
They begin with attention to the body, for in Judaism the body is created by God as much as any other part of us is; it is not of instrumental value alone. Jews have historically been eager to avoid diseases when possible and to cure them when not, and part 1 informs us of how Judaism understands the results of those efforts for us living today. Part 2, on pastoral care, draws the reader s attention to the pastoral needs not only of the patient but also of the caregiver, whether a healthcare professional, friend, or family member; and it provides good advice for anyone on the giving or receiving end of pastoral care. Part 3, on coping with disease and suffering, is a graphic example of how a Jewish approach to healthcare differs from much of Western medicine. It explores how we can cope with suffering and pain when pills and even surgeries are not effective