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Ideas & Issues

Sanctity Of Life

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From the Jewish News pages for this
week 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago.

.

Rabbi Address stresses the importance of making
medical decisions in a Jewish context.

DEBRA ISAACS
Special to the Jewish News

A

central paradox of faith — how to reconcile the
weight of free choice with the inevitability of
Divine will — has occupied spiritual thinkers
through the ages.
It was at the heart of a scattered but lively talk on the
subject of Jewish thinking on healing and the body Feb. 7
at Temple Emanu-El in Oak Park.
In a lecture 4)onsored by the Metropolitan Detroit
Federation of Reform Synagogues, Rabbi Richard Address
spoke to an audience of some 60 people about the rich
vein of Jewish tradition that is relevant as we encounter
-newer ways to prolong life and even create it.
Rabbi Address is director of the Union of Hebrew
Congregations' new Department of Jewish Family
Concerns, designed to help leaders of UAHC's 900-plus
member congregations in North America broaden their
Jewish understanding of contemporary issues. These
include end-of-life care, infertility treatment, mental illness
and the changing face of the Jewish family.
If they don't embrace the realities of modern life, he told
the crowd, temples will cease to matter to their congre-
gants. Teaching congregants about making decisions in a
Jewish context is what's needed, he said.
Parrying and moving like an evangelist, Rabbi Address
touched on the Torah, prayer and the writings of
Maimonides, the 12th-century rabbi and physician in
Egypt, to make the point that Jews regard the body as
God-given and necessary for spiritual perfection. Rabbi
Address said Judaism allows for organ transplantation, in
vitro fertilization and other biomedical advances as long as
the purpose is to sanctify, preserve and dignify life — the
triumvirate of the Jewish ethic.
Saving a life, or pikuach nefesh, takes precedence over any
other mitzvah, Rabbi Address pointed out.

Respecting Human Life

Sanctifying the body, the rabbi said, is a religious impera-
tive that can be found in biblical text and in prayer. Jews
acknowledge this in a daily prayer, recited during morning
bathroom ablutions, that thanks God for keeping one's
arteries and body cavities open and in good functioning in
order so that one can pray.
And yet, illness that comes by accident or heredity — Rabbi
Address' so-called "wild cards" — are the foils of personal free-
dom. He finds the Akeidah, the story of Isaac's near-sacrifice
on the mountain by Abraham, useful as a metaphor for the
bodily constraints that thwart our relationship with God.
Although the rabbi did not delve into particulars —

In commemoration of the 500th
anniversary of the expulsion of the
Jews from the Iberian Peninsula,
Temple Emanu-El, in conjunction
with Congregation Beth Shalom
and the Detroit Jewish Committee
for Sephard '92, present programs_
and classes, including a presenta-
tion on the history of Sephardic
Judaism by Moshe Lazar.
Marcella Stein, executive secretary
for the Metropolitan Detroit Optical
Society, is appointed Democratic co-
chair for the Michigan Women's
Political Caucus.

Harry and Sarah Laker receive
recognition for their devotion and
volunteer efforts at the annual din-
ner of the Jewish National Fund
Council of Detroit.

How long should life be extend-
An impassioned
ed? What is acceptable for pro-
Rabbi Richard Address
longing it? What of cloning? —
speaks to a crowd at
he concluded with the idea that
Temple Emanu-El
we can deploy the medical tech-
about medical
nology available as long as it
technology from
respects the sanctity, dignity
a Jewish perspective.
and preservation of human life.
Nancy Jonas of Farmington
Hills has heard Rabbi Address
speak a few times, but last week's lecture was particularly
stirring, she said.
Jonas is -past president of the Temple Israel Sisterhood.
Last October, her 86-year-old mother died without ben-
efit of extraordinary measures to extend her life.
"My mother lived about a year and a half longer than
she would have lived years ago," Jonas said. "She had a
pacemaker installed and oxygen at the end, but we were
still able to keep the quality of her life up. I don't know
that there was more we could have done."
She said Rabbi Address helped her sort out the limits
of our control and the choices we can make as Jews.
"You can choose to smoke because you're going to die
anyway, but how we live and how we get to the end of
our lives, how good they are, how productive they are, is
in our hands." E.

Temple Emanu-El's 50th anniversary commemoration
continues with a visit by Rabbi Eric Yoffe, president of
the New York City-based Union of American Hebrew
Congregations, at Shabbat services Feb. 15.

The Synagogue School Association,
comprised of Detroit Conservative,
Reform and Orthodox representa-
tives, forms with Rabbi Irwin
Groner as chairman and Rabbi
Richard C. Hertz as co-chairman.
Gov: Milliken appoints Detroit
attorney Avern Cohn to the eight-
member bipartisan Michigan Civil
Rights Commission.

i;Av4-k

' ing Katz remarks on the
Detroiter Irv
200th anniversary of the coming of
the first Jew to Detroit, Chapman
Abraham.

Te ,:z„

State chairman of Brotherhood
Week, Leonard S. Simons, presents
$7,500 to the Rev. Celestin Steiner,
president of the University of
Detroit, collected from a. group of
Jewish businessmen in honor of the
75th anniversary of U-D.
Rabbi B. Benedict Glazer is
named Michigan state chairman of
the Rabbinical Council of the
Combined Campaign of the Union
of American Hebrew Congregations
and the Hebrew Union College.
— Compiled by Holly Teasdle,
certified archivist, the Rabbi Leo M.
Franklin Archives of Temple Beth El

2/15
2002

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