44 | MAY 26 • 2022
R
abbi Herbert
Yoskowitz stepped
away from being the
full-time spiritual leader of
Adat Shalom Synagogue in
2018, but he has not stepped
away from professional
leadership in the ethical
imperative of the rabbinate.
The rabbi’s central
commitment has moved
from synagogue to academia
as he regularly conducts
two seven-session seminars
at the Oakland University
William Beaumont School
of Medicine. Both are part
of the for-credit elective
curriculum.
Jewish Bioethics, which
began in 2012 with the
opening of the medical
school, regularly changes
as it covers current health
issues, such as treatment
allotments during COVID.
Nazi Medicine and Its
Impact on the Founding
of Bioethics, which began
in 2017, has an historic
orientation as it delves into
the influence of German
anatomists on politics,
medical experiments without
informed consent and
attitudes toward eugenics.
“My goal as a rabbi and
educator is to try to teach the
students that they should not
be passive,” said Yoskowitz,
who has been surprised
that most of the students
enrolling in his seminars
have not been Jewish.
“Medical students
should learn to be active in
defending the ethics that we
try to teach them to make a
difference in the places they
occupy as medical students
and throughout the time
they serve as physicians.
“Since becoming a rabbi
in the 1970s, I have believed
that the most important
aspect of Judaism is the
respect for human life
regardless of race or religion,
and so issues of bioethics
remain central to what I
want to communicate.”
Yoskowitz, whose next
Jewish Bioethics series
starts in late summer and
whose next Nazi Medicine
series returns in the fall,
also speaks on specific
bioethical topics before
medical students at other
schools. He points out that
after World War II, the issues
were addressed through
The Nuremberg Code as a
consequence of courtroom
trials revealing the extent of
Nazi medical cruelty.
Some 120 students
have attended Yoskowitz’s
seminars, reading the
assigned articles and
preparing required papers
based on their own research
interests.
SOMETHING NEW
This year, two major changes
are occurring in what will
be offered through the
second seminar. The most
far-reaching is the planning
of a trip to Poland so
students can experience the
Auschwitz-Birkenau State
Museum and observe the
structures where devastating
experiments occurred.
The second is a salute to
personnel staffing the Israeli
field hospital established in
Ukraine.
“The Jewish doctors who
have set up a field hospital
are consistent with what
Jewish physicians have done
through the centuries,”
Yoskowitz said. “We Jews,
within our ethical system,
believe that all people are
created in the image of God.
Therefore, when we are
helping to heal people, we
are partners with God and
what God intended us to do.”
A continuing seminar
speaker is Guy Stern, retired
Wayne State University
professor and Holocaust
survivor who served with
a United States World War
II military intelligence
interrogation team. Students
also visit the Zekelman
Holocaust Center in
Farmington Hills.
“History has proven that
we must learn from the
lessons of the past in order
to increase the chances of
avoiding the repetition of
the same errors,” Yoskowitz
said about his immersion
into this topic after graduate
education in history at Rice
University in Texas and
participation in a bioethics
fellowship sponsored by the
Bush Foundation Leadership
Program with study at St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital in
London and Georgetown
University in Washington,
D.C.
HEALTH
Rabbi Herbert Yoskowitz enjoys a
second career teaching medical
students about bioethics.
Reinventing
Himself
SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Rabbi Herbert
Yoskowitz