Jewish Bioethics

This book surveys the development of Jewish religious law and practice in relation to healthcare, with an emphasis on their influence on Israeli medical law. It contains discussions on the nature of Jewish law and and ethics, especially in comparison to Catholic moral theology and the Western political traditions.The book is divided into key themes: approaches to health, illness and the body; medical nursing and social services; doctor-patient relationships; the uses of the dead and living body; fertility, genomics and infertility; Jewish sexual ethics and the medicalization of religion; abortion; care for neonates; the timing of death and organ transplantation from the brain-dead, and end-of-life care. The book should be of interest to students and scholars of bioethics, Jewish religious law, history of Israeli law, and the interactions between social history of medicine and biomedical law. This is a much expanded and revised Hebrew version of the 2014 book Jewish Medical Ethics published by Cambridge University Press.