Jewish Medical Ethics: Mortality

Catalog description

This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the varied approaches in the history and literature of Halakhah, using a case-based and text-centered approach, to issues in medical ethics related to the end of life and their contemporary application. Through selected topics, the course examines questions such as definitions of death, the balance between preserving life and quality of life, organ donation, autopsy, and the treatment of the body after death. Study will trace these issues from their earliest biblical and rabbinic sources through the Mishnah and Talmud, to medieval codification and commentary, and into modern responsa and legal writings.