Category: Judaism

Templeton Prize Acceptance Address

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Beloved friends. The news that I had won this prize almost rendered me speechless, an event that would have been unprecedented in the history of the rabbinate. But it has left me moved, humbled, thankful, and deeply motivated, because to me the award is not just about what has been done but also about how much there is still to do.
Templeton Prize Acceptance Address

I want to express my deep sense of gratitude to and kinship with the Templeton family . . .

. . .I know full well that the credit is not mine, but that of the Jewish tradition to which I have tried to give voice, and to its twin imperatives: to be true to our faith and a blessing to others regardless of their faith. People sometimes ask me how I became a speaker, and I answer: Simple. I married the best listener in the world. So my thanks to Elaine, and to our children – Josh, Dina and Gila – and their wonderful families who gave me so much support, and to Joanna, Dan and Debby, my wonderful team. And thanks ultimately to God, who believes in us so much more than we believe in Him.

I said that to me the prize is less about recognition of the past than about responsibility for the future, and it is to that future I turn tonight. This is a fateful moment in history. Wherever we look, politically, religiously, economically, environmentally, there is insecurity and instability. It is not too much to say that the future of the West and the unique form of freedom it has pioneered for the past four centuries is altogether at risk. . . . continue reading

Concerns raised about physician-assisted death policy

The Canadian Jewish News

Paul Lungen

The Supreme Court has spoken, the legislative wing is deliberating, but some in the Jewish community are uncomfortable with the direction the country is going in adopting a policy on physician-assisted suicide.

Discussion on the topic is now so normalized that an acronym has arisen, PAD, referring to it as physician-assisted dying.

As is the case throughout Canada, the Jewish community is not of one mind when it comes to public policy regarding the issue. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) canvassed a broad spectrum of opinion in the Jewish community and presented a series of suggestions to the minister of justice that would regulate how the policy is implemented. . . [Full Text]

 

Orthodox doctors wrestle with ethics of ‘assisted suicide’

The Canadian Jewish News

Barbara Silverstein

Dr. Albert Kirshen said it’s just a matter of time before one of his patients asks him for assistance to die. Kirshen, an observant Jew who is a physician at the Temmy Latner Centre for Palliative Care at Mount Sinai Hospital, said he is bracing himself for the inevitable.

Kirshen is “personally conflicted” and struggling with the new Supreme Court-mandated policy that will permit physician-assisted death (PAD), he said, explaining that while the medical college will require him to accommodate a patient’s request to die, Jewish law does not permit him to make a referral for the termination of a life.

Kirshen spoke to the issue at a town hall meeting on “the implications of the proposed federal assisted suicide legislation on the practice of medicine,” held March 7 at Shaarei Shomayim Congregation in Toronto. About 300 people, many of them physicians, packed the shul’s social hall to learn more about the issue from an Orthodox perspective that reflected the views of rabbis, physicians and a legal expert. . . [Full text]

 

Jewish physicians’ freedom of conscience and religion and the Carter Case

Wagner-Sidlofsky LLP
Reproduced with permission

Charles Wagner* and Adam Hummel*

How does the decision in the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General)1 (“Carter”) impact on the religious Jewish doctor? Will this landmark decision bring into conflict these doctors’ freedom of conscience and religion with their professional obligations? The Carter case sets aside federal criminal laws as they relate to physician assisted suicide. It stands for the proposition that individuals who are suffering unbearably have a constitutional right to a physician-assisted suicide. Canada now joins only eight other countries in the world that have decriminalized physician-assisted suicide in recent years. This is a fundamental change in the law.

Previously, in the 1993 decision of Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney-General)2, the SCC confirmed the criminal sanctions as they related to physician-assisted suicide, while justifying their ruling by citing the protection of the sanctity of life. Given the importance of Carter, the authors will consider some of the main concepts discussed in the decision, and consider how the SCC’s position has changed over the last 22 years. . . [Full text]

 

Ottawa archbishop among religious urging CPSO not to violate physicians’ conscience rights

Catholic Register

Deborah Gyapong, Canadian Catholic News

OTTAWA – Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, along with an imam and a rabbi, have written a joint-intervention in favour of physicians’ conscience rights.

“No Canadian citizen, including any physician, should ever be disciplined or risk losing their professional standing for conducting their work in conformity with their most deeply held ethical or religious convictions,” wrote Prendergast, Rabbi Reuven Bulka and Imam Samy Metwally in a July 31 letter to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

The College had been seeking input until Aug. 5 on its policy review entitled “Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code.” [Full Text]