The Kalsman Institute is a founding member of the Academic Coalition on Jewish Bioethics (ACJB) which hosts biennial conferences for healthcare professionals, attorneys and Jewish leaders. The ACJB engages the Jewish community in considering biomedical dilemmas, many of which emerge from the encounter between technology and spiritual values. While recognizing that any coherent Jewish bioethics rests on the legacy of inherited norms, values, and experience, the Coalition advocates the development of a variety of methodologies that bring clarity and authenticity to difficult life choices. The ACJB strives to broaden and deepen biomedical conversation in Jewish life and to create pluralistic models of cooperation -- across a spectrum of Jewish practice. The vigorous discussions that took place at the first ACJB conference formed the basis for the Coalition's first publication: Quality of Life in Jewish Bioethics, launched in May 2006. This will be the first of a series of publications promoting inclusive and committed discussion and understanding of Jewish bioethics.

"For everyone concerned with bioethics, the major issues remain the same.  However, the responses to those issues differ depending upon the values, norms, definitions of key terms and decision-making methods that decision makers bring to bear.  Jewish bioethics is distinct from secular bioethics and other forms of religious bioethics because of the resources from Jewish tradition that Jewish bioethicists can apply.  These resources developed over many centuries of halakhic decision making.  The commitments to preserving life and to human dignity and the definition of life as beginning at birth are examples of the Jewish approach that have major ramifications for bioethics." Rabbi David Teutsch, PhD, Director, Levin-Leiber Program in Jewish Ethics and the Center for Jewish Ethics, Louis & Myra Wiener Professor of Contemporary Jewish Civilization at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.