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 Report on the Academic Coalition for Jewish Bioethics Rabbi Julie Pelc, Assistant Director, and Rabbi Bill Cutter, Founding Director of the Kalsman Institute on Judaism and Health attended the National Conference of the Academic Coalition for Jewish Bioethics in Atlanta last month. A highlight was to listen to the words and wisdom of Dr. Baruch Brody, of Baylor in Houston (Brody is a scholar on the ways in which the traditional poskim render a wide range of response based on the same texts; he is also an Orthodox Jew). Brody's intellectual work focuses on the indeterminacy of rabbinic ethics based on this notion that a wide range of possible responses are issued from the same sources The ACJB is a joint project on Jewish Bioethics and is a joint venture of ethics centers and related programs at HUC-JIR, American Jewish University, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Shalom Hartman Institute, The Jewish Theological Seminary, and University of Pennsylvania - Center for Bioethics. The Academic Coalition for Jewish Bioethics seeks to engage the Jewish community in considering biomedical decisions. While recognizing that any coherent Jewish bioethics rests on the legacy of our 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 models of cooperation across the spectrum of Jewish practice. Founded in 1875, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is the nation's oldest institution of higher Jewish education and the academic, spiritual, and professional leadership development center of Reform Judaism. HUC-JIR educates men and women for service to American and world Jewry as rabbis, cantors, educators, and communal service professionals, and offers graduate and post-graduate programs to scholars of all faiths. With centers of learning in Cincinnati, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, and New York, HUC-JIR's scholarly resources comprise renowned library and museum collections, the American Jewish Archives, biblical archaeology excavations, research institutes and centers, and academic publications. HUC-JIR invites the community to an array of cultural and educational programs which illuminate Jewish history, identity, and contemporary creativity and which foster interfaith and multiethnic understanding. Visit us at www.huc.edu |
