Zoe Bell | Staff Writer
Most people shy away from “taboo” subjects such as abortion and war. Rabbi Professor Dr. Avraham Steinberg travels the United States and Europe to discuss the ethics of these very topics from both medical and halakhic perspectives.
He will visit Lower Merion Synagogue in Bala Cynwyd as a scholar-in-residence from Sept. 13 to 15.
Steinberg, who lives in Jerusalem, wears many hats. He is an associate clinical professor of medical ethics at Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, a senior pediatric neurologist at Shaare Zedek Medical Center and heads the Encyclopedia Talmudit.
Steinberg penned the Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, for which he was awarded the Israel Prize in 1999.
As a scholar-in-residence, he has 15 to 20 specific topics for his audiences to choose from related to medical issues or issues pertaining to questions of Jewish law. Many of these ethical questions concern new developments in medicine.
Steinberg said many of the topics covered in his Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics and those discussed in his lectures are very complicated ethical, halakhic and legal questions about the beginning of life — IVF, abortion, contraception, modern genetics — end of life — organ transplants and autopsies, and other topics, in accordance with halakha.
Dr. Nadav Schwartz, a longtime member of Lower Merion Synagogue, arranged for Steinberg to visit the local congregation.
“He’s a physician, he’s an author, he’s an advocate. He lectures around the world, but he also comes from a very devout religious perspective and is able to merge and use the two in his life’s work,” Schwartz said.
Schwartz first heard about Steinberg when the rabbi professor visited Schwartz’ brother’s synagogue in North Jersey. Schwartz was drawn to Steinberg’s work as chief editor of the Encyclopedia Talmudit, which summarizes topics of Jewish law in 2,500 entries and is 80 years in progress.
“He recently put together a new edition which collates all of the references and sources from the Encyclopedia Talmudit and beyond, related to waging war according to Jewish law and all of the responses over the centuries related to the topic,” Schwartz said. “Given the obvious critical time in our history, with the war going on since Oct. 7, and with the thousands upon thousands of IDF soldiers that are engaging with the war and are directly affected by the war, we thought it was a great opportunity to learn more about the Jewish ways to handle this critical time and also to infuse Torah and spirituality and religion into the effort.”
The new volume, “War According to Halakha,” covers issues related to the Israel-Hamas war, such as scarce resources, triage decisions and how to fight amongst civilians who are not involved in the war.
“This is a very unfortunate, big war. It is a very prolonged war,” Steinberg said. “We’re already almost a year in war. There are many people who have not been home for months facing dilemmas on how to deal with certain parts of their lives now, which changed dramatically. Many of these dilemmas are halakhic in nature.”
A former medical officer in the Israel Defense Forces, Steinberg is in contact with soldiers, officers and rabbis of the army to discuss halakhic issues as they continue to fight in the war. He said the military rabbinate expressed much interest in the volume of “War According to Halakhah,” so he sent the IDF 4,000 copies of the new volume. These were distributed among all military rabbis, military shuls and interested officers and soldiers.
Steinberg receives funding from the Israeli government, but he said this sum is not enough to continue the monumental project of the Encyclopedia Talmudit. He hopes that the Lower Merion community will join him the weekend of Sept. 13 to 15 to better understand the halakhic approach to medical and war-related issues and to spread the word about the encyclopedia.
Steinberg has done a similar initiative in 13 different communities already, which raised funds to publish 500 designated copies of this “special edition” to the IDF. Each copy costs $36.
“If the [Philadelphia] community can raise $18,000, that will be dedicated to this particular community as their effort to help the army on a spiritual level, not only on a physical level, … that is another form of participating in this war,” Steinberg said.
Steinberg said that once the copies of the volume “War According to Halakhah” were distributed, IDF soldiers began studying it during their limited time off.
“Once they got the volume, we have pictures showing that in Gaza, while they are fighting, if they have a half-hour break, they study the book, because this is what they want to know — spiritually how to deal with the war,” Steinberg said.
Schwartz said he will also try to raise funds from other Philadelphia synagogues in memory of the IDF soldiers who were originally from the area and died in the war. He looks forward to Steinberg’s upcoming speaking opportunity.
“I think it would be great for people who could want to listen to him because they’re going into sciences or medical stuff, but I feel like this is another way for us to proudly show that the Jewish nation and the Jewish people are ethical,” Schwartz said. “People who are at the forefront of science, at the forefront of ethics, have values that are deep-seated and have been developed over millennia.”
