My aim is to understand the complex interactions of patients, their families, health-care providers, and religious authorities-groups that are often in the grip of competing and sometimes conflicting influences. My approach to this study is an interdisciplinary one. I also explore the broader implications of this case for understanding the cultures of Jewish medicine in an increasingly complex scientific and technological landscape.
In this article, I explicate and elaborate on the panel’s report and the 1977 case as I examine the important contrasts among adherents to different traditions and legal systems. The distinctive nature of the Jewish approach is thrown into relief even further by comparing it with the differing approaches among Catholic, Protestant, and secular authorities and medical caregivers. A close examination of that report, and of the circumstances of the 1977 case bring to the fore the legal nature of the Orthodox Jewish procedures that determined the medical outcomes of the conjoined twins. This legal character had been highlighted a decade earlier in a report issued by a panel convened to study the different approaches to conjoined twins among Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic authorities. Footnote 1 An evaluation of the medical decision-making process in the 1977 case illustrates the distinctly legal nature of Orthodox Jewish discourse. Everett Koop, M.D., who later became Surgeon General of the United States. Following legal deliberations in the American court system, as well as religious deliberations within the Orthodox Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic communities, the twins were separated by surgeon C. In 1977, conjoined twins were born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Lakewood, New Jersey and later treated at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). As I will show, the profile of Judaism as an amalgam of religion, ethics, and law informs reactions on the part of Jewish patients, rabbinic authorities, and medical caregivers to such an extent that it often comes into sharp conflict with the secular view of medical issues in the United States and with the views of other religions. I argue that the picture of Judaism Batnitzky presents continues to shape Jewish cultural discourse regarding medical issues. In this essay, I will explore one manifestation of this distinctive nature of Judaism in a case study pertaining to making medical decisions at the end of life. Batnitzky argues that Judaism-both in its premodern manifestation and today-is not only a religion, but also a culture that encompasses three dimensions: religion, ethics, and law. In her book How Judaism Became a Religion, Leora Batnitzky identifies aspects of Judaism that set it apart from other religions, and that persist even today as essential components of Jewish culture-especially in communities that identify as Orthodox, or as adhering to the system of Jewish law ( halakhah) writ large (Batnitzky 2011). Following an elaboration and explication of the report and the 1977 case in which I examine the important contrasts between the adherents to different traditions and legal systems, I explore their broader implications for understanding the cultures of Jewish medicine in an increasingly complex scientific and technological landscape. The distinctive nature of the Jewish approach is thrown into relief even further by comparison with the differing approaches among Catholic, Protestant, and secular authorities and medical caregivers. Close examination of that report, and of the circumstances of the 1977 case itself, bring to the fore the legal nature of the Orthodox Jewish procedures determining the medical outcomes of the conjoined twins. This legal character of Orthodoxy had been highlighted a decade earlier, in a report issued by a panel that had been convened to study the different approaches to conjoined twins among Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic authorities. Evaluation of the medical decision making process in the 1977 case illustrates the distinctly legal nature of Orthodox Jewish discourse-a feature that sets it apart from Protestant, Catholic, and secular ethics. Everett Koop, who later became Surgeon General of the United States. In 1977, conjoined twins were born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Lakewood, New Jersey they were treated at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia.
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