SELECTED REFORM RESPONSA

To answer this question it must be said that although there may not be in the Jewish legal literature any direct and positive guidance to the physician on this matter, there is, however, a strongly implied guidance in the attitude toward prayers for the dying. From the point of view of the Jewish legal tradition, both medicine and prayer are efficacious modes of healing. A physician is considered an authorized emissary of God and prayer is also an effective therapeutic agent(b. Berachoth 60a). Your question as to whether a doctor is duty bound to keep alive a dying, suffering patient is discussed in relation to the healing power of prayer; namely, whether we are duty bound to use the power of prayer to keep a miserable and dying patient alive.

On this form of the question we have some direct state­ments. The Talmud (Ketubot 104a) discusses the dying day of the great Rabbi Judah the Prince , author of the Mishnah. We are told that the rabbis gathered in ceaseless prayer to keep him alive, but his servant-maid(who, by the way, was honored as a learned wo­man in the Talmud ), seeing how hopeless was his case and how much he suffered, prayed that he be given the privilege of death. When the rabbis insisted on praying that he be kept alive a little longer, she threw down from the roof a huge earthen jar in order to disturb them and stop their prayers so that Rabbi Judah might peacefully die. The Talmud quotes this action of this learned women with evident approval.

In fact, this incident is quoted with approval by one of the great Spanish -Jewish scholars in about the year 1200. Rabbenu Nissim Gerondi comments on the passage(Nedarim 40a). The passage discusses the duty of visiting the sick and praying for their recovery. Rabbenu Nissim says that there are times when a man

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