Abstract

These notes are most sharply constructed for the non-Jewish physician who tends to a Jewish patient and who operates with the assumption that religion is of therapeutic value, having the potential to guide, comfort and motivate.

The physician should know that in Judaism, formally speaking, life is carried and guided by beliefs, commandments, rituals and ceremonies, both uttered and enacted, that address all aspects of life, including dietary regulations, moral and ethical behavior, prayer, Sabbath and holiday rules. Yet, Jewish people cover the broadest spectrum of adherence to and knowledge of these particulars. Four major movements of American Jewish life—Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative—offer profiles of observance that present only the broadest characterizations of beliefs and practices. In order, therefore, to say something most broadly about the Jewish patient I must excavate beneath Judaism's formal structure of beliefs and practices; otherwise, there can be no end of discussion or description of a Jewish patient whose profile likely does not even fit cleanly into one of the four major streams of American Judaism. In presenting one stereotypical profile, I will succeed in describing no one. Indeed, I will have offered little useful information to the physician.