Medicine and Morals course in Brisbane

October 10, 2010 by Community Editor

The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute (JLI) will present Medicine and Morals: Your Jewish Guide Through Life’s Tough Decisions.

The six-session course will be launched during the week of Oct. 24.

Chanoch Sufrin of the Jewish Educational Institute – Chabad Brisbane will conduct the six course sessions at 8:00 pm on Monday evenings, commencing on October 25 at The Brisbane Synagogue, 98 Margaret Street, Brisbane. In addition a special session for ladies is being held on Wednesday mornings, at 10:00 am commencing on October 27 at One Park Road, Milton.

The six lessons will include Choosing Life: The Obligation to Seek Healing; Flesh of My Flesh: Organ Transplants in Jewish Law; Rolling the Dice: Risky and Experimental Treatments; New Beginnings: The Ethics of Reproductive Technologies; With You In Mind: Ethical Treatment of the Mentally Disabled; Secret Code: Genetics and the Ethics of Patient Confidentiality.

“As medicine advances and life expectancy increases, almost all of us will encounter an ethical dilemma in dealing with our own health or that of a loved one,” said Sufrin, JLI’s local facilitator. “But Jewish law creatively draws analogies with ancient paradigms to provide guidance through the maze of medical decision-making.”

The course will examine contemporary case studies and compare secular and Jewish approaches as a means of developing understanding, he added.

Like all JLI programs, Medicine and Morals: Your Jewish Guide Through Life’s Tough Decisions is designed to appeal to people at all levels of Jewish knowledge, including  those without any prior experience or background in Jewish learning. All JLI courses are open to the public, and attendees need not be affiliated with a particular synagogue, temple, or other house of worship.

Interested students may call 0425 248 182 or visit www.ChabadBrisbane.com/myJLI for registration and other course-related information. The course is approved by the Queensland Bar Association and will be available for CPD credits.

Members of the local media are invited to observe a class and/or conduct an advance interview with the local course facilitator. Interviews with national facilitators and course creators also may be scheduled, upon request. Contact Chanoch Sufrin, [email protected], 0425 248 182 for additional media-related information.

JLI, the adult education branch of Chabad Lubavitch, offers programs in more than 300 U.S. cities and in numerous foreign locations, including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, Israel, the Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Venezuela. More than 180,000 people have attended JLI classes since the organization was founded in 1998.