LEGACY OF WISDOM

www.legacyofwisdom.org

Project Directors:

Jay Goldfarb Tom Valente

Mostackerstrasse 11 7350 S. Tamiami Trail, Suite 214

4051 Basel, Switzerland Sarasota, FL 34231, USA

Tel/fax +41- 61-361 5375 Tel. +1-941 927 5907 Fax 923-3205

Team & Sponsors: Ram Dass, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Roshi Joan Halifax, Harry Moody, Dr. Sarita Bhalotra, Dr. Rodolfo Musco, Mickey Lemle, Judy Goggin

Wisdom Area: Health Care

The intense discussion around health insurance and health care points up the deep questions we have about how to take care of ourselves as we age. We are hard-pressed to know how best to collaborate and participate with the medical, drug and healing establishments.

Question: How do we handle issues of Health and medical technology that lets us live longer - and the issue of assisted Suicide - how do we do this appropriately?

YouTube Video Title: Legacy of Wisdom -Reb Zalman - Health & Assisted Suicide

YouTube URL: www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8f5WgbLnwU

Length: 3:51

Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi – commonly called "Reb Zalman". I was born in Poland in 1924 and raised in Vienna where I was simultaneously immersed in both traditional Judaism and secular modernism by attending a yeshiva and a leftist-Zionist high school. After fleeing from Nazi advance and imprisonment by the Vichy-French government, my flight from Europe led me to New York City when I was 17. I entered the Lubavitch Yeshiva; ordained in 1947. I received an M.A. in the Psychology of Religion (Boston University, ‘56); a Doctor of Hebrew Letters (Hebrew Union College, ‘68).

For 20 years I was Professor of Religion and Head of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at the University of Manitoba, Canada. In 1975 I became Professor of Religion in Jewish Mysticism and Psychology of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia where I am currently Professor Emeritus. In 1995 I was called to the world Wisdom Chair at Naropa University and later joined the faculty in the Dept. of Religion. I retired from the faculty and am now also emeritus at Naropa University.

My own experience of aging and eldering compelled me to found the Spiritual Eldering Institute in 1989, encouraged and assisted by professionals and colleagues in the field of aging. I have since developed and taught workshops to many thousands of individuals seeking to expand their awareness to match our extended life span.

Question: How do we handle issues of Health and medical technology that lets us live longer - and the issue of assisted Suicide- how do we do this appropriately?

Transcript:

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi: Zalman – See how important it is that you make all these qualifications because without those qualifications there is always a big problem of what is good public policy. And when you don’t nuance anything you want to say “look, these kids will want to have Bubbi’s inheritance so they will talk her into doing assisted suicide”. So this might happen in one case so we don’t want it for anybody.

But what happens in intractable pain? And the person says, “I’m not doing anything for anybody anymore – and certainly not for myself”. I was dealing with a person who had ALS and she was asking me and wanted the family to help her commit suicide because it was getting harder. I came to visit her and I was saying “look, you have a choice if you want to stop eating and drinking it’s going to go very fast and you don’t have to implicate your family in difficult situations”. The fact that she knew that she had control over it made her not use it and then she went in a good way, you know? There is a lot of stuff that has to do with that. I’m not going to say a blanket yes or a blanket no… the people who have enough compassion to help people out. You know there is an issue in the Bible. King Saul was isolated from his troops. His weapon carrier, he asked him “kill me before the Philistines come and get me”. And he didn’t want to do it. So he put the sword and he threw himself on the sword so that he would die and not be caught by them and so on and so forth. So nobody has ever said, that ”Oy, he is never going to get into Heaven for that. So if people had enough they had enough.”

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