YU/RIETS End-of-Life Halachic Advisory Program

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Rabbi Herschel Schachter, Rabbi Yaakov Neuberger, Rabbi Mordechai Willig, and Rabbi Moshe Tendler, met with the leaders of Calvary recently to learn about the Hospital’s extensive services for Orthodox patients and families in the two inpatient facilities and through Calvary’s Home Hospice.

They also toured the Bronx facility to see special features such as the kosher food pantry, Shabbos lounge, and a Torah scroll rescued from Czechoslovakia after the Holocaust.

The visit is part of a continuing collaboration set up at the end of 2012 between Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) and Calvary Hospital to guide observant Jews in the metropolitan area in need of information and access to end-of-life care.

The YU/RIETS End-of-Life Halachic Advisory Program provides rabbinic consultation for families and community rabbis. It makes available a rabbinic panel of four roshei yeshiva who have extensive experience with end-of-life halachic issues. Rabbi Herschel Schachter, Rabbi Yaakov Neuberger, Rabbi Mordechai Willig and Rabbi Moshe Tendler will serve on a rotating basis as pre-hospice advisors, answering questions from patients’ families and community rabbis after a physician has recommended that an individual receive hospice care.

A panel of physicians associated with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and its affiliates will be available to advise community rabbis on the clinical issues surrounding the terminally ill. The medical panel includes Dr. Edward Burns, Dr. Seymour Huberfeld, Dr. Beth Popp, Dr. Edward Reichman and Dr. Robert Sidlow.

“There is a pressing need in the Orthodox community for accurate and thorough information on the conditions under which end-of-life care should be provided,” said Burns, Einstein’s executive dean. “Regardless of where a person chooses to seek hospice care, Yeshiva University’s End-of-Life Halachic Advisory Program is designed to answer their questions. Our decision to collaborate with Calvary recognizes the unmatched quality of care that every patient receives there and the staff’s commitment to the hospital’s mission.”

Calvary provides kosher meals and cholov yisroel upon request, a kosher food pantry, a Shabbat lounge and inclusion in the Einstein and Pelham Parkway eruv. For more information about the YU/RIETS End-of-Life Halachic Advisory Program, visit www.yu.edu/riets/end-of-life-care.

To learn more about Calvary, visit www.calvaryhospital.org.