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July 2, 2009
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person
Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya
July 1, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken
The Kosher Gourmet
by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts
June 30, 2009
Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?
Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief
June 29, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'
Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas
June 26, 2009
Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain
Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law
June 25, 2009
Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip:
Everything's Relative
June 24, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity
The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun
June 23, 2009
Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin
Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect
June 22, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm
N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?
June 19, 2009
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect
Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity
June 18, 2009
Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip:
Everything's Relative
June 17, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion
The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …
June 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel
Richard Z. Chesnoff: Palestinians: Never Missing an Opportunity …
June 15, 2009
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'
Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed
June 12, 2009
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big
Caroline B. Glick:
Obama's High Commissioner
June 11, 2009
Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President
Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers
Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos
June 10, 2009
Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world
The Kosher Gourmet
by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste
June 9, 2009
Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?
June 8, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?
Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past
Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?
June 5, 2009
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams
Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth
June 4, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock
The Kosher Gourmet
by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette
June 3, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?
Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action
June 2, 2009
Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)
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Jewish World Review
April 1, 2005
/ 21 Adar II, 5765
If Michael Schiavo had met Yacov the Jerusalemite
By
Jonathan Rosenblum
|  Michael Schiavo |
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
I have been thinking a lot about Marsi Tabak recently. I first met Marsi about fifteen years ago, when she hired
me for my first major editing job.
Marsi was already something of a legend in the world of Jewish publishing for taking a manuscript about an
abandoned Chinese baby found in a train station by a completely assimilated Jewish professor, that had been
rejected by several publishers and fashioning it into "The Bamboo Cradle," one of the all-time best-sellers in
the Orthodox world. (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)
Marsi was bright intimidatingly so and demanding.. But we hit it off. Though that initial project ended
abruptly, Marsi and I remained friendly, and I always felt that she took Pygmalion-like pride in the development
of my subsequent career.
I haven't seen Marsi since she suffered a heart attack seven years ago that left her in what has been diagnosed
as a persistent vegetative state (PVS). I do, however, run into her husband Yacov at the numerous family
simchas of another author whose career she did much to shape.
Invariably, Yacov responds to my inquiries about Marsi with expressions of thanks for the progress that has
been made and hope for future progress. Last week, Yacov was moved to write about Marsi to the Jerusalem
Post, in response to a series of articles about Terri Schiavo and the Jewish approach to such situations.
Subsequently, CNN picked up the story and interviewed the Tabaks and aired a three-minute segment on
them.
Over the last seven years, Marsi has learned again to swallow and to stand with the assistance of a walker.
Each of these achievements i.e., the performance of the most routine, everyday actitivies has been
hard-won, the result of months and even years of effort by each family member and various physiotherapists.
As a result of Marsi and her family's efforts, she accompanied her daughter to the chuppah, and on Purim her
son read the Megilla to her, as he does every year. Yacov describes communication as "very challenging, but
possible, and very rewarding."
Yacov hopes that the brilliant woman he married will again be able to converse freely with him, just as Sarah
Scantlin, a Kansas woman who had been in PVS for twenty years, began to speak well this past February. Whether or not
that happens, however, he will have no regrets about devoting himself to her improvement. "To witness my wife struggling
today with her challenging physiotherapy while standing in a walker is to understand what the will to live really means," he
writes.
I cite Yacov Tabak not as a club with which to figuratively beat a less devoted husband like Michael Schiavo. No one who has
not been in Michael Schiavo's situation is entitled to judge his actions, or to assume that he would act as Yacov Tabak. My
only question for Michael Schiavo is: Why insist on retaining the power to kill your wife while morally compromised by your
desire to remarry and your position as heir to the remainder of her $1.2 million malpractice judgment? Why not simply divorce
her?
But I would fear to live in a society that sets the procedural and evidentiary bar so low for the termination of life as the state of
Florida has done in the case of Terry Schiavo. And I'm proud to live in a religious Jewish society in which Yacov Tabak's
efforts on behalf of his beloved wife are the societal ideal.
Only a society that still believes in the human soul, in something ineffable that cannot be expressed in terms of EEG's, can
produce a Yacov Tabak, or for that matter a JewishWorldReview.com's Marianne Jennings, professor of Legal and Ethical Studies at Arizona State
University, who has lived for more than a decade with a daughter who depends on a feeding tube and who now has a mother
in the same state. "Eliminating them," she writes here, "would mean no more diaper changes,
no more feeding bags, and no more '1-2-3 lift!' as we struggle to rotate their positions. But if I lost my Claire or my mother, I
would spend a lifetime longing to be of service again, to have just one more time to feel the warmth of those neurologically
curled fingers."
And a society which defines life only in terms of the capacity to experience a certain set of pleasures is on the road towards
elimination of those who lack a certain societally determined "quality of life." Indeed the killing by starvation of a sentient,
responsive woman, who requires no more life support than an infant, is already well down the road.
That slippery slippery slope is rapidly traversed. In the Netherlands, where euthanasia is legal, there is growing evidence that
many elderly and infirm people feel pressured by their families to "consent" to their own killing so as not to constitute a burden
on them. By following the recommendation of Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer to jettison "doctrines about the sanctity of life,"
the Netherlands has, in just a few years, come close to Singer's own ideal of a society in which it is "the refusal to accept killing
that, in some cases, [will be seen] as horrific."
May we continue to be guided by the Biblical injunction: Choose life.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading."
Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Jonathan Rosenblum is Israeli director of Am Echad. Comment by clicking here.
© 2005, Jonathan Rosenblum
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