J. David Bleich

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Rabbi Dr. J. (Judah) David Bleich (born 1936) is an authority on Jewish law and ethics, including and Jewish medical ethics. He is a professor of Talmud (Rosh Yeshiva) at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, an affiliate of Yeshiva University, as well as head of its postgraduate institute for the study of Talmudic jurisprudence and family law. At Yeshiva University, he holds the Herbert and Florence Tenzer Chair in Jewish Law and Ethics and also teaches at the Cardozo Law School.Bleich brings an Orthodox perspective to governmental deliberations on bioethics. For example, in 1988 he served on the NIH Human Fetal Tissue Transplantation Research Panel [http://www.all.org/abac/dni010.htm] and testified before Congress on the Pain Relief Promotion Act.[http://www.jlaw.com/LawPolicy/painrelief.html] In 1984, New York's Mario Cuomo appointed Bleich to the Governor’s Commission on Life and the Law. He grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, the son of a rabbi. He attended public elementary school and received private tutoring on Jewish subjects. He has commented that he would be the only boy in his class to show up in school during deer hunting season. He then attended Yeshiva Torah Vodaas in Brooklyn, New York and Beth Medrash Elyon in Monsey, New York. His wife, Judith Bleich, is a professor of Jewish history at Touro College. They have three children together.

Academic credentials

Rabbi Bleich is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a postdoctoral fellow at the Hastings Center, and fellow of the Academy of Jewish Philosophy. His degrees include: B.A., Brooklyn College of the City University of New York; M.A., Columbia University; Ph.D., New York University; Ordination, Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, New York; Ordination Yadin Yadin, Rabbis Moshe Feinstein and Mendel Zaks.yu.edu Rabbi Bleich was a close student to the late Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky, one of America's leading rabbis, and rosh yeshiva head of Yeshiva Torah Voda'ath, where Rabbi Bleich learned.

Publications

Rabbi Bleich is the author of Contemporary Halakhic Problems (five volumes); Jewish Bioethics (a collection of essays, which he co-edited with Fred Rosner); With Perfect Faith: Foundations of Jewish Belief; Time of Death in Jewish Law; and Judaism and Healing. His Ph.D. thesis is Providence in the late medieval Jewish philosophy (NYU, 1974). He has written extensively on the applications of Jewish law to contemporary social issues and on the interface of Jewish law and the American legal system. He serves as the long-standing contributor of the survey of halakhic literature for Tradition, an Orthodox journal.

The Yorkville Synagogue

Rabbi Bleich has been the rabbi (Jewish spiritual leader) of the Yorkville Synagogue, located in Manhattan for over forty years. He teaches Talmud classes on Shabbat. He also teaches Jewish halakhic or philosophical issues in a program called "Kiddush, Cholent and Learning." The topic usually is related to the subject matter of the weekly Torah portion. (For example, Rabbi Bleich discussed the seven Noahide Laws on the Shabbat in 2005 when Genesis chapter 34, the story of Dinah's abduction and rescue, was read. Medieval commentators have discussed whether the actions of Shimon and Levi, and the people of Shekhem, were consistent with the Noahide Laws.)

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