Right Now, Kids are Dying, Because They Are Gay

By Ilana Angel
Published on September 23, 2011

What is it with people wishing me a Merry Christmas???

By Julia Bendis
Published on December 14, 2010

Talking About Dying

Published on June 8, 2010

“What should you do if your parent is drawing close to dying but doesn’t want to talk about it?” I asked.

Bernie Madoff Reportedly Dying of Cancer

Published on August 24, 2009

Madoff, who is serving 150 years at a North Carolina federal prison after pleading guilty to swindling more than $65 billion, has been telling fellow inmate he doesn't have much longer to live.

Obituaries

Published on August 7, 2008

The high cost of dying

By Jane Ulman
Published on August 7, 2008

A traditional Jewish funeral is simple and not ostentatious -- good news for people concerned about the high cost of dying. But while Jewish law doesn't require embalming, elaborate floral displays or 16-gauge metal caskets with tufted crepe interiors, it does require Jews to be buried in the ground. And that costs money.

The Dance of Life

By Rabbi Carla Howard
Published on February 14, 2008

I spoke to Fred several days before he died. He didn't want to be on hospice, didn't want to think about dying -- or to let me visit him in the hospital -- but he said he thought that he had danced his last dance. I was honored to have shared it with him -- asher hu bam.

Final lesson

By Rabbi Mordecai Finley
Published on December 20, 2007

In this week's Torah portion, Vayechi, we have the most intimate description of a deathbed scene and the most elaborate description of a le'vayah (funeral) contained in the Torah.

Laugh at Death the Buchwald Way

By Dov Burt Levy
Published on May 4, 2006

Art Buchwald is living and dying in a Washington, D.C., hospice. If you don't know his story, you could be forgiven for thinking this is a very sad time for the 80-year-old Jewish columnist. Just the opposite, Buchwald says. "I am," he announces, "having the time of my life."

In Death, Still Not Parting

By Soriya Daniels
Published on April 7, 2005

How often do we let feuds linger on believing that we have so much more time left on this earth?

The Answer Is Love

By Julie G Fax
Published on January 8, 2004

Excerpt from "More Money Than God: Living a Rich Life Without Losing Your Soul," by Steven Z. Leder

A few years ago, I was called to see an extremely famous and wealthy movie director. He was a friend of a friend, and he was in the hospital. We were strangers, this dying old man and I. Entering his room, I noticed amid the monitors, tubes, and fluorescent lights of the sterile ICU, there was only one solitary breath of humanity tacked up on the wall -- one small black-and-white photograph, some sixty years old, of a young couple in their twenties holding hands on a park bench.

Opinions Conflict on Ending Life Support

By Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff
Published on November 6, 2003

The Florida case of a woman on life support for 13 years has put issues of how we die and when and how doctors and others should intervene on the front page. Whatever the courts say about that case, however, will only apply to federal and Florida law.

What would Jewish law say about such a case? That question is important because the issues raised in that case confront Jews often as they care for their parents, spouse and other loved ones and as they contemplate their own dying process.

The basic Jewish principle about these matters is clear: We are, on the one hand, not allowed to hasten the dying process, but on the other, we are not supposed to prolong it either.