Non­fic­tion

The Hadas­sah Jew­ish Fam­i­ly Book of Health and Wellness

Robin E. Berman, Arthur Kurzweil, Dale L. Mintz, eds.
  • Review
By – October 18, 2011
There have been many home health books pub­lished over the years, rang­ing from Dr. Spock to Con­quer­ing Child­hood Obe­si­ty for Dum­mies. Now comes Hadas­sah — the orga­ni­za­tion, not the hos­pi­tal— with a book on health and well­ness, offer­ing advice from childrais­ing and vis­it­ing the sick to a sec­tion on Jew­ish genet­ic dis­eases. Each chap­ter is writ­ten with a dis­tinct­ly Jew­ish flair. 


The book is divid­ed into ten parts, with top­ics rang­ing from nutri­tion to organ dona­tion. Each chap­ter is self-con­tained and easy to read, usu­al­ly open­ing with a per­son­al­ized sto­ry, fol­lowed by med­ical infor­ma­tion, then a dis­cus­sion from the Jew­ish per­spec­tive. Writ­ten by an eclec­tic col­lec­tion of con­trib­u­tors, the book is equal parts med­ical infor­ma­tion, halacha, and prac­ti­cal advice.

A note of cau­tion: this book will not nec­es­sar­i­ly help the par­ent who has a child with a fever in the mid­dle of the night. How­ev­er, if the read­er is inter­est­ed in the Jew­ish response to stem cells or what the Lubav­itch­er Rebbe had to say about health and heal­ing, this book will fit the bill.

Paul M. Arnold, MD, is pro­fes­sor of neu­ro­surgery and direc­tor of the Spinal Cord Injury Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas.

Discussion Questions