Q&A: Several Matters Related to Illness
Several Matters Related to Illness
Question
"The Divine Presence is at the head of the sick person's bed"
1. Does this also apply to an elderly person being treated in the hospital due to old age, but who is not medically defined as ill?
2. According to this, is a hospital a holier place than a synagogue, and is it preferable to pray in a hospital because there is more Divine Presence there?
3. Is it forbidden to touch a dying person — should one follow this Jewish law, or known medical science?
4. If a member of the medical staff is concerned that after a 20-hour fast the treatment he gives will not be optimal, is it proper for him to eat and drink in measured quantities?
5. Why doesn’t the government provide food, even simple food, for the accompanying family?
Answer
I do not think anyone on earth knows where the Divine Presence rests. So there is no point in hair-splitting over all this. In any situation where there is established scientific knowledge that contradicts the assumptions of the Sages, one should follow it.
4. Yes. If the concern is significant and he has no way to split the shift.
5. Ask them. But this is just a decision about how to allocate the money. They can take more taxes and give to the families of patients, or take less taxes and the families will manage on their own. They could also have decided not to provide food even to the patients themselves, but only to treat them. And the families, or the patients themselves, would take care of the food.
Regarding 5, this is open to abuse, because a patient could bring random people and claim they are accompanying family members so that they would get a free meal from the hospital, and then they would repay him in some way afterward.