The Doctor and the Rabbi: Bringing God into the Sick Room

Ronald Andiman, Cedars-Sinai Hospital, and Bill Cutter will be in dialogue based on the work they have accomplished re: speech, silence and theology, and the role of listening. Is it really God we are hearing when we listen well? We will be inviting participation from rabbinic colleagues by proposing that there are analogies between what happens in the doctor's office and what happens in the rabbi's life. We plan to concentrate on the indirect effects of careful listening and suspending one's own sense of the patient's-client's needs, while (nonetheless) relying on the inevitable framing we do based on our past experiences of similar needs. Jerome Groopman's article "God on the Brain" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/09/17/god-on-the-brain can be helpful in thinking about this session. (New Yorker Magazine, Sept. 17, 2001--available on line.) With Bill Cutter, Ron Andiman