Here's the scenario from which he argues that religious leaders need to decide whether medical advancements that keep people alive long past their ability to fully function change the rules of the game:
Any takers?Take, for example, the dilemma of a healthy spouse — let’s call her Sarah — caring for her husband, who is restricted to an Alzheimer’s facility. Sarah must deal with the extended institutionalization of her spouse. She cares for him with love and dignity, but also feels that he is not really her spouse.
How does Sarah handle the reality that, while on a brief respite from the demands of care giving, she met someone with whom she became friendly and intimate? She cannot discuss this with her children, or even with her circle of friends.
So Sarah asks her rabbi, “Tell me, rabbi, am I doing something wrong? I love and care for my husband. But I am a healthy 70-year-old woman, who goes to work, enjoys life and has needs. Is it wrong? Am I supposed to just put my needs on hold?”
Such a scenario is not at all fiction. I have heard versions of this story over and over again, across the country.
These real-life situations should prompt us to reinterpret the concept of adultery.
2 comments:
I am all for redefining relationships. However, this one seems to perhaps have a simpler "gut" answer.
Marriage, like all voluntary relationships are based upon two separate entities entering into an agreement. The Jewish wedding itself is a contractual agreement. Yet, when one partner is no longer competent enough to be part of a contract. The contract itself should dissolve.
It seems to me that the same way that marriage ends because of death it ends because of dramatic medical changes, reflective with the current medical science. When someone goes into a persistent vegetative state or reaches a certain point of dementia. In a very real sense, the person who you married no longer is there.
In other words, til inconvenience do we part. Reminds me of my elementary-school-best-friend Rhonda. We were going to different schoolsin the 7th grade. Needing reassurance, I asked if we'd still be friends. "I'll let you know when I get tired of you." I never called her again.
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