Jewish Ideas and Beliefs

Despite some legal and ethical concerns, single women should not be prohibited from becoming pregnant with donor sperm.

Traditional rabbinic authorities forbid instigating the death of a terminally ill patient.

The major codes of Jewish law forbid actions that hasten death, but some allow the removal of impediments to death.

The Torah prohibits murder, and the Talmud maintains the prohibition on active killing, even with the terminally ill.

Contemporary Jewish thinkers have expressed a wide range of opinions about the permissibility and parameters of euthanasia.

According to some Hasidic thinkers, human free will is an illusion; God causes all human actions.

The idea that God controls the world, determining the trajectory and details of its history, is strong in Judaism and is one of the theological issues that contributes to the Jewish problem of free will.

The belief in a messiah, a person who will redeem the people Israel and usher in a more perfect era, is has long been considered a core plank of Jewish belief.

In the Middle Ages, Jewish thinkers struggled to reconcile God's knowledge of the future with human choice.

Biblical and rabbinic sources stress both divine determinism and human freedom.