The ethics bureau of the Israel Medical Association has issued an official
policy paper – to which members are supposed to adhere – stating the exclusion
of women is unacceptable.
The IMA was reacting to the fact that some
physicians – all IMA members – agreed to lecture along with leading rabbis at
Wednesday’s conference on gynecological issues of the Puah Institute for
Medicine and Halacha. The annual conference is aimed at the national religious
and haredi (ultra- Orthodox) sectors and attended by some 1,000 women and men
sitting side by side, separated by cloth dividers. But women speakers are not
invited.
The IMA bureau, headed by Hadassah University Medical Center
senior neurologist Prof. Avinoam Reches, said the bureau had reached a
consensus and stated that no physician may allow women to be excluded based on
their gender, whether in giving or receiving medical treatment, medical
publications, receipt of prizes, receiving medical positions or appearing at
medical conferences. Women must in no way be degraded, it said, stating
explicitly that “no physician may participate in any medical or scientific event
in which women – either patients or doctors – are excluded.”
Objections
were raised to the conference –to be held for the 12th time in the same format
as before – after Kadima MK Rachel Adatto, a trained gynecologist, learned that
women doctors had not been invited to speak from the dais. In support, eight of
the physicians on the schedule – due to alternate with rabbis – canceled their
participation on Sunday after identifying with Adatto’s
position.
However, Puah – which said it invites women speakers to other
events but wanted the Eda Haredit to participate in the annual conference –
maintained it had the last-minute agreement of other physicians to speak instead
of the boycotters.
It also said that because it always believed in unity
of Israel, it deeply regretted the division and argumentation that various
organizations are trying to lead in an ugly wave of “exclusion of
women.”
“Despite this, we received much encouragement form the public for
our standing for our halachic principles... and guarding modesty and giving
consideration to the huge number of of participants [that are expected],” the
institute said. “In addition to the screaming voices, we also heard sane voices
of women... who wanted compromise and conciliation and to hear the best
women lecturers in the field.”
As a result, the institute has decided to
plan a summer conference for women, with lectures by women. It will be held to
mark the anniversary of the death of Puah’s initiator, Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu,
to show that it “appreciates and does not scorn women.” The conference will be
held annually, it said.
When the IMA issued its position paper – hinting
at but not spelling out sanctions against doctors who violate the rule – the
institute consulted its lawyers, but did not say whether the would-be
replacements would indeed attend. If they too stayed away, the conference would
for the first time have only rabbis as speakers.
Senior doctors,
including secular specialists, have long been happy to be connected to Puah
because some of those who consult with veteran doctors on fertility and other
medical problems choose to pay significant fees through Sharap (private medical
services).
The IMA noted that at a public ceremony held last year in
Jerusalem under the auspices of Deputy Health Minister Ya’acov Litzman (a Gur
hassid and United Torah Judaism MK), a senior woman doctor and a nurse who won
prizes were not allowed to stand on the stage to receive them. This was later
explained by the presence of “leading rabbis” on the stage. The IMA said that a
few minutes before the ceremony, the women decided to forgo their receipt of the
prizes in person “even though they did not feel comfortable with this demand.”
In fact, one of the women pleaded with
The Jerusalem Post not to mention the
incident.
The ethics bureau said it had received complaints from women’s
organizations, Ben- Gurion University President Prof. Rivka Carmi (a
pediatrician and geneticist) and the Nurses’ Association ethics bureau over the
incident.
The IMA’s ethics bureau said it was induced to take action
because of the growing “broad and deep process of religious extremism” in
Israeli society and that when it related to doctors and the medical system, it
could not remain silent.
Asked to comment, Dr. Nahum Kovalski – a
modern Orthodox urologist and deputy director of TEREM, the network of urgent
care clinics based in Jerusalem, told the Post that he worried whether the
growing exclusion of women could lead to “women physicians being barred from
examining and treating men.”
“What would happen if a patient insists that
he does not want a female hospital resident in the operating or examination room
– or for that matter if a patient insisted they did not want an Arab to touch
him?” This has happened in TEREM, he said. “I closed the patient’s chart and
told him to leave.”
Kovalski said he was “willing to be flexible on
entertainment issues, but if women cannot sing at a ceremony in the Israel
Defense Forces, then no one should. And if women doctors cannot deliver a speech
at the Puah conference, then no one can deliver one. If haredim want to have a
conference inviting only haredi speakers, then I consider that a private matter.
But if the conference is open, to all comers both behind and in front of the
podium, then it has to be open to women and non- Jews and lesbians and anything
else you can think of,” Kovalski said.
Prof. Ephrat Levy-Lahad, a leading
medical geneticist at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center who is regularly
invited to speak to conferences around the world, told the Post that some years
ago, she had been invited to speak at the annual Puah conference, but a few days
before the conference, she received a call from the voluntary organization that
it “suddenly realized I was a woman and asked for a replacement. I agreed then,
because it had not yet become a public issue, and there would have been no use
in objecting.
Now, I am happy that the issue has been brought to the
forefront – even though I don’t like the confrontational way it has in the
current climate.
But that “doesn’t negate the importance of the issue
that some things have to fester before they come out. As we know, there is no
halachic prohibition to hear a woman speaker. In general, catering to extremist
demands just leads to more extremism.”
She said the Puah Institute has
since its founding in 1990, at the request of then-chief rabbi Eliyahu – who
then stipulated that only male doctors speak at the annual conference so any
sector can attend – always “walked the fine line. It made it possible for
medicine and Halacha to live together. Now it can take a position that
does not exclude women.”
The Health Ministry, which has in the past given
Puah subsidies but said it did not this year, didn’t comment.