J. David Bleich

Who is J. David Bleich?

J. David Bleich is an authority on Jewish law and ethics, including Jewish medical ethics. He is rabbi of Cong. B'nei Jehuda. He is a professor of Talmud at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, an affiliate of Yeshiva University, as well as head of its postgraduate institute for the study of Talmudic jurisprudence and family law. At Yeshiva University, he holds the Herbert and Florence Tenzer Chair in Jewish Law and Ethics and also teaches at the Cardozo Law School. He is married to Dr. Judith Bleich, a historian of 19th-century European Jewry.

Bleich brings an Orthodox perspective to governmental deliberations on bioethics. For example, in 1988 he served on the NIH Human Fetal Tissue Transplantation Research Panel and testified before Congress on the Pain Relief Promotion Act. In 1984, New York's Mario Cuomo appointed Bleich to the Governor’s Commission on Life and the Law.