GEN697 Jewish sources specify four duties with regard to physical and mental health: To adopt helpful practices and avoid harmful ones; to seek to heal those who are sick; to balance at the same time health care costs with those of other communal needs; and to visit the sick. Some of these apply to society as a whole, and others apply to individuals. The Duty to Maintain Health. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Before we address our duty to attend to the sick, it is important to note that we have a prior duty to try and avoid illness in the first place. In modern society, people think that they should engage in healthy habits for all kinds of pragmatic reasons. Proper diet, exercise, hygiene, and sleep are, for Americans in particular, ways to feel good, look good, be popular, avoid illness, get a good job, and live a long life. If follows that if I do not want any or all of these things, I have the perfect right to do whatever I want, as long as I do not directly injure others. I may not smoke indoors (at least in certain places) because we now know that secondhand smoke harms others, but I may smoke outdoors. I may not drink and drive, but as long as I do not get behind the wheel of a car, I may get drunk whenever I want. I may eat a half-gallon of ice cream every night of the week even if that will mean that I will weigh five hundred pounds in no time. It is my body, and I may do whatever I want with it. In stark contrast, the Jewish tradition makes it a duty to take care of our bodies, whether we want to or not. That is, in part, based on the Jewish presumption that God owns our bodies as well as everything else on earth: “Mark, the heavens to their uttermost reaches belong to the Lord your God, the earth and all that is on it!” Deuteronomy 10:14 As Owner of our bodies, God can and does insist that we take care of them. It is as if you were renting an apartment: you have fair use of the apartment during your lease, but you may not destroy or damage it, because it is not yours. Similarly, while suicide is not punished through depriving your heirs of your inheritance or in any other way in any of the fifty states in the United States (although assisted suicide is punishable everywhere but in Oregon), in Jewish law we do not have the right to commit suicide or assist in one. [this verse]. DORFFWITO 144-6