Doctor Rosner is a medical ethicist and helped to create the community educational program in Michigan. Rabbi Freedman has served as a consultant for other communities exploring the possibilities for setting up Jewish hospice services in locations such as Baltimore, Maryland and Manhattan, New York. Metropolitan Jewish Geriatric Center in Brooklyn, New York and Van Dyke Hospital in Lakewood, New Jersey have already set up Jewish hospices based on the Michigan model, with Rabbi Freedman s assistance. According to Keren Traub of the Gevuras Yarden Organization in Baltimore, the initial proposal for this service has been made because the Baltimore Jewish community is one with persons who could benefit from Jewish Hospice Services. A home setting is familiar and bound to be the least disturbing to a patient, a person, who is dying.
Hospice care is provided in that familiar setting, and it is necessary.
With the many fine medical institutions in the state of Maryland, there is still a dearth of options for people who want a more compassionate approach than the routinized, mechanized care for the dying that is to be found in the average medical institution. According to Larry Ziffer of Baltimore s Associated Jewish Charities, Rabbi Freedman is a consummate professional in the planning and execution of Jewish Hospice Care. A 1996 meeting between them has resulted in initial and strategic movements up to and including February 1998, regarding the setting up of a local Jewish Hospice program. We have specific goals and overwhelming community and official response to the idea of hospice in this community. We are at the penultimate stage of setting up Jewish Hospice Services in the image of Rabbi Freedman s model.