Doctor and rabbi team up to offer answers on suffering

Combining medical experience and more than 2,500 years of Jewish traditions and teachings, cardiologist Joel Roffman and Rabbi Gordon Fuller have joined forces to offer meaning to those whose suffering has warped their outlook on life.

In “Coping with Adversity: Judaism’s Response to Illness and Other Life Struggles,” the two Dallas-area authors present 10 case studies about people struggling with physical ailments, emotional difficulties or a combination of the two.

Each chapter begins with the description of the individual’s problem and is followed by a Jewish response (in the form of quotes and paraphrases from texts) and the application of Jewish teachings (in the form of summary paragraphs).

The authors use wisdom from the Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, prayerbooks and other writings, such as Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, to demonstrate how Judaism helps people cope with illnesses and other challenges without letting their difficulties define them.

At its core, this book is about seeking spirituality, with the authors directing readers toward Jewish texts for answers and comfort. They want people to be able to look beyond their aches and pains and be grateful for the lives they have.

While a straightforward, easy read, and ideal for a lay audience seeking an introduction to the issues it raises, this slim book also can be simplistic and platitudinous.

For example, the authors explain the Jewish value that “life is a gift from God that must be protected at all costs.” For someone battling terminal cancer, they advise, “In addition to using our days to the fullest, we must all strive to live in such a way that we have no major regrets.”

Readers will want to proclaim “Duh!”

Sometimes the authors are more preachy than instructive: “If Jack were to assume more responsibility for his own care and acquire more healthy habits … he would be showing strength and self-control.”

Readers will want to proclaim, “Tell me something I don’t know!”

Most of the subjects in the case studies are worried — about their physical health, some troubled relationship or both. In her essay “Life Is Beautiful” (from “Heaven on Earth,” Targum Press, 2002), Elena Rosenblatt wrote that “worry is a personal spiritual barometer.” When we worry, she was suggesting, we are out of touch with the reality that we don’t always control what happens to us; that the world is not a perfect place; and that we must strive not for perfection but instead for happiness.

In this framework, Roffman and Fuller are essentially advising people, “Don’t worry, be happy.”

The authors also cite Daniel Gordis, who in his 1995 book “God Was Not in the Fire” asserted that Jewish study is about gaining spiritual insight — rather than accumulating knowledge — through understanding ancient texts. Doing so, Gordis wrote, is an “admission ticket” to spiritual dialogue.

Roffman and Fuller emphasize that ancient texts also had a lot to say about coping with adversity. In fact, they conclude with “Ten Command-ments of Coping with Adversity,” which could stand alone as a short magazine article.

Despite the authors’ obvious love affair with texts that infuses this book, it seems naïve to believe that ill middle-age and elderly people will change their outlook on life simply by reading traditional Jewish texts.

But the search for a spiritual self must start somewhere, and this book is as good a place as any.

“Coping with Adversity: Judaism’s Response to Illness and Other Life Struggles” by Dr. Joel A. Roffman and Rabbi Gordon A. Fuller (198 pages, Brown Books, $16)