Rabbi Gerald I. Wolpe died on Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Rabbi Wolpe was one of the nation’s most prominent rabbis as well as a bioethicist.
Rabbi Wolpe’s “second career”, as it is sometimes described, was in bioethics, which focused on medical education and ethical caregiving, says the Philadelphia Inquirer, the latter of which he faced in his own life. His involvement in bioethics was wide and varied from consulting on the television drama “Grey’s Anatomy” to teaching medical students to serving as an advisor to a wide range of scholarly, public and social institutions.
Rabbi Wolpe is survived by his wife, four sons, who include AJOB associate editor Paul Root Wolpe, and eight grandchildren. He is certain to be missed not only by his family but by all of those who knew him.
Summer Johnson, PhD