The director of Baylor ISR’s Program on Religion and Population Health (PRPH), Dr. Jeff Levin, has a strong professional interest in the contribution of Jewish religious belief and practice to personal and population health and well-being.  The intersection of Judaism and health is an important focus of work for PRPH, and is principally engaged through two ongoing projects:

1. Global research on patterns and predictors of Jewish health and well-being:  Through access to various national and international data sources, such as the Gallup World Poll and other probability surveys, a series of analyses is documenting the general well-being of Jewish respondents in the United States, in Israel, and in the non-U.S. diaspora.  This work will be instrumental in constructing a health and well-being profile of the world’s Jewish population, as well as in extending ongoing research on religious influences on physical and mental health to this religious group.

2. Kalsman Roundtable on Judaism and Health Research :  Dr. Levin serves as Scientific Chair of the Kalsman Roundtable, a project of the Kalsman Institute on Judaism and Health (KIJH) located at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), in Los Angeles.  Funded through a two-year grant from the John Templeton Foundation (JTF), the Kalsman Roundtable is tasked with advancing scholarly understanding of the relationship between Jewish spirituality and health, including the impact of Jewish religious and spiritual practice, Jewish cultural life, and Jewish communal experiences on the overall quality of life of the American Jewish community.  As this work unfolds, PRPH will be responsible for scientific oversight of the varied scholarly products to be produced by the Roundtable, which will be administered at KIJH under the leadership of Michele F. Prince, Director of KIJH.  This collaboration with HUC-JIR, added to ISR’s ongoing partnerships with Jewish Theological Seminary and the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, serves to strengthen ISR’s growing role as a significant contributor to basic and applied social and policy research related to American Judaism.

3. Archive of Judaism and Health Research: A principal product of the Kalsman Roundtable project is the creation of an online archive of scholarship on Judaism, health and healing.  The Archive (AJHR) will be the largest web-based collection of published and unpublished scholarship on this subject.  It will provide “one-stop-shopping” for researchers, academics, rabbis, and Jewish professionals and laypeople with interest in topics at the intersection of Judaism and health.

For more information on KIJH, visit http://www.huc.edu/kalsman/.

For more information on JTF, visit http://www.templeton.org/.

For more information on AJHR, visit http://www.ajhr.org/.