Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

In First, Pope Francis Names Rabbis To Pontifical Academy Of Life

(JTA) — Two rabbis, one from Israel and one from Argentina, were appointed by Pope Francis to the Pontifical Academy of Life, the first time rabbis have been invited to be members of the academy.

Pope Francis appointed 45 new ordinary members and five honorary members to the academy’s advisory body, the Vatican announced last week.

Israeli rabbi Avraham Steinberg, who won the Israel Prize in 1999 for original rabbinic literature, and Argentinean rabbi Fernando Szlajen were designated on June 13 as members of the institution that “exists for the promotion and defense of human life, especially regarding bioethics as it regards Christian morality.”

Rabbi Steinberg is the author of “The Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics,” for which he was awarded the Israel Prize in 1999. He is the director of the Medical Ethics Unit of the Shaare Tzedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, and director of the Editorial Committee of the Talmudic Encyclopedia.

Rabbi Szlajen, who is from Argentina, the birth country of Pope Francis, is the director of the Department of Culture for the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires and a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Buenos Aires.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.