J. David Bleich

Rabbi Judah David Bleich is a respected authority on Jewish law and ethics, especially Jewish medical ethics. Born in New York in 1936, he studied at Torah Vada'as and Beis Medrash Elyon, as well as in the kollel in Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim of Radun. He received smicha from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and Rabbi Mendel Zaks in 1957 and was a close student of the late Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky. Rabbi Bleich holds a bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College, a masters from Columbia University, and a PhD from New York University. Bleich is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a fellow of the Academy of Jewish Philosophy and a postdoctoral fellow at the Hastings Center. He advises the United States government on issues of ethics from a Jewish Orthodox perspective, is Rosh Kollel in the Yadin Yadin kollel (Institute for the Study of Jewish Monetary Law) at Yeshiva University and Rav of Yorkville synagogue