The "Mishna Berura" is, without a doubt, Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan's greatest and most complex contribution to the canon of Orthodox Jewish Law; it is a singular work that synthesizes Jewish traditions, laws, and mores into a practical halakhic guide to daily religious life. For all of his traditionalism, Rabbi Kagan was an iconoclast, and the "Mishna Berura" broke from many of the traditional approaches of deciding halakhic directives. Instead, he favored studying, engaging, and asserting decisions in a nuanced, almost natural approach to how ethical people should live their daily lives consistent with Jewish law. Today, the "Mishna Berura" has gained widespread recognition and is considered authoritative by essentially all of contemporary Orthodox Jewry, a measure of greatness that few works of Halakha have attained. Michael J. Broyde and Ira Bedzow here investigate this seminal text and explore its background and decision-making process.

The social determinants of health framework has brought a recognition of the primary importance of social forces in determining population health. Research using this framework to understand the health and mortality impact of social, economic, and political conditions, however, has rarely included religious institutions and ties. We investigate a well-measured set of social and economic determinants along with several measures of religious participation as predictors of adult mortality. Respondents (N = 18,370) aged 50 and older to the Health and Retirement Study were interviewed in 2004 and followed for all-cause mortality to 2014. Exposure variables were religious attendance, importance, and affiliation. Other social determinants of health included gender, race/ethnicity, education, household income, and net worth measured at baseline. Confounders included physical and mental health. Health behaviors and social ties were included as potential explanatory variables. Cox proportional hazards regressions were adjusted for complex sample design. After adjustment for confounders, attendance at religious services had a dose-response relationship with mortality, such that respondents who attended frequently had a 40% lower hazard of mortality (HR = 0.60, 95% CI 0.53-0.68) compared with those who never attended. Those for whom religion was "very important" had a 4% higher hazard (HR = 1.04, 95% CI 1.01-1.07); religious affiliation was not associated with risk of mortality. Higher income and net worth were associated with a reduced hazard of mortality as were female gender, Latino ethnicity, and native birth. Religious participation is multi-faceted and shows both lower and higher hazards of mortality in an adult US sample in the context of a comprehensive set of other social and economic determinants of health.

Many HIV-positive women regard spirituality as an important part of their lives and spirituality may have positive impact on their health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Particularly among African American women with HIV, spirituality may serve as a cultural and psychological resource. This descriptive, crosssectional study examined associations between spiritual well-being (SWB) and its components, existential well-being (EWB) and religious well-being (RWB), and dimensions of HRQOL among a non-random sample of 118 African American HIV-positive women. A secondary analysis of data from two similar, NIH-funded studies: The Get Busy Living (GBL) Project and the KHARMA Project, was conducted. Baseline data on women from both studies were combined into one database and statistical analyses, including descriptive, correlation and hierarchical regression analyses, were conducted. Existential well-being was significantly positively (β =.74; p=.014) associated with the physical composite of HRQOL and accounted for a significant amount of unique variance (10.0%) beyond that explained by socio-demographic variables, religious well-being (RWB), HIV medication adherence, CD4 cell count and percentage, HIV viral load, and depressive symptoms. EWB was also significantly positively (β =.57; p=.024) associated with the mental health composite of HRQOL. Depressive symptomatology was also significantly inversely (β =.40; p=.004) associated with mental HRQOL. EWB accounted for a significant amount of additional variance (6.3%) beyond that explained by other variables. Spirituality is an important factor in the lives and quality of life of African American women and women living with HIV/AIDS. Further research is needed to examine relationships between spirituality and HRQOL among HIV-positive African American women.