PIP: This article discusses some basic tenets of Judaism as they apply to 3 health care delivery issues: death, abortion, and triage. The most pervasive value in Judaism is the utter sanctity of life and an obligation to prevent disease. Orthodox Jewish thought requires the following criteria and standards of death: unresponsive coma, absence of spontaneous respiration and movement, absence of reflexes, absence of pupillary response to light, absence of oculocephalic response, substance screening, and radioisotope angiography to differentiate true brain death from other causes. General endorsement of euthanasia is rejected, but, in cases where these criteria have been met, further medical support systems can be discontinued. Jewish law generally prohibits abortion, except in cases where pregnancy poses a threat to the woman's life. However, those from the conservative denomination accept abortion in cases where there is a probability of severe physical deformities or profound retardation. Those from the reform movement recognize psychological factors as being as important as physical factors in the determination of the appropriateness of abortion; moreover, they stress that the decision regarding abortion should rest with the pregnant woman and her family. Triage, the allocation of health care on the basis of priority, is generally rejected in favor of serving people on a first-need basis.