Draft:The Heart Knows its Own Bitterness (Yoma 83a)

The Heart Knows its Own Bitterness is a sugya (pericope) in the Babylonian Talmud's tractate Yoma, which hinges on the interpretation of a Biblical verse. A snippet of the verse, "The Heart Knows its Own Bitterness" (Proverbs 14:10), identifies both the sugya and a principle derived from the sugya for Jewish ethics and law. For centuries, the sugya has been relevant to deliberations over real or perceived health risks, especially when facing religious obligations such as fasting on Yom Kippur. In contemporary Jewish medical ethics, the sugya is used to gauge patient autonomy in relation to expert medical opinion. In an more expansive move, progressive (non-Orthodox) Jews have invoked this principle and its sugya to adjust rabbinic law for gay, transgender, and disabled Jewish lives.