Observance-aware telehealth, in development
Health guides built around the Jewish calendar
You've explained your religious constraints to a doctor who didn't understand them. You shouldn't have to. Refuah publishes the label facts and the named sources, plans around fast days, and leaves every ruling to your rav.
What Refuah is today: free, cited guides and a free waitlist. Nothing is prescribed, nothing is sold, no care is delivered, and no religious ruling is ever made here. Care opens only after the conditions described below are real.
The problem, stated plainly
The system never learned your calendar or your questions
Two questions follow observant patients through every pharmacy and every clinic: what is actually in this medicine, and what happens on a fast day. Both have documented answers. Prescribing information lists every inactive ingredient of the exact formulation.[4] The annual Passover lists categorize US products by brand name.[5] The halachic literature discusses medicine on fast days by name, in print.[3]
What does not exist is a care model that puts those answers in one place, plans treatment around the calendar instead of against it, and knows which questions are not its to answer. A clinician who needs the context explained twice is not a system failure you caused. It is the gap this project exists to close.
The division of roles is the design: Refuah publishes the facts with citations, your clinician owns the medical risk, and your rav makes the religious call. Each lane stays in its lane, on every page and in every planned product.
We put the label facts in your hands, build the plan around your calendar, and your rav makes the call with a clinician who doesn't need the context explained twice.
That sentence is the whole brand. Notice what it does not claim: no ruling, no shortcut past your own rav, no promise about what a clinician would decide. Getting the facts and the calendar right is a real thing to fix. The rest was never ours to promise.
7.5M
US Jews in Pew's 2020 estimate, 5.8 million adults and 1.8 million children.[2]
17% vs 3%
share of US Jews ages 18 to 29 who self-identify as Orthodox, against those 65 and older. The readers who keep the calendar skew young.[2]
Sept 20
sundown on September 20, 2026: Yom Kippur begins. A care plan for this community has to know that date before it matters.[1]
On the label
the semaglutide prescribing information already discloses a peptide backbone produced by yeast fermentation and every inactive ingredient. The facts exist. Nobody hands them to the patient.[4]
Read this site correctly
Facts from us. Rulings from your rav. Risk with your clinician.
Nothing here will ever tell you a medicine is kosher, or that a fast is safe for you, or what your obligation is. Those sentences do not belong to a website. The OU's own Passover guidance opens by telling readers to exercise extreme caution and consult their doctor and rabbi before deciding not to take a medicine.[5] That ordering, life and medicine first, your own authorities always, is the standard this whole site is written to.
The halachic literature itself is not squeamish about this: Peninei Halakha writes that only danger to life exempts a person from the Yom Kippur fast precisely because preserving life overrides the commandments.[3] A health brand for this community that pressured anyone toward fasting, or toward skipping medicine, would deserve to fail. This one is built so it cannot.
Who this is written for
- People who keep the calendar, in any community and at any level of observance, and the people who care for them. Communities differ, poskim differ, and these pages never assume yours.
- People who take a daily medicine, or love someone who does, and want the ingredient facts and the named positions before the conversation with their rav, not after it.
- People who want the citation, not the claim. Every figure here links to its public source, and pages say plainly when no figure exists.
Before anything opens
The condition on launching Refuah
The condition on launching
Refuah launches care only with the community at the table
Three things have to be real before Refuah treats anyone: a rav who will go over every fasting and medication page and be credited on it by name, an endocrinologist or a doctor of pharmacy co-signing every fasting protocol, and community clinical leadership holding real equity. All three, not one. That search is open right now, and none of the three is filled.
This is not a values statement bolted onto a finished company. A brand that tells this audience the standard care model did not understand their calendar, and then runs a general prescriber network behind a Hebrew name, is doing the same thing again. This audience notices, and it should.
So the honest state of things is this: today Refuah is a set of free cited guides and a waitlist. There is no rav here, no clinician, no advisory board, and no named team. When those names are real, they will appear on this site with their own standing and their own equity, and not before.
Where we stand, plainly
What we will and will not claim
No rulings, ever
Refuah publishes what labels, annual lists and named halachic literature say, with citations. Whether a medicine is acceptable for you is your rav's call, and whether a fast is safe for you is your clinician's. Neither call will ever be made on this site.
No invented anything
No invented praise, no member counts, no stock photographs, no illustrated patients. Every figure on this site carries a citation to a public source, listed at the bottom of the page it appears on.
No names until the names are real
There is no rav attached to this project, no clinical team, and no advisory board. You will not find a name, a title or a set of credentials here, because there is nobody to put there yet, and pretending otherwise would end this brand.
No promises we cannot operate
Matching you with a clinician who shares your background or speaks your language is not a built capability, so we do not promise it. And nothing here will ever encourage fasting against medical risk: the sources themselves put life first.
Sources cited on this page
- [1] Hebcal, Yom Kippur 2026, begins at sundown on Sunday, 20 September 2026 and ends at nightfall on Monday, 21 September 2026. https://www.hebcal.com/holidays/yom-kippur-2026. Accessed 2026-08-09.
- [2] Pew Research Center, Jewish Americans in 2020: population estimate of approximately 7.5 million, and the Orthodox self-identification split by age. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/. Accessed 2026-08-09.
- [3] Peninei Halakha, The Infirm are Exempt from Fasting: fast-day exemptions, the chronic-medicine passage, and the principle that preservation of human life overrides the commandments. https://ph.yhb.org.il/en/05-07-07/. Accessed 2026-08-09.
- [4] DailyMed, Ozempic (semaglutide) prescribing information: peptide backbone produced by yeast fermentation, and the inactive ingredient lists. https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/lookup.cfm?setid=adec4fd2-6858-4c99-91d4-531f5f2a2d79. Accessed 2026-08-09.
- [5] OU Kosher, Kosher for Passover medicine lists and guidelines, including the caution to consult your doctor and rabbi before deciding not to take a medicine. https://oukosher.org/passover/medicine-guidelines/. Accessed 2026-08-09.
Positions attributed here to Peninei Halakha or to OU Kosher are those sources' published statements, quoted for orientation, not rulings by this site. Your own rav may hold differently, and that is exactly why every page routes the personal question there.
Guides now, care only after the gate
The guides are free. The waitlist is free too.
Joining the waitlist is not a purchase and not a signup for care. It sets the order people are contacted in if Refuah launches, and launch waits on a rav, a clinical co-signer, and community leadership, all still unfilled.