Q&A on Organ Donation

Greetings and blessings. Without any doubt, it is absolutely forbidden to disconnect a patient from life support machines, even if they are terminally ill. This applies even for the purpose of donating their organs to save the lives of others. One life cannot be pushed aside for another.

 

 

Hello. In principle, there is no problem with organ donation after death when the deceased's wishes in this matter are absolutely clear. However, this depends on many complex details: Is the person needing the transplant present before us? What constitutes a life-threatening necessity? What is defined as death, from which point organs can be taken without violating the status of the patient as living? And many other difficult questions that cannot be detailed here. In any case, anyone wishing to express their desire to donate their organs must consult with a qualified rabbinic authority and ask about all the relevant details.

 

Greetings and blessings. The great Torah luminaries of our generation, like Rabbi Elyashiv and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, along with all the true Torah scholars, believe that one should not sign an ADI card under any circumstances. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's opinion did not change even in the last year when he ruled more leniently regarding the moment of determining death.

 

I don't know which "rabbis" you're referring to who permitted signing an ADI card. The position of the Chief Rabbinate is that as long as doctors oppose rabbinic supervision in this matter - one should not sign the card. Even those few rabbis who were lenient on this issue stipulated adding to the signature "with the approval of Rabbi..." and since the law still does not recognize this condition - one should not sign the card. If the government wanted many to sign the card with the approval of Orthodox rabbis - they would have to agree to the presence of an accepted rabbi at all stages of deliberation, up to determining the moment of death. As long as they do not agree on this matter - the blame for the relative few signatories falls solely on government decision-makers.

And a few points for clarification: a. A person does not have ownership over their body to sell or give organs during their lifetime. b. A person does not have ownership over their body to sell or give organs after death. c. Family members do not have ownership over their deceased relative's body to sell their organs. d. When we have before us a person who has died a final death, not just brain death, and we can save lives with the deceased's organs, it is permissible in principle to take organs from the deceased to save lives, as nothing stands in the way of saving life. e. In such a case, there is no need for permission from the deceased during their lifetime, or from their family after death, to permit taking the organs. f. There is no permission to take organs to ease life, such as taking corneas for transplants to improve vision, and certainly not for research purposes. g. The permission to take organs after death is only after the halachic definition of death, not as secular law determines. h. The halachic authorities have agreed among themselves about the moment of determining death, and in such matters the law is that as long as there is disagreement among the authorities and there is doubt whether the person before us is still defined as living - they should not be touched, even for the purpose of saving the lives of other patients, as one life cannot be pushed aside for another. i. One should not sign any cards, because a person is not the owner of their body, and when it is permissible to take organs there is no need for their consent. Also, because the signer of such cards abandons their body to legal definitions of determining death, not necessarily according to the halachic determination of death. Likewise, one cannot place complete trust in doctors who are not Torah observant that they will indeed wait until the death of the entire brain stem, when in their view waiting is not moral.

 

A person with morality that does not derive solely from the Torah may tomorrow decide that it is also permissible to do this a few hours before death. In contrast, divine morality has not changed, and its foundations are fixed exactly like unchanging laws of nature. So it is clear that Jewish law does not oppose saving lives with organs of the deceased, but as long as the person has not died in a final way - it is forbidden to touch them.

 

Greetings. After bringing the dead back to life in the valley of Dura, the prophet Ezekiel prophesied by God's word (Ezekiel 37:11-12): "Then He said to me, 'Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They indeed say, "Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!" Therefore prophesy and say to them, "Thus says the Lord God: Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel."' And according to the commentators, Ezekiel was referring exactly to the subject of your question. As the Mabit explained in his book Beit Elohim (Gate of Foundations): "Or the matter of the bones refers to the whole house of Israel... to teach about those who died from diseases of organs on which life depends, and they are like the terminally ill.

 

Just as with the dry bones, the flesh will rise and skin will form over them from above - so with these, the body will return to its nature and return to its youthful days, as it was in the days of youth, when they could live a long time, and the organs on which the soul depends will be healed, so that the vital soul can dwell in them. And those whose flesh was consumed and whose bones dried up and who rotted and were burned and were dung on the face of the earth - God's hand is not too short to save them, to strengthen their bones, to gather the decay of their bones and the dust of their burning, so that their body will return to what it was, as He did with those whom Ezekiel revived, as it is written, 'So the bones came together, bone to bone,' and it is easy for Him, blessed be He, to bring close what is distant at the ends of the earth just as easily as bringing close what is already near Him."

 

Hello. I am copying a section from the response of Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg z"l, rabbi of Shaare Zedek Hospital, what he wrote on this topic in his book Tzitz Eliezer, Part 14, Section 84: "...We therefore have before us only the problem in its second part (after completely forbidding taking an organ from a deceased Jew), namely when the treating physician already has the eye of the deceased from the eye bank according to order, whether it is permissible for him to treat the transplantation of the cornea into the body of the living person who needs it to heal his eyes or eye. And in this it seems according to Halacha, that if he doesn't know whether it is from a deceased Jew or from a deceased non-Jew, then there is room to permit the transplantation because of doubt, because then we can combine another doubt that perhaps after all the skin and also the cornea that has no blood vessels in it, is only forbidden by rabbinic decree, and we have a double doubt to permit.

 

And even when it is known that it is from a deceased Jew, there is also room to argue in cases where there is otherwise a danger to the patient's eye (assuming that there was definitely consent from the deceased during their lifetime, and combined in such a case of after the fact, with what some permit when there is consent of the deceased for this), and not only when there is a danger of blindness in both eyes, in which case there is room to permit this on the grounds of pikuach nefesh (saving life). And as we find similarly to this from Rabbi Shlomo Kluger z"l in Chochmat Shlomo on Orach Chaim 328:46 who argued to permit even the desecration of Shabbat for this in the case of danger of blindness, since otherwise he would be completely blind and exempt from all commandments and would cease from Torah study, etc., as mentioned there, but even where the danger is of blindness in only one eye there is also room to permit, and as we find in the Shach in Yoreh Deah 157:3, and Pri Megadim in Orach Chaim 328:7, who believe that in danger to a limb it is certainly permissible to transgress a negative commandment of the Torah in order to save the limb, and that only on the severe Shabbat is it forbidden to violate a Torah prohibition because of danger to a limb, as mentioned there [and this is not like the words of Chochmat Shlomo there who equates other prohibitions with desecrating Shabbat, see there]. And when there is no danger of blindness, one should not permit the transplantation in cases where it is clear that it is from a deceased Jew, as mentioned above in section 1 in the name of Even Shoham responsa."