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- From: Reuven Werber <reuw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: neveh-vc <neveh-vc@xxxxxxxxxxx>,Neveh-tech freelists <neveh-tech@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,Neveh-l freelists <neveh-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 11:58:00 +0200
----- Original Message -----
From: "Shalom Berger" <lookjed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <LOOKJED@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 10:09 AM
Subject: Lookjed Digest IV:62
> Topic in this issue:
>
> Organ donations (Borstein)
>
> *****************************************************
>
> Yesterday was the Shloshim (the 30 day period of morning) for Yoni Jesner,
> a student at Yeshivat Har Etzion who was killed in a terrorist attack just
> before Succot. The memorial service that took place at the Yeshiva led to
> the following email, and its posting is pushing off some of the other
> topics under discussion until later on this week.
>
> The issue of organ donations is particularly sensitive because it is a
> practical question, not just a theoretical one. Unfortunately, it is
> rarely discussed until there is a call for the possibility of donating
> organs, which often takes place while the family is dealing with the
> emotional trauma of a terrible accident or tragedy.
>
> The difficult issues involved apply to the recepient as well as to the
> donor. Please pay attention to the LATimes story that follows the query
> that describes the case of a family whose comittment to Jewish law has
> forced it to look to the larger Jewish community for assistance in
> locating an organ donor.
>
> Shalom
>
> *****************************************************
>
> Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 22:46:42 +0200
> From: Borstein <borstein@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: LOOKJED LIST <LOOKJED@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Organ donations
>
> Dear Shalom,
>
> In my attempt to somehow confront the tragic death of Yoni Jesner, I am
> dedicating some time and energy to exploring the Halachic parameters of
> organ donation.
>
> In an informal conversation with students who are studying in Israel for a
> year, I was reminded that many American high school students receive their
> drivers licenses at the age of 16 or 17. Along with their driver's
> license, they are asked if they would like to sign organ donor cards. I
> believe that "under age" drivers must have parental consent to fill out
> the card.
>
> The question of organ donation is clearly an issue that is raised in the
> minds of high school students. I am wondering how Jewish educators present
> the halachik parameters of organ donation to their students and if anyone
> on your list has developed a shiur or curriculum discussing this topic
> with students and their parents.
>
> There is a web-site http://www.hods.org which explores some of the
> issues.
>
> Shira Borstein
> Alon Shevut
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
>
> Related to the above post, I was recently directed to the following story.
> I share it with you as a resource to generate discussion in your
> classroom, and in the fervent hope that publicizing this story might bring
> an appropriate donor to the Avrech family.
> Shalom
>
>
> Religion; An Issue That Can Try Body and Soul; Medicine: Religious
> attitudes toward organ donations vary. The Catholic Church and Islamic
> groups see such acts as charity. Among Jews, a debate rages.
>
> The Los Angeles Times
> Oct 12, 2002
> TERESA WATANABE
>
> (Full Text:
> Copyright The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times 2002. All rights
reserved.
>
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-religtransplant12oct12.story?null)
>
> For Los Angeles screenwriter Robert Avrech, it was a wrenching choice
> between two of his greatest loves: his Orthodox Jewish faith and the life
> of his only son.
>
> His son, Ariel, is in critical need of a lung transplant. Avrech knew of a
> man who had just collapsed on a softball field and was in a coma. But
> Avrech, guided by his religious and moral compass, would not approach the
> family about a possible organ donation.
>
> It seemed "ghoulish," he said. He saw a slippery slope that would turn the
> desire for healing and life into a morbid wish for death to harvest
> organs. Wouldn't that make him no better than a Nazi?
>
> Even after the man eventually died, Avrech still declined to approach the
> family, for he says his Jewish values, particularly the need to show
> reverence to the body and respect for mourning, overrode even his own
> desperate desire to save his son's life.
>
> "It's a difficult situation for me, because I want to save Ariel's life,"
> Avrech said slowly, his voice weighted with emotion he does not try to
> hide. "But there are worse things than death, like leading an immoral
> life."
>
> Avrech's case underscores the sometimes wrenching dilemmas--and vast
> divergence of belief--that occur in the religious world over the issue of
> organ donations.
>
> All religions cherish the value of saving lives, but questions of when
> death begins and when donated organs may be used have raised a thicket of
> moral issues.
>
> In Japan, for instance, an ancient religious belief that cutting a corpse
> defiles the individual's spirit has severely hampered organ donations. Not
> until 1997 did the nation recognize brain death as legal death, becoming
> the last advanced industrial nation to move away from the idea that death
> occurs only when the heart and lungs cease working. In part, the
> hesitation stemmed from beliefs among some Buddhist schools of thought
> that transplants from the brain- dead would deprive a soul of
> reincarnation.
>
> The Roman Catholic Church, by contrast, has an "upbeat, positive attitude"
> toward organ donation, said James Walter, the O'Malley professor of
> bioethics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. At St. Francis
> Medical Center in Lynwood, he said, a pastoral care team broaches the
> subject of donations with families as early as the onset of brain death.
> As a result, the Roman Catholic hospital is one of the largest sources of
> organ donations in Los Angeles County, he said.
>
> The positive Catholic tradition stems from the 1940s, when theologians
> began promoting organ donations as an act of charity, "the willingness to
> sacrifice for the sake of other people," Walter said.
>
> Officials turned to the concept of charity to legitimize donations,
> because the church until then had frowned on mutilating the body except
> for the purpose of benefiting the greater whole-- amputating a gangrenous
> limb, for instance. That "principle of totality," sacrificing a part for
> the whole, could not be used to justify donations lest it open the door
> for totalitarian societies, for instance, to claim ownership of people's
> organs. So a new principle--personal acts of voluntary charity--had to be
> established, Walter said.
>
> Within Islam, organ donations are encouraged under the Koranic exhortation
> that "whoever gives life, it is like giving life to all human beings,"
> said Maher Hathout, a retired Muslim physician and member of the
> Kuwait-based Islamic Medical Conference. The group affirmed organ
> donations as an act of charity several years ago, he said, stipulating
> that organs were not to be bought and sold and that living donors could
> not endanger themselves in offering organs. He added that Muslim scholars
> have also affirmed the use of organs from pigs--a growing supply
> source--despite prohibitions against eating pork.
>
> In the Jewish world, debate rages between religious movements and even
> within them.
>
> "To many people the issue of organ donations is very emotion- laden," said
> Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, a professor of Jewish law at Loyola Law School
> in Los Angeles. "Unless you have a very, very definite cause, and usually
> an immediate need, Judaism attaches a high value on keeping the body
> intact."
>
> Adlerstein said that entrenched value explains why crews in Israel can be
> seen gathering up the body pieces of a victim killed in terrorist blasts,
> for instance, to ensure a proper burial. There is also a folkloric belief
> that the body should be intact for resurrection after death, he and others
> say.
>
> Those attitudes, however, appear to be changing in at least some sectors
> of Judaism. In 1995, legal scholars from the Conservative movement, the
> Jewish grouping with the highest number of U.S. synagogue members,
> approved a rabbinical ruling that not only declared organ donations
> permissible but said they were an obligation under Jewish law.
>
> "Saving a life takes precedence over the general principle that honor is
> due to the dead body," said Rabbi Elliot Dorff, an expert in bioethics at
> the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and author of "Matter of Life and
> Death: A Jewish Approach to Modern Medical Ethics." He added that organ
> donations in fact constitute honor to the dead body and give meaning to
> the death of loved ones for grieving families.
>
> Since the 1995 decision to deem organ donations a religious obligation,
> many Conservative temples have promoted them through sermons, fliers and
> distribution of donor cards, said Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, dean of the
> Zeigler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism.
>
> The issue, however, remains highly controversial within Orthodox Judaism.
> Rabbis from opposing camps continue to vociferously debate when death
> begins-- at the cessation of neurological functions, known as brain death,
> or when the heart and respiratory systems fail. The definition is key to
> organ donations, because doctors using heart-lung machines can keep those
> systems working a long time. Rabbis also disagree about whether there is
> consensus on the issue within Orthodoxy and about the scope of a late
> 1980s decision by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel that accepted brain death
> as the standard and paved the way for heart and liver transplants.
>
> Rabbi David Bleich, a professor of the Talmud at Yeshiva University in New
> York, said the vast majority of Orthodox scholars reject the brain-death
> standard. Traditional Jews cannot be party to pulling the plug on a
> patient before the heart and respiratory functions stop, he said. He
> added, however, that Orthodox Jews could receive organs extracted from
> brain-dead patients as long as they had nothing to do with obtaining them.
> Bleich also criticized the Chief Rabbinate's decision, saying it relied on
> "erroneous information" in making its ruling.
>
> That position provokes a withering rebuttal from Rabbi Moshe David
> Tendler, a professor of medical ethics and chairman of the biology
> department at the same Yeshiva University. He said Jews who reject brain
> death should not then be able to harvest organs from brain-dead patients,
> or they would be akin to "hit men" waiting for others to kill someone so
> they benefit. Tendler accepts brain death as the standard and maintains
> that organ donations are required by Judaism. He said that only
> "inconsequential scholars" disagree with him.
>
> As the debate rages, Ariel Avrech needs new lungs. At minimum, he needs
> donations of two lung lobes, which can be extracted in what medical
> experts regard as a relatively safe procedure.
>
> The 21-year-old rabbinical student suffers from pulmonary fibrosis, a
> severe scarring of the lungs caused by massive chemotherapy he has
> undergone since being diagnosed with a brain tumor at age 14. In May, his
> breathing functions deteriorated so rapidly that he was forced to return
> to Los Angeles from his rabbinical studies in Baltimore.
>
> Most of the time, Avrech is attached to an oxygen machine. He tires
> easily, and can no longer devote his customary nine hours a day to his
> beloved Talmud study--managing only an hour at most these days. The
> soft-spoken, self-contained student, who wears a black velvet yarmulke and
> white tassels as a reminder of the commandments, spends most of his time
> now in prayer, with doctors or receiving a stream of phone calls and
> visits from well-wishers.
>
> Homebound, Avrech also serves as a culinary guinea pig for his father, who
> has learned to cook for his son--aspiring to move from George Foreman
> grill items to fancy concoctions like Portobello Napoleon. They spend
> hours watching DVDs together--most recently, howling over a documentary on
> a Thai Elvis impersonator. Avrech says his son, who has endured his
> illnesses without complaint, has become his hero.
>
> "I don't know if this is God's intention, but Ariel and I know each other
> better and love each other more than ever before," said the elder Avrech,
> his eyes filling with tears, "I wish Ariel weren't ill, but I'm going to
> take advantage of it."
>
> The family's Orthodox community has rallied around them. Members of
> Avrech's synagogue, Young Israel of Century City, have brought food, gifts
> and even daily services to his home during the High Holy Days. The Jewish
> Healthcare Foundation has distributed an e-mail on Avrech's plight
> throughout the Americas, Europe, Brazil and Israel. The appeal, a
> "Life-Saving Search for a Living Lobar Lung Transplant Donor," says the
> suitable donor would be an adult male, age 18-50, 5- foot-8 or taller,
> blood type A or O, a nonsmoker and non-asthmatic in good health.
>
> So far, more than 20 potential donors have stepped forth. But few, if any,
> appear to meet the qualifications--including a New York man, 75, who had
> donated a kidney before and was now eager to offer Avrech a lung lobe. As
> time ticks by, the family is reaching out to the broader community.
>
> For his part, Ariel Avrech says his ordeal simply represents the unique
> challenges God presents everyone, challenges that have helped him grow. He
> focuses not on his pain but the beauty and godliness his illness has
> elicited.
>
> "People have displayed tremendous courage, bravery and generosity, and
> they wouldn't do this if I weren't sick," he said. "I see all of the
> beautiful things coming out in this world because of me."
>
> *
>
> Those wishing to help can contact the Jewish Healthcare Foundation (Bikur
> Cholim) at (323) 852-1900.
>
>
>
>
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