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Israel Passes Organ Donation Law; Religious Controversy Remains

By Howard M. Friedman

According to Haaretz, Israel's Knesset last week enacted the country's first law on organ donations. Among other things, it outlaws the brokering of sales of organs. Organ donation has been controversial in Israel because many Orthodox rabbis have insisted that cardiac death, rather than the earlier brain death, defines the end of life under Jewish law. The new bill, however, has garnered support from Sephardi rabbinical leaders and those from the National Religious movement. Under the new law, a committee made up of rabbis, doctors and ethicists will be created to set guidelines and authorize doctors who will certify brain death. While Sephardi leaders (represented by the Shas Party) agree that new technology permits brain death to be used as the measure of the end of life, the Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism party led by Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv objects. YNet News reported that in ultra-Orthodox areas of Jerusalem, large posters opposing the new law charged that declaring a person dead on the basis of brain death amounts to murder. The paper says the posters reflect the views of "two of the most prominent rabbis belonging to the Lithuanian non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodox Jewish community." [Thanks to Religion and State in Israel for the lead.]

Full post as published by Religion Clause on April 02, 2008 (boomark / email).