How Judaism Differs in Life-Death Issues

by leavingwt 3 Replies latest jw friends

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  leavingwt

  A recent article in the NJ Jewish Standard. . .

  The boy was 17 years old and he urgently needed an operation.

  As a Jehovah’s Witness, however, he would rather die than receive a blood transfusion, believing it to be a transgression of the biblical prohibition against eating blood. His parents, also pious members of the religious group, agreed with him.

  The doctors of the UCLA Medical Center, however, would not agree to perform a blood-free operation. They were not willing to risk losing a patient’s life because of his religious beliefs.

  As a member of the medical center’s ethics committee, Rabbi Elliot Dorff was among those consulted.

  Dorff, Conservative Judaism’s leading expert on medical ethics and chairman of the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS), says that under halachah, or Jewish law, the case would be open-and-shut.

  First, halachah does not consider a blood transfusion to be at all akin to the forbidden act of eating blood. Secondly, even eating blood would be permitted under Jewish law to save a life.

  American law, however, presented the UCLA Medical Center with a more complicated picture. An adult has the legal right to refuse medical treatment. The patient, however, was a minor. And parents do not have the right to refuse medical treatment on behalf of their children.

  This case was resolved by sending the patient to a hospital, affiliated with Jehovah’s Witnesses, that was able to offer a blood-free operation — and would be willing to let the patient die if necessary.

  . . .

  http://www.jstandard.com/content/item/how_judaism_differs_in_life-death_issues/22840
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  designs

  Good article.
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  Dogpatch

  BTTT
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  Leolaia

  We may wonder if many, few, or none accepted the force of the analogy between Jesus' disciples plucking corn out of hunger on the Sabbath and David's hungry company breaking the Torah by eating the bread of the presence, which only the priests, by law, can eat. But one thing is clear: Jesus does not perceive himself here as an antinomian. Not only does he affirm that the Sabbath is divinely ordainted (2:27: "The sabbath was made for humankind"), but also Jewish law in its wisdom certainly knew that Sabbath observance might be the lesser of two goods and so, in the rabbinic terminology, one might "override" or "supersede" the Sabbath law (cf. m. Pesah 6:1-2). This principle allowed the Maccabeans to fight on the Sabbath (See 1 Macc 2:39-41; Josephus, J.W. 2.517; Ant. 12.276-77). It allowed the Mishnah to rule that a physician can attend a patient if that patient's life is in danger (See Mek. on Exod 31:12; m. Yoma 8:6; b. 'Abod. Zar. 27b; b. Sanh. 74a: One may transgress various commandments to save one's life, except for idolatry, incest, and murder. Keeping the Sabbath is not on the lists. Cf. b. Yoma 85a), and further that, if the eighth day after birth is a Sabbath, circumcision should be performed anyway....To return to the problem of the Sabbath, what of Mark 3:1-6? Here Jesus heals a man simply by saying: "Stretch out your hand." That some would have regarded this as work is implicit in what follows, and the Mishnah certainly equates practicing medicine with work (So m. Shabb. 14:3-4; cf. t. Shabb. 12:8-14). Jesus, furthermore, does not deny the equation. Yet this scarcely means that he is, in principle, on the side of Sabbath-breaking. He rather appeals to compassion as raising an exception to the rule of Sabbath law: "Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?" This does not satisfy the Pharisees and Herodians in Mark 3. For even if they accept the principle that "whenever there is doubt whether life is in danger, this overrides the Sabbath" (m. Yoma 8:6), the man with the lame hand is not near death. Surely Jesus could, one supposes, wait another day (cf. Luke 13:14). Still, as already indicated, the idea that humanitarian concern can interfere with Sabbath observance was comfortably at home in Judaism. Pentateuchal Sabbath legislation already reflects compassion for unfortunates (Exod 23:12; Deut 5:14-15). Some rabbis thought it permissible to carry the sick on the Sabbath. 4Q265 frag. 2 1.7-8 allows one to throw a garment to a man who has fallen into water (cf. b Shabb. 128b). In Eccl. Rab. 9:7, Abba Tahnah exalts mercy over Sabbath observance by carrying a man afflicted with boils into the city; while his conscience bothers him, a bat qol endorses his action and invalidates his guilt. Probably few if any would have disputed the principle that human need can stretch the Sabbath rules, only perhaps its applicability in the case of Mark 3. (Dale Alison, Resurrecting Jesus, 2005, pp. 161-163).