END-STAGE EUTHANASIA

We can see this combination of gifts most clearly in Maimonides who described his tasks as a physician to Ibn Tibbon , his translator , in a famous letter.” The authority of the rabbinate was easily extended to the medical realm, and, in the case of Maimonides , to the realm of philosophy, an area about which many of his contemporaries had serious reservations.'® The status of the physician and the willingness to follow the most recent medical technology was therefore more or less guaranteed from Talmudic times onward.

A residue of that trust remains to the present day, but it has diminished for two reasons: The general questioning of all authority and the shift of emphasis of the Jewish physician away from Jewish scholarship to medical knowledge alone. This is visible not only in matters of death and euthanasia but in other medical areas also.

Modern medical practitioners are usually specialists in a narrow field, and only rarely concern themselves with broader ethical questions. Furthermore, they often have only a vague interest in such questions. As the role of physicians has changed, their influence in"end of life" issues has diminished.

THE GOSES

Individuals who are dying have been placed into a special category by the Tradition called goses. This category has been used since Mishnaic times." The Traditional texts define what may and may not be done to this person as well as their rights.” None of these texts define the time limit of the goses precisely; that was done by Joshua Falk , a Polish Talmudist who died in 1614.>* He defined the period within three days of death basing himself on the statement of Joseph Caro :"When they say that we have seen your relative goses for three days, we consider him dead and should mourn him." The definition was in keeping with the medical knowledge of the period although that is difficult to establish for Eastern Europe .

94