Not every halakhic authority has accepted the cessation of breathing as the sole criterion for death.
Rabbi Zvi Ashkenazi, known as Hakham Zvi of Lemberg,(16601718) declared that assigning the sign of life to the nostrils alone was too simplistic:"Breathing going from the heart through the lung is recognizable only as long as the heart is alive. It is very clear that there is no respiration except when there is life in the heart." In his view, the heart-beat must serve as an additional criterion for the cessation of life."
Rabbi Moshe Schreiber, the famed Hatam Sofer of Pressburg , Hungary ,(1762-1839) stated:"The measure and determination of death were given as Law to Moses on Sinai(halakhah lemosheh misinai)"and established three criteria for determining death:
L. The person has been lying still like an inanimate stone, 2. There is no pulse whatsoever 3
And respiration has ceased, (This means) he is dead and his burial should not be delayed.
The decisor conjectures that"this determination of death might have been a tradition of the first naturalists(mesorat mibaalei tiviim harishonim), on whom our rabbinic sages relied in many matters of Torah , but forgotten by today’s physicians."*> Unfortunately, Sofer does not reveal to us the identity of these"first naturalists”.
Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof , contrasts the traditional and scientific approaches to determining death. He underlines Moses Sofer ’s defense of the Jewish custom of immediate burial, on the same day. This custom relies on traditional judgement, embodied in the knowledge of the Hevra Qadishah(Burial Society), constituting sufficient proof of death. Freehof claims that modern scientific opinions are much stricter than Jewish tradition in determining when a potential donor is actually dead.”