DETERMINING DEATH IN JEWISH LAW
In the Talmud , we are told that if you see your neighbor drowning, mauled by beasts or attacked by robbers, you are bound to save the person--even at the cost of your own life.”
It would seem that kal vehomer(a fortiori) reasoning may resolve the question before us: How much the more must the organ of a brain dead person be donated to save a human life.”
Notes
* Dedicated to the memory of Sergeant Jonathan Boyden, who fell in battle in Lebanon, July, 1993 1.(Judge) M. Beisky, Supreme Court Criminal Appeal 341/82, Nathan Blacker v. the State of Israel, Supreme Court Verdicts, vol. 41, part 1, 1987. Among the many legal precedents supporting this verdict, the jurist quotes(on page 28) a similar case:"The death resulted not from turning off the respirator, but from the defendant’s acts, which undeniably caused the victim’s brain to die. Having caused’brain death’, the defendant was properly found criminally responsible for homicide."(State of New Jersey v. Watson 467 A 2d., 1983, p. 591. 2. Mishnah Yoma 8:6
. b. Yoma 5a beraita
. Rashi, ad loc., s.v. ad hotmo 5. b. Yoma 85a
Laws of Shabbat 2:19
7. Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayim 329.4
8."Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death .” JAMA, Chicago , 1968, v. 205, p. 337.
9. Walter Jacob , Contemporary American Responsa, ed., New York , 1987, no. 78, pp. 130-131. 10. Hartzofe, Tel Aviv , 21 August, 1992
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