Woodchopper Revisited 31

Waldenberg therefore applies the woodchopper analogy to the contemporary medical scene. He does so, even though the respirator is quite different technologically from the supernatural factors that Isserles mentions because it resembles them in terms of function: like the woodchopper and the salt, the respirator at this moment is an entirely external force, pushing life into the patient from the outside but unable to help him recover the power to live on his own.” His “interpretive assumption” the general theoretical approach that justifies the analogy and that determines the similarities in the cases to be more important than their differences— is that God has decreed that the goses has reached the“time to die” and that God does not wish him to continue life under these circumstances. Waldenberg’s repeated reference to“the will of God ” is therefore a theological claim on behalf of his interpretive assumption. His rhetoric appeals to his religious reader’s presumed agreement that not everything in the world is subject to human control and that some medical measures, though materially within our power, lie beyond the sphere of legitimate human authority.

5. R. Moshe Feinstein . Responding in 1982 to a series of questions on medical ethics submitted by two physicians, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein takes up the following issue: Is it permissible to refrain from administering life-extending treatment to some patients?” He begins by reciting the story of the death of R. Yehudah HaNasi(B. Ketubot 104a).“The Talmud tells this story,” he writes,“in order to teach that there are times, when a person is suffering and when neither medicine nor prayer suffices to restore him to health, that one must pray for his death, as did Rabbi ’s maidservant.” Feinstein notes that he derives this conclusion from the 14"century R. Nissim Gerondi, who makes the point in his commentary to B. Nedarim 40a. Feinstein thereupon makes the analogy to the contemporary medical situation: In the absence of a medical remedy that will enable the patient to survive his illness(efshar lo sheyichyeh) and when the patient is suffering terrible pain(yisurin), physicians should not provide treatment that can do