Woodchopper Revisited 37

those texts, which bid us to heal the sick and to preserve life, demand that in fulfilling these duties we apply in indiscriminate fashion every available technological device to prolong the death of a dying person. Medical science has made immeasurable advances during recent times, and we are thankful for that fact. Doctors today are able to prevent and to cure disease, to offer hope to the sick and disabled to an extent that past generations could scarcely imagine. Yet there comes a point in time when all the technologies, the chemicals, the surgeries, and the machines which comprise the lifesaving arsenal of modern medicine become counterproductive, a point when all that medical science can effectively do for a patient is to indefinitely delay his inevitable death. This is not pikuach nefesh; this is not medicine; this is not what physicians, as agents of healing, are supposed to do. There is neither meaning nor purpose in maintaining these treatments. They are salt on the tongue and the sound of a woodchopper[emphasis added-MW]. They are not refu’ah[medicine; healing]; no commandments are fulfilled thereby. Yes, life is a precious thing, and every moment of it should be regarded as God 's gift. But we are not required under any reading of the tradition that makes sense to us to buy additional moments of life undertaking useless and pointless medical treatment.

This rhetorically charged passage serves much the same purpose as R. Moshe Feinstein ’s use of the terms“obvious” and“certain” in his argument. The Reform responsum, no less than the Orthodox posek, wishes to invoke a community of interpretation, to identify the readers who are most likely to find its words persuasive and compelling. Where Feinstein ’s community consisted of those who hold the sanctity of even the shortest span of life to be of the ultimate value, the community envisioned by this responsum comprises those“who cannot and do not believe” that Torah demands that we undertake every conceivable technological measure to delay the otherwise