42 Mark Washofsky

you, or me, or some other reader(s), is their plausibility: Can the analogy from the woodchopper text and the other traditional passages serve as the basis of a plausible discourse concerning medical treatment for the dying? Framed in this manner, the question is much easier to answer. We can say with confidence that the woodchopper analogy does work and it is plausible, provided that the audience to which it is addressed accepts the interpretive assumptions upon which it depends. Let’s take as our example Rabbi Jakobovits’s analogy, based on all three of the talmudic and halakhic texts discussed at the beginning of section III. Each of these texts affirms the correctness of an action that removes an impediment to the otherwise imminent death of a goses. Jakobovits wishes to draw an analogy from those texts and actions to the medical treatment of the goses. Although conceding that the texts speak not of medical but of“non-natural” impediments to death, Jakobovits argues that they teach that“as a matter of principle the spirit of the Torah is not utterly indifferent to the plea of the suffering.” On this point he bases his claim that truly medical impediments may also be removed, for even though used by physicians in fulfillment of the mitzvah of healing they can function at life’s final stage to prolong the same sort of suffering that the Torah wishes to bring to a speedy end. Does this analogy persuade every reader? Clearly not; Dr. Ya’akov Levy, for one, doesn’t accept it. Yet it is not difficult to imagine the existence of an interpretive community that would accept it, that would with Jakobovits find the analogy a plausible basis on which to argue that Jewish law permits the discontinuation of life-prolonging medical treatment for the terminally ill under certain circumstances. That audience would agree with Jakobovits precisely because it identifies with his interpretive assumption, the claim that“the spirit of the Torah ” would have us extend compassion to those who suffer from disease and who lie near death. To adopt the assumption, in other words, is to be persuaded of the analogy’s cogency. The same could be said of the writings of Rabinovitz, Waldenberg, Feinstein, and the CCAR Responsa Committee. In each case, analogies are built on interpretive assumptions that, persuasive or