Joining the circle of organ donors

It is hard to overstate the importance of the law on determining brain and respiratory death, which the Knesset passed this week with the Shas faction's backing. However, despite Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's support, the burst of optimism that characterized the public reactions seems unfounded - so long as there exists an entire sector that does not join the social treaty and national solidarity that forms the basis of this law. Experts suggest that if the populations that currently refuse to donate (but never refuse, and in every area, to receive donations) join the circle of organ donors, hundreds of people each year will get a new lease of life.

"This is a special time for Israel, in which we are giving priority to God's image in man and the duty under Jewish law to save lives," Rabbi Yuval Sherlow wrote on Ynet, Yedioth Ahronoth's Web site, following the law's passage. Rabbi Sherlow, like other rabbis who belong to the Tzohar association, carries an organ donor card.

An ultra-Orthodox rabbi who has the ear of the supreme adjudicator for the Haredim, Rabbi Shalom Elyashiv, says the Haredim cannot rely on the rabbis sitting on the committee that will determine brain death. And let's say, I asked him, that for the sake of the commandment to save lives, the Shas rabbis and the national-religious rabbis consent that the three rabbis on the committee will be ultra-Orthodox, will you participate in the committee? His evasive reply ("You will never agree to let only Haredim rule on this matter") implies that they are not prepared to assume responsibility.

Another question: "Is it possible to transplant in the body of a Haredi person an organ from a person whose death was determined not according to the Haredi criteria?"

"Certainly," the man replied without hesitation.

"But he received an organ from a person who in your view was murdered."

"That has nothing to do with it," the Haredi rabbi answered. "The murder already took place. So why shouldn't the organs of the murder victim save the life of a Haredi person?"

No one will propose that Haredim cannot receive organ transplants because they are opposed to organ donation. The Haredim know this and therefore continue to get out of donating, among other things because of the belief that the dead should be buried with all their organs intact, and then, when the Messiah comes, they will be resurrected with their bodies intact. The Haredi rabbi did not reply to what will happen at the resurrection to those incomplete people whose donated organs went to save the lives of Haredim.

The new law provides an opportunity, at least in the area of saving lives, to put the Haredim in their place. Rabbi Yosef and the national-religious rabbis, as well as the publics they represent, must, and can, be assertive this time and bring pressure to bear on the Haredim. For if they are allowed to carry on as they have, other sectors will also continue evading organ donation - superstition and primeval fears exist in nearly every sector of the population.

The number of lives saved through transplants depends, to no small degree, on the norms that religious and civil leaders manage to instill. Since this is one of the few norms that enjoys a near-unanimous consensus, instilling it must not be delayed for even an hour.