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Friday May 18, 2001

Organ donor advocates clarify halachah for life-saving mitzvah

DAVID SACHS
Jewish Renaissance Media

They are trying to convince more Jews to sign organ donor cards -- a pledge to donate body parts for transplantation at the time of death.

Many Jews are under the misconception that organ harvesting is a mutilation of the body, which is forbidden under Jewish law. Even Jews like Kahn -- fortunate enough to receive a life-saving organ from a living family member -- are concerned about the Jewish reluctance to donate body parts at death.

"We're trying to educate as many people as possible right now," she said. "It's hard because there's so many people who need organs and there's just a lack of people. If I didn't get my father or someone else to donate, I would have had to wait for years on a list for a cadaver kidney."

Kahn, 27, of suburban Detroit, had just celebrated her first wedding anniversary when her father, a Detroit attorney, gave her one of his two kidneys. Since then, Kahn and her family have made it a mission to spread the message through acquaintances and social outreach programs that it's OK for Jews to donate body parts at death.

Their efforts are needed because Jews hold many misconceptions about whether it's religiously acceptable to donate body parts at the time of death.

Only a small percentage of Jews do agree to pledge their organs. A Reform temple adult education class, for instance, reacted in a predictably negative manner when quizzed about Jewish organ donation at death.

"Everyone thought it wasn't permissible because it was a desecration of the body," said David Techner, a suburban Detroit Jewish funeral director, who had posed the question. "Most of the time, people are quite surprised to learn that it's actually a wonderful mitzvah."

Detroit-area pediatrician Jeffrey Devries knows the need for organ donations all too well. His wife, Sheri, needed a pair of lungs to reverse adult-onset cystic fibrosis. The Devries waited months for a cadaver donation that never came, while her condition deteriorated.

Finally, in desperation, Devries and Sheri's brother, Steve Traison, each donated a lung in an experimental procedure, in an unsuccessful attempt to save her life.

"I read in a medical journal that if everybody who could donate an organ at the time of death did, there wouldn't be any waiting lists for any of the organ transplants," said Devries.

The major misconception among Jews is that removal of organs for transplant would violate the Jewish prohibition against mutilation of the deceased. But the profound mitzvah of saving a life, pikuach nefesh, supersedes this restriction in all streams of Judaism.

"Just as I am not allowed to transgress Shabbos by doing work, if I could save a life thereby, I do work -- or eat on Yom Kippur to save a life," said Rabbi E.B. "Bunny" Freedman, a Detroit-area Jewish hospice chaplain. "For removing something from a body to save a life, I can do the same thing."

While all streams of Judaism permit Jews to donate organs at death, there is controversy among the Orthodox regarding whether "brain death," a legally and medically recognized standard that facilitates the harvesting of most organs, also comports with the halachic definition of death.

"Deciding which transplants and organ donations are halachically sanctioned is a very nuanced, complex and case-specific endeavor," said Freedman.

He recommends those considering donation consult a rabbi, preferably one schooled in that sub-specialty of halachah. Although the prevailing Orthodox position opposes the harvesting of organs that require a "brain-dead" donor, there are halachic experts who disagree.

Erwin Posner, a suburban Detroit pharmacist, was grateful when a donated liver was found to save his daughter-in-law, after she had a near-fatal reaction to an over-the-counter drug. But he became shocked when he learned that Jews weren't encouraged to be organ donors at death.

His daughter-in-law's experience inspired him to form an informational Web site for Orthodox followers of halachah to get resources on rabbis who approved of the procedure: http://imjl.com/hoda/hoda links.htm

There is no limit to the life-saving joy that donated organs can bring about, family members say. Nine-year-old Julia Strecher of Ann Arbor was on the verge of death when a donated heart became available from a Grand Rapids, boy who was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Julia had previously received a heart transplant when she was a year old.

"I feel really strongly that if you can give someone a chance of life, you are totally duty-bound to do it," said the girl's mother, Jeri Rosenberg. "Without a transplant, Julia couldn't have lived long at all."

Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, a Conservative proponent of organ donation, writes that 60 percent of Americans consent to donating organs when asked, "but only about 5 percent of Orthodox Jews do so, and the record of Conservative and Reform Jews is not much better." His 1998 book, "Matters of Life and Death: A Jewish Approach to Modern Medical Ethics," notes the same reluctance in Israel.

Dale Mintz, national director of women's health for Hadassah in New York, said, "We know that Jews are less likely to give because of what the hospitals tell us in the communities. "In Israel, there are a thousand people waiting for donated organs. In the U.S., 61,000. That's a lot of people. If every person who passed away and was able to give gave, there would be no waiting lists."

Hadassah offers chapters across the country an educational program on organ donation to shatter both the myths and the ice.

"Organ donation is where cancer was 20 years ago," Mintz said. "Our program is to get people talking about it."

Shelli Liebman Dorfman of Jewish Renaissance Media contributed to this report.

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