Meir, 

Thanks!

Kendall Corbett

An unreasonable man (but my wife says that's redundant!)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950


-----Original Message-----
From: Meir Weiss [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2005 3:13 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: FW: Preserving Life

-----Original Message-----
From: Yosef [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2005 11:03
To: Yosef
Subject: Preserving Life


Dear Friends,

The attached article deals with the case of an American Catholic woman
who is in a coma, and whose husband has succeeded in having the hospital
remove the tubes which provide her with life-giving nutrition. He claims
that she wants to die; however, this claim is disputed by her parents
who say that she wants to live. Her parents have also said that even
though she is in a coma, she has shown signs of awareness. Her parents
are fighting to keep her alive, but so far they have not succeeded in
stopping the attempt to cause her death. Advocates for the disabled have
supported her right to live, and the New York Times reported on March
27th that the concerns of disabled Americans have caused some
progressive Democrats to join the struggle to keep her alive.

If I was able to communicate with her parents, I would let them know
that I, a Jewish teacher in Jerusalem, support their struggle to
preserve their daughter's life. She is in my prayers to the One Who gave
all of us the gift of life.

Shalom,
Yosef Ben Shlomo Hakohen


HUMAN BEING

by Rabbi Avi Shafran


Like the mental state of the incapacitated woman at its center, the
Schiavo Saga doesn't lend itself to a simple label. On one level it
exists as a family feud; on another, as a political football; and on yet
another as a cultural touchstone.

But regardless of the motivations of the husband or parents of Terri
Schiavo, who at this writing is dying of court-ordered dehydration,
regardless of the propriety of congressional involvement in the matter
and regardless of what reactions to the case might or might not say
about America as a society, the tumult has also been a teaching moment,
an opportunity for us all to ponder nothing less than the meaning of
life.  And Judaism, here as always, has much to teach.

Jewish religious law, or halacha, does not always insist that life be
maintained.  When, for instance, a person is in the state called
"goseis" - "moribund [and] in imminent danger of death," in Rabbi
J.David Bleich's words, Judaism forbids intercessions that will prolong
suffering, although the active removal of connected life-support systems
is another matter entirely.  And there are times when even a healthy
Jewish person is required by halacha to forfeit his or her life - most
famously, when preserving life would entail the performance of an act of
idol-worship, murder or sexual immorality.

However, when an individual is incapacitated, even severely, but clearly
alive, Judaism considers that life to possess no less value than that it
possessed before it was compromised.  Even a previously expressed desire
to be killed if in such a state, while of considerable import in
American law, carries no halachic weight at all.  Although there are
those who like to assert otherwise, the Jewish high ideal is not
autonomy but responsibility.

It is not hard to make a slippery slope case here.  In the Netherlands,
where patients in compromised states have been "mercy-killed" for years
by doctors, today 16-year-olds with "emotional pain" can legally enlist
medical help in committing suicide (a 15-year-old requires parental
consent).

And there is already at least scholarly slip-sliding in our own country,
like the pronouncements of renowned ethicist Professor Peter Singer of
Princeton, who not only advocates the killing of the severely disabled
and unconscious elderly but has made the case as well for the
dispatching of babies who are severely disabled.  Such children, he has
written, are "neither rational nor self-conscious" and so "the
principles that govern the wrongness of killing nonhuman animals... must
apply here, too."  Or, as he more bluntly puts it, "The life of a
newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog or a chimpanzee."


The Jewish view, though, of lives like Terry Schiavo's is, in the end,
not dependent on slopes or slippage. According to halacha, withholding
food and water from a person in a "persistent vegetative state" is, in
and of itself, a grave wrong.  Judaism invests human life - no matter
how limited it may seem - with inherent, infinite meaning.

It is not surprising that the incapacitated (or, as in Dutch law, even
the very despondent) are seen in our times as somehow less worthy of the
protections we offer more active people. Ours is a culture, after all,
where human worth is often measured by intellectual prowess or
mercantile skills - even by things like youth or physical beauty, or,
for that matter, the capacity to convincingly impersonate a real or
fictional character, or to strongly and accurately hit, kick or throw a
ball.

But the true value of men and women lies elsewhere entirely, in their
potential to do good things - to prepare, in fact, for an existence
beyond the one we know - and in their meaning to the rest of us.  When
that idea - self-evident to some, objectionable to others - is
internalized, a very different sensibility emerges.

Basketball or dancing may no longer be options in the confines of a
hospital bed, and even tending to one's most basic physical needs may be
impossible without help.  But are acts of sheer will - like forgiveness,
repentance, acceptance, commitment, love, or prayer - any harder to
accomplish, or any less meaningful?  Are they compromised in any way by
tangles of tubes and monitors?

Not even consciousness, at least as medically defined, need hinder what
humanly matters most.  We choose to take only what registers on an EEG
or acts of communication as evidence of being meaningfully conscious, of
the ability to think and choose, and then proceed to conclude that, in
the absence of such evidence, those abilities must no longer exist -
without a thought (at least a conscious one) of the immense tautology we
have embraced.

We do not know, cannot know, when a human being is truly incapacitated -
when his or her soul is no longer functioning.  Only when a heart has
stopped beating can we be certain that life in its truest sense has
ended.  And so hastening or abetting the death of even a physically or
psychologically compromised human being is, at least in the eyes of
Judaism, no less an abortion of meaningful life than gunning down a
healthy one.

The attitude regarding human life that characterizes decisions like the
one Terry Schaivo's husband made is, unfortunately, one toward which
much of contemporary Western culture is slouching.  It is spoken of by
sophisticates as "progressive," and indeed represents a progression of
sorts, away from the Jewish religious tradition that is the bedrock of
what we call morality and ethics.  The degree to which we manage to
check that progression will be the degree to which we demonstrate that
we truly understand what it means to be human.

C AM ECHAD RESOURCES

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of
America.]