Recently while renewing my driver's license, the DMV attendant looked surprised when I requested organ donor designation. She remarked how she thought being an organ donor is against the Jewish religion. I suppose my yarmulke (head covering) gave away the fact that I was Jewish, but this encounter did not surprise me given conversations I've had with many of my religious friends who will not become posthumous organ donors because they believe it would interfere with a religious duty to be buried intact.
Last week the NY Times reported that in response to a growing resistance by Haredi Jewish patients unwilling to consider donating organs but perfectly willing to accept organs from others, Israel has become the first country to implement a priority system:
[I]f two patients have identical medical needs for an organ transplant, priority will be given to the patient who has signed a donor card, or whose family member has donated an organ in the past.
According to OrganDonor.gov, in the U.S. alone, there are currently 112,674 people waiting for an organ, 18 people die each day waiting for an organ and one organ donor can save up to eight lives. Why wouldn't everyone want to be an organ donor? More specifically, why are many of my Jewish religious friends so wary of becoming posthumously dismembered? Why did Israel need to implement a priority system to encourage organ donation by Orthodox Jews? Orthodox Jews should be lining up to become organ donors, especially considering that under Jewish law saving a life supersedes concerns around desecration of the dead.
The Halachic Organ Donor Society (HOD) is an organization that encourages Jews to become organ donors in accordance with Jewish law. Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, hailed by Time Magazine as a "once-in-a-millennium scholar," arguably the foremost Talmudic scholar in the world today, supports the mission of the organization. Many other leading rabbis support HOD.
According to Bobby Berman, the director of HOD, the reason for the low rate of posthumous organ donation among religious Jews is that "[m]ost Jews are under the mistaken impression that traditional Jewish law requires a body be buried whole at all costs."
In realty, except for the prohibitions against illicit sexual relations, idol worship and murder, saving a life (pikuach nefesh) overrides every other commandment and prohibition in Jewish law. Saving a life is like saving an entire universe. Therefore it is understood that saving a life overrides any concerns regarding the proper treatment of a cadaver and therefore organ donation is a mitzvah (positive commandment) in Jewish law.
A student once asked a religious sage what lesson he could learn from an atheist. The sage answered: "If someone comes to you for help, you should never assume God will help him. Rather become an atheist for a moment by recognizing only you can help him."
On the issue of posthumous organ donation my religious friends could learn a lesson from my atheist friends. They should recognize that only they can help those in need of organ transplants.
The obsession with preserving a dead body by keeping it intact is historically based on Egyptian culture of mummifying. Judaism was a rejection of that culture. The ancient Egyptian's philosophical basis for mummifying and preserving the body was to insure proper passage into the afterlife, which ironically is the same concern my religious friends raise when refusing to become organ donors. Judaism was a rejection of Egypt's glorification of the body but rather a recognition that the body is just a vessel that houses the soul.
Atheists believe that when you are dead your lifeless body is just a cadaver. The notions of afterlife and proper burial are nothing more than delusions and rites that help us cope with death. The atheist has no basis to object to organ donation. If you can help someone in your death, then why not? The religious person on the other hand is sometimes fraught with questions about the afterlife and preserving the body for proper burial. Question that may unfortunately lead one to hesitate from becoming an organ donor.
I think all religions can and should agree that in this matter, a lesson can be learned from the atheists. Atheists ideology posits that our dead bodies will ultimately decay anyway, so why not use them for something positive? At the end of the day, there should be nothing more life affirming and religious than being able to save someone in your death.
Follow Eliyahu Federman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/elifederman
Not because there's anything wrong with me, mind you. Free of any/all blood borne diseases, fairly young and fit, no medication or risk to speak of.
But I am gay. So no saving up to 8 lives with *my* death.
**Atheism holds no belief that your body is just a cadaver, or that a "proper" burial, (whatever that is) is a delusion. Those are individualistic beliefs, and in no way are exclusive to the absence of Theistic beliefs.
Atheism is the linguistic label we use for the absence of Theistic Belief. Atheists, are people who are people that hold no Theistic belief.
In other words, Atheism in no way says anything about what a person DOES believe.
I have atheist friends who care about how they are buried and atheist friends who don't care.
...No, atheists believe that there is no God. While many atheists do believe as you stated, the idea that those beliefs are part of the definition is a vast overreach.
there is no learning new practices. Its all in the book
And in this case the book says that you are not to recieve benefit form a dead body.
Its called hana'at hamet
If you want to start using the dead for your benefit you really should renounce the book, Otherwise you are surely going to bring this god person's wrath upon you.
What a powerful idea, that God may use disbelief for good....
Excellent article. Thank you!
Unfortunately parents don't really think of this, especially when their child does die unexpectedly. While many medical practitioners might be thinking of this, its a tough thing to bring up to a greiving parent. It's horrible when a parent loses a child, parents are suppose to be buried by their children and not vice versa. But what a wonderful feeling to know that through your childs death several lives of other children were saved.
I doubt many people will read this, but if you do please keep this in mind.
By giving organs first to registered organ donors, an incentive is created for non-donors to become donors. More donors means fewer people dying waiting for transplants.
Donating organs is a great step for theists in their humanist development. Now imagine if theists would take all the wasted energy they expend to selfishly secure a place in an ill-defined heaven and put it toward improving the world.
I'd be thrilled to see "atheists" primarily defined by what they believe, as opposed to what they(we) don't believe. We're a diverse and contentious lot. But, generally, the universe we live and breathe in dwarfs the worldviews of "god believers". A simple post- or subscript would then suffice: "dismisses or ignores the existence of the supernatural".
Now, if we can just come up with a better word. "Atheist" is too reactionary. "Agnostic" seems apologetic and a dodge(although I still seem to prefer it). "Freethinker" is clunky.
Any ideas? .