Haredi Health Minister Moves To Block Heart Transplants

Rejecting brian stem death, Gur hasid and health minister Yaakov Litzman tries to block heart transplants and other cadaver organ transplants requiring brain stem death.

Buried in the last paragraph, after an extensive discussion of Litzman's attempt to fill hospitals with his cronies:

Litzman challenges Rabbinate's control over hospital rabbis nomination
Deputy health minister sets out to promote religious reform in hospitals; says will pursue it even if it means overriding Chief Rabbinate's authority
Kobi Nahshoni • Ynet

Is the Deputy Health Minister launching another reform? Knesset Member Yakov Litzman (United Torah Judaism) intends on appointing a number of rabbis and kashrut supervisors for hospitals across Israel due to problems with Jewish law and kosher impairments he asserts exist in the facilities.

Litzman is set on choosing on his own the various functionaries, an authority usually held by the Chief Rabbinate, and has recently been engaged in a dispute with Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar on that account.

The deputy health minister informed Rabbi Nissim Karelitz, a leading figure in the ultra-Orthodox community, of the matter in a conversation documented by the 'haredim' website.

Ynet learned that Litzman met last week with the chief rabbis and presented them with the issue. He requested the rabbinate to approve additional posts for rabbis and kashruth supervisors and demanded he appoint the candidates himself. Amar and Metzger have yet to approve the request.

Thursday night Litzman paid a visit to several leading rabbis and informed them of his plans. During the visit to Rabbi Karelitz's house one visitor said, "There's a problem of non-Kosher food at hospitals as well as problems regarding Shabbat and clerics (who are exposed to impurity of the dead – K.N.)

'I'll appoint them'
The deputy minister replied, "I'm going to bring that up, the rabbinate called and asked me. Rabbi Amar and Rabbi Metzger wanted to appoint their own rabbis. I said – No! Rabbis I appoint – not them. I'll provide them with rabbis and supervisors. No problem."
   
On the issue of kashrut he said hospitals will have food approved by the rabbinate, but not mehadrin food.

Litzman also referred to the issue of organ donation, one of the most controversial topics in the medicine-Jewish law dynamic and said, "Kidneys are simple and do not cause problems, heart (donation) I won’t allow since there is a problem as long as the heart is beating."

How Jewish Law Killed Yossi Raichik.

What's Mine is Mine and What's Yours is Mine: Haredim and Organ Donation.

Haredim and Organ Donation, Part 2.

Halachic Organ Donation Society.

Comments

[Yosef ben Matitya]

yippee, reb talibansky!
long live the dead, und screw the living!

[Michael Makovi]

Sigh...just what I needed to read after reading Feiglin's Where There are No Men over Shabbat...

(Feiglin's book was actually pretty hilarious, in a sardonic way. For example, the prosecution at Feiglin's sedition trial claimed that civil disobedience is invalid in a democracy! The appendix, by Israeli university lecturer Raisa (Re'aya) Epstein, shows how the Israeli Left still holds by totalitarian socialistic policial models, even as it has coopted Western democratic terminology.)

Who the hell is this crackpot that he thinks he can unilaterally ban organ donations? Jackass.

[Shlomo]

Does he realize that he is setting a bad precedent of the government appointing Rabbis against the wishes of the Rabbinate. What will happen when there is an anti-religious health minister

[Michael Makovi]

Shmarya, typo:

Haredi Health Minister Moves To Block HEAT Transplants

[Ben]

This is just a first small step.

I suggest to follow it up with the ban on Jewish non-Haredi doctors,since these sinners are not helping, but causing great spiritual damage to their Jewish patients.

Also it is is vitally important to prohibit use of electricity and computers on shabbat in the hospitals, since it can lead to shabbat violations.

[Yochanan Lavie]

You can't take a little piece of my heart
Apologies to Janice Joplin:

Didn't I make you feel like you were the only rabbi, well yeah,
An' didn't I keep nearly everything that a cadaver possibly can ?
Motik, you know I did!
And each time I tell myself that I, well I think I've had enough,
But I'm gonna show you, bubbeleh, if you need an organ, tough.

chorus:
I want you to come on, come on, come on, come on and forsake it,
You can't have a little piece of my heart now, bubbeleh, (break a..)
Break another little family's heart now, bubbeleh, nu. (come on)
Hey! You can't have a little piece of my heart now, bubbeleh, yeah.
You know I got it and I'll keep it for good
Oh yes indeed.

You're in the ICU looking bad, and bubbeleh,
Deep down in your heart I said you know that it ain't right,
Never never never never never never hear you when you cry at night.
Nu, you cry all the time!
And each time I tell myself that I, well you can't stand the pain,
But when I rot in kever, I'll sing it once again.

Chorus

Guitar break

chorus

(Waaaaahhh!)

final chorous

[Dr. Dave]

This goes back to the days when people were buried with digging implements in case they were buried alive.

This is ridiculous.

[Office of the Chief Rabbi]

Forward to Yesterday!

[alternative childcare]

Its the litvaks fighting Shas, since it was Ovadiah Yosef who took the most liberal position on transplants. They want to delegitimize all opposition.