year autopsy crisis in Israel resolved! THE JEWISH BSERVER in this issue ... Postmortem on the Autopsy Crisis in Israel, Rabbi Mendel Weinbach .......•................................ 3 Measuring Up to the Challenge (adaptations of addresses by members of the Moelzes Gedolei Ha Torah/Council of Torah Sages of Agudath Israel of America delivered at the recent national convention) Taking Matters to Heart, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ...•.... 9 THE JEWISH OBSERVER (ISSN Finding the Permanent in the Transitory, Rabbi Yaakov 0021-6615) is published monthly, Kamenetzky • .•......•.........................•..... 10 except July and August, by the Agudath Israel of America, 5 Recognizing the Loss/Putting Ideas to Work, Rabbi Beekman Street, New York, N.Y. Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman ............................ 16 10038. Second class postage paid at New York, N.Y. Subscription Toward Meeting Current Needs, Rabbi Shneur Kotler ... 18 $12.00 per year; two years, $21.00; three years, S28.00; out­ Ozrov, a Dynasty of "Kedusha," Rabbi Yaakov Feitman ...•.. 27 side of the United States, Sl3.00 per year. Single copy, Sl.50 A Walk in the Rain, Hillel Goldberg ...........•........... 40 Printed in the U.S.A. Postscripts Scholarship or Charity? ............................ 42 RAee1 NlssoN WoLPIN "Mishnayos" ...................................... 43 Editor Letters to the Editor Editorial Board World Gathering of Holocaust Survivors/"Darkness" On.. ERNST BonENHEJMER Greece and Philosophy!Mishnayos/" Dear Chairman Mornh"!etc. ..••......•............•...........••... 44 RABBI NATHAN BULMAN RABBI JOSEPH ELIAS JOSEPH fRIEDENSON RABBI MOSHE SHERER M1ct-IAEl ROTHSCHILD Business Manager THE JEWISH OasERVER does not assume responsibility for the Kashrus of any product or ser­ Convention photographs courtesy of Frank Storch (unless indicated otherwise) vice advertised in its pages. JAN, 1981, VOL XV, NO. 3 ,.,, t1¥"'t1:£ ~ n"''Cl\"l::i. .. l"\;\ll') "lfll:'~ ";'\\ \'"'" l\"lf\ i .. ,~ ;n.,!\<Ul"::i.' The Jewish Observer I January, 1981 3 ' Now that the Knesset has passed the Amendment to tion requirements. In more than a quarter of the afore­ the Anatomy and Pathology Law (December 2, 1980) it mentioned violations, there was either no certificate at is time for a post-mortem study of the autopsy crisis all, or a certificate signed by only one doctor. which was a blight on Israeli society for three decades. The State Comptroller's 1969 report vindicatd the This study must deal not only with the bitter battles in arguments that the religious community hc1d been voic­ the Knesset that resulted in this historic legislative ing for years. The report recorded that in 1965, 55 breakthrough, but also with the broader significance of percent of the patients who died in the hospitals investi­ this victory for Torah Jewry in Israel. gated were subjected to postmortems. (For compari­ When the Knesset, in the wee hours of Erev Cha­ son's sake, the U.S. Department of Health, Education nukah, voted into la\v the amendment that gave a per­ and Welfare reported that the average autopsy percen .. son, along with his family, jurisdiction over his body, it tage in the U.S.A. was 19.1%) It also added weight to climaxed a struggle waged by Tor ah Jewry for close to the suspicion long harbored by the religious community thirty years. This campaign was slow in starting because that even in the cases \vhere certificates contained the of the nature of the Kulturknmpf that characterized necessary three signatures, the form was usually µre• religious-secular relations in the early days of state­ signed, so as to circumvent the reguli'ltions. hood. In those days, the Torah community was com­ But more than anything else, the report demon­ pletely involved in fighting life-and-death issues such as strated that the government had absolutely no interest military service for yeshiva students, woman's conscrip­ in enforcing the law. Not only had the Minister of tion into the army, and the subversion of religious Health failed to establish any specific agency for its immigrant youngsters as typified by the "Yaldei Tehe­ enforcement, he had practiced benign neglect in regard ran" scandal. It could hardly muster the energies for to its offenders. Although the law prescribed a pun­ battles on the comparatively less pressing religious ishment of three years imprisonment, or a fine, or issues, which the secular majority in the Knesset both, not a single offender was ever brought to justice repeatedly brushed aside with the argument of "status despite the fact that there \Vere thousands of knovvn quo." violations throughout the years The Dismal Record Scattershot Combat With no law to restrict them and no public opinion to What could the religious community do in the face of deter them, pathologists, encouraged (some claim) by such circumstances? If the surviving family 2!Cted quickly fat research grants, were busy making Israel the free enough to alarm an Agudath Israel representative, or world's champion of autopsies, with some of its hospi­ one of the Community action groups, above all the V1111d tals achieving an autopsy rate of close to 90 percent of all L'f{11grnns K 'rod HC1'C1da111 (Committee for the Preservation deaths' The Anatomy and Pathology Law passed by the of Human Dignity), their intervention could usually Knesset in 1953 was supposed to quell dissatisfaction prevent an autopsy. But how often did the L1n1ily learn with the existing situation by allowing the deceased's of the death too late to take any action' Perhaps the family the right to object to an autopsy. But it also most sensational case of the hospital dissecting before allowed a physician to "operate on a body to ascertain informing the family vvas that of the wife of a pron1i­ the cause of death or to use a part thereof for the nent member of the Agudas Harabonin1 of An1erica curative treatment of a person if it has been confirmed who had moved to Israel with her family. Back in 1966, by a certificate signed by three physicians ... that the she became ill and eventually passed atvay on a ShC1bho~ operation serves one of the said purposes." This turned morning in Jerusalem's most prestigious hospit'11. Sev­ out to be nothing less than legitimization of wholesale enteen hours passd before the family was informed, autopsies. while in the interim the Chevra Kadisha (burial society) Although the Regulations on Anatomy and Pathol­ was prevented from entering the morgue. Despite ogy issued in 1954 meticulously spelled out which phy­ assurances by the hospital that nothing had transrired, sicians were authorized to permit post-mortem dissec­ it was discovered during the tnhnrn (pre-burial ritual tions, the rules were generally ignored by the hospitals. cleansing of the body), that an autopsy had been per­ Back in the late Sixties the State Comptroller of the formed on Shabbos and organs had been removed. State of Israel investigated how four government hospi­ Even the efforts of a religious Je\v to forestall an tals and the Municipal Hospital of Tel Aviv were comp­ unwarranted autopsy by demanding a promise from lying with the law. He found that in 424 of the 1756 doctors that he would not be dissected after death postmortems carried out in 1967, the certification proved ineffective. In 1966, the Director-General of the requirements were not met. In 1968, matters were even Health Ministry issued an order to all hospitals prohibit­ worse: of 1590 postmortems, 450 cases lacked certifica- ing doctors to accept any conditions or nlake any prom­ Rabbi Weinbach is dean of Ohr Somnyach lnsfilulions, lsrae/'s /argrsf rn111plr:r ises and directing the doctors to refuse adn1ission to of residence and outrenc/1 edurntional farililirs. patients insisting on such conditions. 4 The Jev.1ish Observer I January, 1981 The Parliamentary Front many reasons why Agudath Israel had refused to accept The answer to this issue obviously lay in new legisla­ the invitations of the Labor governments to join their tion. But this was an uphill battle for a tiny party forever coalitions was Labor's unwillingness to support revised in the opposition. It meant a combination of parliamen­ autopsy legislation. The Likud, however, agreed­ tary motions and questions, mass demonstrations and among the 42 points of the accord-to amend the Anat­ public information efforts. Again and again the Knesset omy and Pathology Law, and the stage was set for members of Agudath Israel arose in the Knesset to introducing the legislation which would effectively give present the grisly details of the autopsy situation in an the family the power it deserved in preventing autopsies. effort to shock the nation's lawmakers into an apprecia­ Three years of persistent efforts were needed to tion of the human rights as well as the religious aspect bring about the amendment. Hundreds of meetings of the crisis: that the law was more liberal than that of were held with officials of the Health and Justice Minis­ any other Western country, violating as it did basic tries to formulate dozens upon dozens of drafts for the Western concepts of the individual's dominion over his amendment. Each time the draft would come back from own body; that it was unwarranted as far as medical the various departments in these ministries with sug­ needs were concerned; that its restrictions were more gestions for ''improvement," which were often thinly often honored in the breach than enforced; that it disguised attempts to bureaucratically strangle it or at offended religious sensibilities in the way that no com­ least emasculate it. parable laws on the books of Western democracies did, Progress finally began when Moshe Nissim suc­ and actually kept frightened patients away from hospi­ ceeded Shmuel Tamir as Justice Minister. Son of the tals. [As a case in point, a New York Tinzes report that the former Rishon LeT zion Rabbi Yitzchak Nissim, the new Lutzker Rav (Rabbi Zalmen Sorotzkin ?">d refused to minister clearly indicated his sympathy for the proposed enter a hospital during his final illness for fear of an legislation by pushing it past all the obstacles erected by autopsy offered a glimpse of the danger to life presented obstructionist bureaucrats.