Rabbis Interfere To Stop Organ Donation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I still laugh when I recall the episode of All in the Family where Archie accidentally agrees to donate his organs.\u00a0 Because he\u2019s such a selfish oaf, he\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/01\/rabbis-interfere-to-stop-organ-donation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rabbis Interfere To Stop Organ Donation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I still laugh when I recall the episode of All in the Family where Archie accidentally agrees to donate his organs.\u00a0 Because he\u2019s such a selfish oaf, he\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/01\/rabbis-interfere-to-stop-organ-donation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Atheist Rabbi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-01-03T19:35:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeffrey L. 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{"id":583,"date":"2011-01-03T19:35:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-03T19:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/01\/rabbis-interfere-to-stop-organ-donation.html"},"modified":"2011-01-03T19:35:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-03T19:35:00","slug":"rabbis-interfere-to-stop-organ-donation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/01\/rabbis-interfere-to-stop-organ-donation.html","title":{"rendered":"Rabbis Interfere To Stop Organ Donation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I still laugh when I recall the episode of All in the Family<\/i> where Archie accidentally agrees to donate his organs.\u00a0 Because he\u2019s such a selfish oaf, he regrets it and lets on that he can\u2019t do it due to religious reasons.\u00a0 Hilariously, his boss wonders if it\u2019s because he\u2019s an Orthodox Jew.<\/p>\n

Avi Cohen was not an Orthodox Jew.\u00a0 He was a world-famous Israeli soccer star who died last week in a motorcycle accident<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When physicians declared him brain dead, the hospital approached his family about organ donation.\u00a0 Cohen had signed an organ donor card and, at least according to the Sephardic rabbinical establishment, brain death is death (and Cohen was Sephardi).\u00a0 Recipients in need were standing by.<\/p>\n

Not content to leave well enough alone, other Haredi rabbis who oppose this well accepted definition of death arrived to persuade the family that a miracle was at hand.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, no miracle occurred.\u00a0 Cohen finally died enough to qualify for burial, but by then donation was out of the question.<\/p>\n

What kind of sick self-assurance would possess these men to insert themselves into the most agonizing moment in a family\u2019s life?\u00a0 How could they bring themselves to convince a family to contradict their loved one\u2019s decision?<\/p>\n

Situations like this are quite common in Israel where there is a very low rate of donation compared with the rest of the western world.\u00a0 The main reasons for refusal are the brain death controversy and the taboo (not necessarily justified by Jewish law) on being buried without all your body parts.\u00a0 The former is based upon the Talmud\u2019s antiquated approach to determining death.\u00a0 The latter on the desire to have all of one\u2019s parts when the messiah comes at the time of the resurrection.<\/p>\n

Once again, morality is swept aside in favor of rules and fairy tales from antiquity.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ironically, Haredim have no qualms about accepting organ donations themselves.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"