Rejuvenation: Is Organ Donation against Halacha?

[Music] hi everybody savato it is eve herro on rejuvenation for the land of israel network today may 19th 2019 the 14th day VR 57 79 and before I start my interview today I'm sitting with Robbie Berman in his apartment in Jerusalem on a really really beautiful day just want to thank Ben and Tabitha for helping me put out this podcast and for helping all of us and all their hard work and remind you guys it in just a couple weeks on shovel off at the Mount Zion hotel land divisional network is going to be having a really great long weekend a lot of learning a lot of tour learning walking tours I am going to be there I'm confirmed I'm going to be there on Sunday I will be there for lunch hosted I'm one of the hostesses for the lunch but I will also be giving a class before that and a walking tour later on in the day and I'll also it looks like be guiding on Monday at least the early part of the trip that's going out to the farm but I will be taking people to Herodian and to stay bar on the way to the farm so I hope that I see some of you on Chev looked and of course you can look on my website for more information and of course get it through the Land of Israel Network anyhow so on to not such a light subject something that many people are I guess would even I would say are uncomfortable talking about but as a lot of you know that's what I do on this show is get us all out of our out of our comfort zones and really deal with issues that some of us would rather not talk about but have to be dealt with because they're totally out there so Robbie Berman who I'm so glad I have made the time to join me today he as he'll tell you all is about to leave for the States for a month having to do with this topic and of course the topic is organ donations and and the great need and a lot of the issues about that so Robbie thanks so much for joining me today on the Land of Israel Network you're welcome thank you very much for coming so a little bit about I mean how you got involved with this did you get it give it an organ did you have to get one did a family member pass away because they didn't have one like you know what's your personal involvement with this so I started the organization the ha logic organ donor society about 18 years ago and I started it because I had noticed that Israel was not allowed to join the European Union for Organ Sharing and when I asked them why they said it's because it was a very low organ donor registration rate that at that time 3 percent of the population had signed organ donor cards in Spain it was like 70 percent so why would that Israel join a network where all they would do it would be to benefit from it but never actually to contribute because I didn't have enough high enough numbers so I asked around that Israel why is it that people don't have organ donor cards and everyone told me the same thing because religion Judaism doesn't allow for which made absolutely no sense because the majority of Jews in Israel are secular Jews so I live in the Greek colony and right down the block there was a non kosher I think it was a McDonald's and I went with my pen and paper I was a journalist I want the right article about this phenomenon and I waited for someone to come out it was a big burly Israeli guy who was not religious clearly he was not wearing a skullcap he was wearing a tank top he had a tattoo in his left shoulder he was eating a big whopping cheeseburger clearly the guy is not you know so he's not observant so I said to the guy do you have an organ donor card from Israel transplant and he said ha special um god forbid it's forbidden by Jewish law to have an organ donor card I said dude you you're eating a cheeseburger you have a tattoo those are forbidden in the Torah in the Bible you know what you see I said clearly you don't observe the commandments he said well when it comes to my life I don't want the Torah to inhibit my lifestyle but when it comes to death I want to be a little bit more religious so you just mentioned something that my listeners already know is a theme here a that in Israel though there's no really can't say secular and religious or observant and non because it's a whole spectrum here and this is a very Israeli Jewish thing which is that it comes to the major life issues marriage death divorce giving us on this you know circumcise in your son even Israelis who look like they're not observant or aren't observant right like the guy that you just described are very based in tradition and very based in even well would be end up being Jewish holla holla if they wouldn't necessarily say that that's what they're doing so this is a very easy to that you're talking about so but what's the problem then what is the halacha problem about not giving an organ so there are and that that's a simple question but the answer is a little more complicated there are reasons that the masses have that are not based on rationality that are not based on Jewish law it's based on misperceptions we will talk about and then there's a legitimate reason which people who are in the know have an issue with and that is and we'll deal with that one first that is the brain death issue that there are many rabbis who believe that a person whose brain is dead and the heart still beating even though it's being beating artificially meaning it's been getting our oxygen artificially from a ventilator and it will stop beating in a few days to a few weeks maybe a few months but no one's ever woken up from varying death there are some rabbis who think that a brain dead body human body with a beating heart is alive and therefore they won't let you donate that person's organ because if you do you're killing that person all the rabbi's such as remotion feinstein roth ovadia yosef the Chief Rabbinate of Israel or Azam if I'm a globe or they all believe no a heart is just a pump it's not even a very particularly smart pump you can take that pump out of a human body put it in a bucket of salt water and the heart will be for another half hour not knowing it's left the human body you can transplant a heart into someone else's body and never connect it to the brain and it beats on its own for another 30 40 years so those rabbis think that up beating heart is not a sign of human life and once the person is unconscious the brain is dead they can't breathe of their own accord and the only reason why the heart's beating is because they're on a machine that's helping it breathe that's helping it beat by giving an oxygen then you are dead for all intents purposes your what's called a beating heart cadaver and you should bury that person so that's the brain death controversy and that's a legitimate one there are rabbis on both sides of the debate you should know a couple things no one's ever woken up from brain death the heart usually stops beating upon the onset of brain death when the heart is still beating as a result of a ventilator the heart stops beating in a few days usually and you have a lot of stories that people say claiming they will go from brain death but it's all nonsense because you never have the doctors go on television with them it's like the patient come on they don't there's not one documented case of a person waking up so that's the brain death controversy the so let me ask so what so what is the controversy that I mean if you're saying that the heart will just stop eating on its own soon after brain death so then make all the rabbi's happy and just wait till the brain is dead and the heart stopped beating and then harvest you're great question the problem is is that once the heart stops beating it stops distributing blood with oxygen in it and all the organs now suffer from oxygen deprivation so you can't recover any organs see the perfect time is recover organs is when the organism is dead by the organs are still alive so the heart's still beating to keep the organs alive not necessarily the person in order to keep it people say well if a person ever wakes and brain death why they put them on a ventilator they don't that's a misnomer they never put it if you came to the hospital brain dead that means your brain died you couldn't breathe you don't get oxygen your heart stopped beating two minutes later that's never the case what is the case is a person comes to the hospital they're unconscious they're having trouble breathing they put them on a vent to help them breathe 20 30 40 50 percent 60 percent while they're in the hospital on that ventilator unconscious their brain then dies and now the ventilator kicks in takes over a hundred percent of the breathing and accidentally incidentally your heart still gets the oxygen and supplies oxygen to all of the other organs and now your organs are alive but your brain is dead so in this specific case that's where the issues come in with the rabbi's and do you harvest right right the problem is is that although I do respect rabbis who say that brain death with a beating heart is not death I don't agree with that but I respect people that different opinions what I have a morally moral issue with is those rabbis that say that you know you can't donate organs when they're brain-dead with a beating heart because they're alive but if a Jew ever gets sick and needs an organ it's okay to take them from other people who are those other people be non-jews and that's morally a problematic stance oh you have to have the courage to stand by your conviction that if you think a brain-dead person is alive and don't donate your organs but don't take them either and that's the problem I have with people who take that path this is a very extreme case that I'm just remembering of someone that we knew from Los Angeles whose son I believe needed a lung and did not they could yeah well you need a lung transplant a young boy and he didn't he didn't get it and he died and he could have the parents didn't cuz the rabbi told them think they could have saved him if I don't remember no problem see people hear so many stories and they spread the stories as if it's true people even read articles that I wrote or that I was quoted in and then they repeated to me and they just didn't get the article they didn't understand it they didn't remember problems so you and I are both in the world of journalism that's one of the problems credible it's unbelievable it's unbelievable so I wrote an article criticizing the Chief Rabbinate of England about 10 15 years ago under the leadership of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks where he said Jews can't donate organs because when they're brain-dead they're really alive but if they ever need organs it's okay to take them from other people so I criticized him and people call me up and they say why criticizing the rabbi he's all for organ donation said I didn't listen to the article he's not he's not he's for living donation for Jews when they're alive to donate a kidney but he's not for cadaveric donation and they just they just missed that on a nuance but it's a significant nuance he changed his mind or rather Sachs is still holding their had people approached him since he's left the Chief Rabbinate he still hasn't change his mind and I find that he was criticized by rabbis and doctors around the world what about other religions I mean here in Israel you have a significant Muslim population and also not a small Christian population in addition to Druze and some of you know other other religions is this I know you're focused on hahaha and on the Jewish part but you have contact with other religions yes well I I was recently interviewed on al hora television it's a satellite Arabic television network and I was interviewed in Arabic to talk about the similarities of Sharlee and a lot on this issue in Sharia Arabic Muslim Islamic law there's also debate about brain death and whether or not brain death is death or not and they have a similar type of debate about it I'm more of an expert expert in Halawa and Jewish law that's why a lecture about the topic on our next we're just on this issue I'm not an expert on other issues is my only issue that I'm an expert on but but I would I didn't get to was that the other issues that Jews have an even and use with donating organs and that is there are three biblical prohibitions in the Bible there are 613 biblical Commandments some are positive some are negative meaning about shafte now shouldn't and there are three negative prohibitions in the Bible it's called the raita which says you can't do three things with a corpse and one of them is you cannot get benefit from a corpse you cannot delay the burial of a corpse and you can not destroy or desecrate a corpse when you don't eat an organ it would seem to be you're cutting into and destroying part of a course you are also getting benefit from a corpse and you're also delaying the burial by a few hours at least all three all three and people say so how can I donate organs for violating three Bible Commandments and the answer is very simple there's also command in the Torah not to eat pork but you're allowed to eat pork it's a mitzvah T pork if it can save your life because we know Pequot nephesh saving a life overrides almost every single commandment in the Torah so why do you understand that by eating pork but you don't understand that by donating organs I once met a man in Brooklyn who said that he would never eat pork I said what if your life depended on it you were in a desert island you were starving to death you came across a vending machine it was solar paneled so you know just for consistency's sake he was stranded with exact change and had pork sandwich what do you think would you eat he said I would never eat book I'd rather die than eat pork well I said well you know you seems to me you're a very religious man but what religion you are I'm not sure because it's not Judaism that's not Jewish law Jewish law is you do almost anything in order to save a life when the Torah was written could they have envisaged a time where you would have doner you know organs great point awesome point and that's what because people said to me why do I think this was why do I think this has become a taboo and not other things and that's because exactly the thousands of years people could envision I would need to eat non-kosher to save a life I would have to travel on the Sabbath to save a life I might have to light a candle light a fire to say bye well no one could ever imagine that I would take a knife and cut up a dead body to save a life and that's why I think that that took on the taboo I'm very happy that you all came up with that because people often ask me that and that's my response to them and that's why Judaism is supposed to be rolling with the times and rabbis are you know you didn't also didn't have electricity in the time of the Bible so how come there's a prohibition against turning on lights and shut back because when electricity became an issue the rabbi's had to sit down and say is this burning is this making a fire is it not and there's so many things right now that are happening is the world is so fast-paced that the rabbi's are really and you know some are and some aren't keeping pace the the more modern organization Sohar the Modern Orthodox rabbis where do they sit on this therefore they're for illumination when I started the organization a 18 years ago there were only two rabbis in Israel that had organ donor cards and only 3% of the population I don't know no cards 120 Israelis were dying every year I signed up about 350 rabbis they get the ID card the Israeli organ donor card that had trickle-down effect and now 16 percent of society and Israel have what we don't Accords mm-hmm and now only 80 Israelis die every year on the list waiting for organs 80 is still too much but it's better than 120 oh we part of the European know I think we have to get it like 35% or 40% to get in there so we're still suffering from that New York New York Times had an article a few months ago that said that New York State has a lowest organ donor registration rate out of all 50 states and when they turned in the article they turned to the federal government agency in New York State and said why why does New York State have a lowest organ donor registration rate and they said two words Jews and Chinese they the largest population of Jews and Chinese in America live in New York and they tend not to donate for whatever their reasons are so what are some other reasons that Jews don't donate and other people donate well first of all Jews can be very superstitious and they don't they believe in the evil I die in Allah and they don't want to sign an organ on the car that says that if I die I want to donate my organs because they feel somehow by signing this this document is negative really negative conditional document that if this happens this horrible thing happens to me I'll donate my organs they feel somehow that they will be um I don't know what to you were to use but they're gonna bring it upon themselves so I assume I also don't buy life insurance that so that's what I respond to them I said you know deep down you don't really believe in the evil eye cuz if you did you wouldn't buy health insurance car insurance fire insurance death insurance flood insurance flight insurance every insurance policy says if this horrible thing happens to my family they're gonna get money etc not only that if you were if you really believe in evil I'm no one when they got married it was signed a ketubah a ketubah most people think it's a marriage document in Jewish law it's not it's actually a divorce document not only do we sign it but we draw beautiful illustrations we frame it we put on the wall and the newlyweds when they have guests over to say oh look at our beautiful divorce document did this if we get divorced in this horrible thing happens look you know we'll look what's gonna look what's going to be so if people don't really believe in it it seems I hate to be cynical but that's one of my personality flaws if you put a document in front of someone's face and say hey sign this horrible document and if this horrible thing happens your kids won't inherit a million dollars or you will get a million dollars everyone signs it well put it docket in front of their face and say hey sign this horrible document and if it happens you will get no benefit from it your children will get no benefit from it and you'll save the lives of eight strangers who you don't know so that's one of the issues of going on here so that's the evil eye there's another superstitious belief and that is there are many people many Jews Orthodox Jews believe in a resurrection of the dead now I happen to know that I will not be resurrected from the dead demon there is a resurrection because the Rambam Maimonides says that i won't be resurrected he doesn't mentioned me by name but he says only righteous people we resurrected I've seen my CV my resume and I know for a fact I'm not a righteous person so I will not be resurrected but for those of you concerned that you need your organs resurrection I want you to think about fully what your belief says this is what your belief says you believe that you need to be buried with all of you organs in order to enable God to resurrect you that's a very problematic statement first of all there's no source of that statement anywhere in classical Jewish literature number two it's theologically problematic to say that God can't do something if God wants to do something he can do it any Hitler I think cremated about a million out of the six million you mean to say God wants to he wants to resurrect in a million Jews but he can because Hitler won the game cuz he'll the cremator them and now he's really the fast one over god I mean none of that makes sense and three most significantly your organs disintegrate in the ground where you don't have the old decay you don't have your organs or resurrections so for those people who think they need two organs for resurrection that is a superstitious belief there's no source of that anywhere in classical Jewish literature no one says you need to be very with the organs in order to enable God to resurrect you there's another one you know most people they go they watch a lot of TV and they hear this famous phrase it's you know the priest or the rabbi says at the graveside funeral from dust you came and from dust you shall return may fr lucasta life are to shoot and people think oh look we came from the ground we got to go back to the ground hole I know I happen to have learned about sex in fifth grade and I found out my parents didn't make me from dirt they had a much more interesting way to make me most people were made from dirt who was made from dirt in the Bible Adam Adam was made from dirt that's God telling Adam that he's going to die in a very literary way because you sinned in the Garden of Eden you will now return to be an inanimate object you came from dirt you will go back to being dirt but nowhere nowhere in classical Jewish literature does anyone write that down as one of the 613 commandments that you must be buried in the ground it's not a commandment anywhere in fact that story says a lot of other interesting things then no one counts as a commandment that says that because Adam sinned not only will he die but now he has to work by the sweat of his brow have you ever heard a graduate of your university say I really want to be an investment banker or a lawyer but you know what we don't sweat enough and as a commandment to work by this way that's ridiculous it also says that women as a result of Eve will now have to suffer intense pain and childbirth no one says it's a prohibition you can't get an epidural because of this comment it also says as a punishment in that story that women will now have to subjugate their will to their husband who in 2019 which woman wants to stand up and say yes I believe that's a command from God we must subjugate our world or husband none of those things were considered to be Commandments if you want to know why they were and what you learn from it you could read some of the commentaries on there but no one considers them to be Commandments so these are the different issues that come up the big thing is the brain death issue and unfortunately people watch too much Grey's Anatomy er House a good doctor and they think they know what brain death is and they have no eye they always confuse it with coma or vegetative state and that's not the same thing coma and vegetative state are the same thing one a short-term coma short-term vegetative state is long-term but brain death means when not just you're in a coma but also the brainstem has died and that means everything has died and that's a completely different animal okay so you've very eloquently laid out why people don't sign up and have the card and and want to want to donate organs but there is a situation with the kidneys where people are alive and can donate their organs so because you have to so what's happening with that so there's a huge movement specifically among Orthodox Jews both in America and in Israel two great organizations renewal in America a monolith Khayyam in Israel and they up six he didn't doing hundreds and hundreds of living transplants where people just show up and say we want Altos that we donate our kidney and say the life of a stranger it's great I mean at in America every year there's only 600 altruistic kidney donations most of the living kidney donations are from father to son or daughter to father or whatever might be but purely altruistic we don't know the person there's six hundred and out of the six hundred in America 33 percent or Orthodox Jews which is incredible incredible given the fact the Jews are only less than two percent of the population in America so what people do is they also try to do a little bit of leisure domain where they try to fool you and say well with Jews were not really donating organs from cadavers from beating heart cadavers but we are from living so we're contributing society well the truth is is not so I'll to asipi as those Orthodox Jews by and large donate to other Orthodox Jews I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it I think it's great and in society does benefit indirectly because they're getting people off the list and people move up the list but it's not a hundred percent altruistic as you donate into your your group and I think we need to step up to the plate if we're gonna take organs from beating heart cadavers we should donate organs when we're beating our cadavers if you don't think that's death and don't donate organs don't get an organ donor card but don't take you know we had a terrible case here in Israel a few years ago where a 72 year old woman was brain-dead religious woman religious family they asked they asked the family to donate her organs there was a 52 year old guy here in Israel who needed a lung transplant they had the same blood type the family said we have to ask our rabbi they went to the rabbi in Bnei Brak and he said no brain death with a beating heart is not dead the heart's a sign of human life always so they said no so what happened the woman's heart stopped beating three days later they buried her and this 52 year old man or 56 I forget already he died about a month later didn't get a lung transplant now that's it that's a tragedy but that's not a solution that's not a desecration of God's name where was the tragedy a week later an investigative journalist from a theatre who note had discovered that this woman three years prior was dying of liver failure and she asked Israel transplant to get her liver from a brain a beating heart cadaver and they did so she took an organ from a brain dead beating our cadaver when she needed it and her and her family took it but when it came to donating they said no Arab I won't allow it and that is hugely morally problematic I mean I see for you that this is actually your biggest problem right now is that there's an inconsistency here even somewhat of a hypocrisy we could say that you can take but you cannot give and so it seems like you're the main group that you need to be working on then is the rabbi's because no okay first of all we have hundreds of worthless rabbis that have our card I don't need to get another five ten fifteen twenty that's not it and this is gonna sound strange but my my strategy is is that the majority of Jews are not Orthodox yet they think orthodoxy doesn't allow for organ donation so I signed up a few hundred rabbis I made sure they had long beards and I show pictures we have brochures when we get funding we run out of these brochures very quickly but we get funding and we produce we met we we go to press on these brochures we destroy them around the world I've lectured in about 12 countries to more than 50,000 Jews over the 18-year period and it's and has had incredible impact we're secular Jews will see rabbis with beards that have organ donor cards and they'll donate organs but Orthodox use is such a small percentage of Jews around the world like I don't need to go ahead and get every last Orthodox Jew there was a famous case here in Israel where a woman's son of an Israeli soldier in the war in Gaza jumped into the tunnel and got a bullet in the head and they pulled his body out he was attached with a rope pulled his body out they ventilated him brought him to the hospital in Bair Sheva and they were managed to keep his heart beating even though his brain was dead they asked the family if they would donate his or it's not a religious family and the family said no it's against Jewish law the transplant coordinator from Israel transplant pulled out the brochure from the halacha organ donor society unfolded it unfurled it it's a long brochure all I'll show you I have it here and said no there are rabbis plenty of rabbis that have organ donor cards and they saw all those pictures and they changed their mind and they donated his organs they saved a lives so that's incredible and that's wonderful - you were so effective now you said that Orthodox Jews which seems like maybe you should just forget about the Orthodox Jews because there are more trouble than they're worth if it's not if most of the people you can convince and I'm speaking as someone who considers herself you know part of that world and has a organ donor card incidentally I should say that and have for a very very very long time and my kids know that as well skin like whatever I'm not going to need it but the question is though do you have the right here to say were you on your organs to go so I'll tell you something very interesting Israel like every other enlightened country liberal democracy does not allow you to say where the organs are going to go when you're dead you're dead and the government decides on a needs basis who needs it they do have something in America called directed donation that if someone has brain-dead with a beating heart and then they say we don't want to donate they say well donate but I have a cousin who needs a liver I want them to get the liver they'll allow you to donate one to direct one organ to one person but the rest goes to the generalist in Israel up until 2006 the number one form that was rejected by Israel transplant like people would fill out these forms is a please send me an organ donor card but some of these forms people wrote stuff on them conditions that couldn't be honored so Israel transplant rejected them so the number up in 2006 the number one form that was in Israel was I want to do anything my organs but only if they don't go to Arabs because of the racism or the perception that every Arab the mistaken perception that every I was a terrorist well I've heard this from people I don't want to save somebody who could potentially be a terrorist and kill Jews I wouldn't want my family's my father whatever his heart to go to do that I pray that people say my organs to go to a Jew that kills Jews and there plenty of Jews and Israel that killed Jews ok the numbers are obviously way different when it comes that ok there's probably sufficiently speaking there's probably more Jews and kill Jews and Arabs that kill Jews we have a country of nine million people seven and a half million or Jews one and a half million are Arabs okay we're not gonna get into discussion about terrorism but you ever I think all my listeners understand what this is going that in a country where this is very much an issue nobody wants to save it to a potential terrorists and I I'm not saying just saying that this has been an issue someone say I don't want to say a terrorist great a potential terrorist so a three month old baby who's a Jews and Arabs also potential terrorists and that's the answer that I've also given to people is your personal you don't know what someone is going to grow up to be and second of all maybe the fact that you have saved a life in this Arab family will cause the family to think different and maybe not maybe I'm being completely naive and maybe they just want to you know there's still gold buy their job but we don't know we just don't know and because the Muslim married to a physician that that can be an issue in anybody who's dealing in the medical world why should you have somebody come into the hospital as a Jewish doctor as an Arab doctor and saved somebody who potentially is going to be against whatever your ideologies you can't do that Hippocratic oath you have to save lives period but by the way by the way because of the demographics in Israel out of the eight people that are gonna receive an organ there's nine million people in the country seven and a half million are jews one and half million or non-jews most of them are Arabs so if you say no to organ donation because you're afraid you might save an arab that means you say i'd rather let seven jews die then save one arab does that make any sense and the reverse is true too because when the arab donates an organ he also donates eight organs and seven go to jews and one goes to an arab so even if you're like a very self-centered drag a pragmatic individual and you want to save more jews and arabs you still will save more Jews if you donate organs but what I wanted to say was to continue that thought excuse me but difficut in you that thought in 2006 there was a point of inflection and the number one form that was rejected by Israel transplant because the condition that was written on it was I want to do any my organs but only in the condition that it doesn't go to ultra-orthodox Jews the querido this game this game has no as no ending yeah I once had a woman call me up from Florida and she said she wanted to donate her kidney altruistic to an Israeli she didn't want to donate to anyone she wondered I said great she said but I don't want to go to any Jew living in the West Bank only Tel Aviv only West Jerusalem I'm like lady I'm not gonna play this game whoever needs it the most should get it I don't care if they're Jew Arab Muslim Christian black white Chinese whatever I'm not gonna play God so have your work cut out for you here now I remember a few weeks ago oh it's already a couple of months ago rough Ettinger IV odd I think her from the community vaguely father of 12 because kids were friends of my kids was shot in a terror by terrorists near Arielle and the family donated his organs and he was really an exceptional person and they they any very Orthodox rabbi it's dirty Sheva in Tel Aviv and I believe that all his organs were donated and that was in the news at the time as well yeah I seem to remember that I don't know it as well as you do but I seem to remember that the family said that they wanted to donate his organs I don't know if any organs were actually don't it it is very and people don't seem to understand that only organs are taken from a person who happened to die in the hospital while they were on a ventilator and then the brain died not a person was killed on the street and a terrorist attack or a car accident do you know how frequent it is for a person to die on a ventilator is it so people think oh if everyone signed an organelle ducati plenty of organs to go around no the answer is out of all the people that die in Israel every year in every country it's zero point zero zero to four percent very very small and that's why it's important that everyone gets an organ donor card because we're so desperate to get any donation going on we have to sign up as many people as we can just a few weeks ago I read a very interesting article I'm sure you read it too about printing organs now alright so here we are in 2019 all kinds of crazy stuff happening in the world where they're also doing experiments that's and stem cells right at some point you can be born you could bank a little of the little puppy you know your umbilical cord blood so everyone's got what they started from in a vial and some blood bank somewhere and then if God forbid you lose an arm or your heart starts to go for some reason you need to regenerate you're an organ of your own you'll have the starter cells the stem cells to do it and then of course you have this whole thing of 3d printing and if possibly actually being able to print which would mean that all this entire conversation and this entire issue is done is dead if you will right thoughts like that trouble me because every year 7,000 Americans die waiting for organs eighty Israelis die waiting for guns and I've been hearing this about 3d printing for about 15 years already there has not been one successful case of 3d printing in organ F functions maybe will be in the future it looks like we're going in that direction I hope it will happen until then we should stop talking about it let the doctors the researchers do what they need to do when we get there we'll all have a party and put myself out of business I would love to close down the halacha organ donor Society and say there's no longer problem we can just print whatever we want the only thing they've been able to 3d print and actually wasn't 3d printing I think it was but what they did grow was a bladder a bladders not a functioning organ or bladders like a human tissue balloon they're just fills with urine empties of urine it's not a functioning organ they haven't able to create anything in fact if you took a look carefully and I watched it carefully on television that night they show that 3d printed heart there was no blood in that heart and yet the veins to the heart looked blue why because they used dye to show you where the vein is it's very it's in the very early stages it looks really cool there's till today there's not an any artificially functioning organ that's made from human human cells so tell us what the what organs there are okay so bladder isn't so what are the usual like what's the list of what knees I mean the typical number that we have in the industry is eight but it depends how you count it skin is an organ so large is organ in the human body you need that for people who have burned victims and they need that to present infection so skin to kidneys liver it could be cut in half because the liver grows back lungs have you have five lobes of your lungs they could be also separated pancreas and corneas cornea is interesting because we said before that you're allowed to violate Jewish law to save a life okay so then can you donate your corneas because the person's not gonna die if he doesn't get corneas he just won't see so what happened was the chief rabbi of Israel really Unterman in his 60s he wanted to somehow make society a better place he created a legal fiction using Talmudic law to say that since the Talmud says that blindness is akin to death right because don't forget in those days if you were blind you couldn't chop wood you couldn't sell wood you couldn't get food there was no Social Security you couldn't function and don't forget also today even today people who are blind died at an earlier average age because of accidents and depression so there is something that you're extending someone's life and he basically said let's create a legal fiction since the Talmud the track date Nidoran page 60 fully obi says that a person who's blind is as if they are dead therefore we'll say we can donate corneas because if you donate a corner you're saving a person from blindness which is saving him from death he did say though that you could only donate one cornea to one person cuz once you give him sight in one eye he's no longer under the category of a blind person no very these legal fictions are common where the rabbi's are trying to help us function in modern day society that's why over this last piece off you and I had things in our house that we shouldn't have had but we quote-unquote sold it to a non Jew that non Jew doesn't know where I live he doesn't have a key to my house he never picks up the stuff and magically right after the Passover was over he sells it back to me so it's kind of a legal fiction to helps us form our own society so you're about to head out for a month abroad to talk about the halacha hey could you give my listeners a way of finding out where you're going to be in case this is piqued their interest and also are you is it just for Jews or can Christians come also a lot of my listeners a lot of the people that I guide here and some I think of the most interesting things going on in not just the United States but in the Western world right now is Christians coming closer to the Bible understanding the relevance of the Bible and perhaps this is something within their communities now that they weren't so aware of I mean if they were you know if we had a lot of Christians giving donors that would also fill fill in a lot of the gaps so it is that part of your intended audience or your just working towards getting Jews to understand that this is not against how the huh right so I actually happened to be very racist I only allow human beings to come to my lectures so if you're a human being income you're not aiming you can't come also concerning donating organs I'm very racist as well the organs must go only to human beings I will not allow them to go to non human beings that's where I stand I'll be lecturing and more than happy I've lectured in I've done Grand Rounds and hospitals I've done I've lectured in the Christian school in East Jerusalem the Schmidt school all of them were Christians and Muslims they were not Jews I'm more than happy for everyone to learn if they want to learn what Talmudic law would halacha Jewish law says about organ donation and brain death I'm lecturing in Englewood I have a Torah on June 2nd formally rabbi golden shul I'm lecturing in June I think 15th or about maybe June 18th in the Hamptons out on Long Island and I'm going very excited this week I'm going down I was invited because we have saved so many lives in Israel the ambassador the Israeli ambassador to Washington ambassador Ron Dermer has been gracious enough to invite me to their Yamato with their independence paid they party they're having this week in the embassy in Washington so I'm going there I'll be there for the party on Wednesday do you have extra dates open if somebody was in touch with you and said listen you know you're not you're not scheduled to come to my community I don't know they're in Chicago wherever they are but this sounds like something that I think I can get a few people together for do you have some open date sure a lot of days that are open absolutely and if you're interested in getting a part-time job and public relations I'm one happy to hire you because you're doing a very you're doing a better job than I am but yes I'm open to any dates just give me a call Robbie Berman and Hodes org R o BBY BER ma n @h OD s that oregon's for Halawa organ donor society org there's a website I assume that explains all this Hodes dot org it's a very robust website with dozens and dozens of videos from rabbis and doctors explaining brain death from a medical perspective from a halacha perspective many many articles we have a lot of articles on our website that are against organ donation and against brain death because I really believe that the truth will went out and I'm not trying to hide anything from anyone so feel free if you're want to get some information against organ donation you can read it on our site as well is one of the concerns about people accepting it let's talk about that do you ever have concerns from people accepting it because you do have let's say AIDS or you know or hepatitis and with donating an organ I would imagine would come whatever disease pack the person who died had with them and then you could have that issues of does that so we've been talking about the donor part but how about the recipient side of it so that's a great question there there have been cases where people have contracted cancer aids from donations it's very very rare the doctors do a very good job technology has gotten very very good in trying to determine what what what the person has it doesn't have it used to be if you want to know if you had AIDS you had to wait for six months before you determine now they have a Testim it's okay that it is a risk but it's a very very small risk assuming if someone's on a donor list their risk of dying is pretty high from because their liver is failing or whatever so I would imagine that people aren't gonna get overly choosy obviously you don't want it to get something diseased implanted in you along with your new liver there are people who are so desperate to get an organ is a no they're about to die they do take organs that are called extended criteria which means it's not the normal criteria but the organ doesn't look good it's not perfect the person had cancer the perfect person has HIV you can there's no substitute for a liver you have the alysus for a kidney but not for a liver so if your livers failing and you doctors think you're gonna die within a week there are people who take livers from HIV patient because people don't die from HIV anymore it doesn't blow up and into AIDS they just take the cocktail and they live with HIV it's not ideal they don't want it they prefer not to but they refer that over death right it does not sound ideal but it's definitely better at least at least you're alive and I would imagine let's say skin you know even if somebody of a disease I mean I'm assuming the skin which is the big organ like you said especially for people with terrible burns you could still you know still take somebody's good yeah I don't know how if disease transfers through skin because I think the way it works is when you get burned over the majority of your body they put the skin transplant on it's not really transplant it just covers your body to make sure you don't get an infection and then when when your body is strong enough to grow its own skin back the transplanted the quote-unquote transmitters in sloths off so it just protects you for a certain period of time and then you grow your own skin so it might be that it doesn't transfer any kind of any of those diseases when you started this 18 years ago did you know how difficult this was going to be I did not know how difficult it was gonna be I had projected I remember my first board meeting I said I think I can solve this problem between three and five years and my board laughed at me also I tell you the problem I'm not a professional fundraiser and yet I raised the money for the organization it fundraising is an awful all I I hate it with a passion and I really thought that it was difficult in the very beginning because I was trying to sell a dream I was trying to sell a vision of what I could do but I could cause a sea change among Jews and get them to all of a sudden understand as the there's major halakhah support for elimination so I thought it's hard to sell a dream but after a couple years when we started saving lives when people started donating organs because of the halacha organ donor Society I thought the money would just come pouring in and unfortunately it just hasn't happened so every year we struggle to make ends meet yes the money goes towards what towards the education and we have a staff and the brochures and look at the website and the video production advertisements right now we have a great program going on we were paying six college students throughout America to become advocates for organ donation with his large Jewish presence on their college campus and they have to do a whole set of things that we train them to do their year and they're getting a $2,000 grant by the way you can still apply for this grant till the end of June if you know someone who is in a very big population of Jewish students on their college campus we give you $2,000 you can use the money to pay for your tuition to buy food to do whatever you want go out to restaurant that's your money but you have to do things you have to organize two lectures during the year one with the transplant surgeon one with a wrap by you need to write an article or encourage the student newspaper to write an article about organ donation in Jewish law we have a whole list of things to do but that's not the Hat program HIV the hoods Ambassador Program if you're interested in being the bass or being an activist on campus please contact us and we'll send you the application okay so the fundraising is towards the educational aspect you're not paying for the transplants every country or every people have their own insurance and if they if the transfers happen that that's a completely other excuse the ridiculous it's not even a joke completely the other organ of services that's Orion yeah yeah we don't we don't get involved in the actual transplants we're educational we're awareness we we try to help people make the right decision and let them know this great hallo fix support for the decision of donating organs but we don't actually go into the hospital people call me up all the time they say I need a kidney I need a heart I need a lung can you help me unfortunately I can't okay Robby burn anything else that miss was tremendously informative to me no I thank you very much for the opportunity and again I was very happy that you were able to immediately alight upon the reason which I also think is why not cutting into the dead bodies become a taboo when violating every other commandment people all get right away oh I can be pork if to save a life I can drive on the Sabbath but why did this become a taboo because no one could ever for three thousand three hundred years no one could ever imagine that cutting into a corpse by the way don't forget also that when the Torah was written not days for creating a dead body in those days desecration was what dies does isis/isil right they kill someone that cut off the head they play soccer with a head disgusting that desecrating a dead body but rabbis don't view donating organs it's desecration desecrating means your your purpose your intention is to really denigrate the dead body there was a rabbi if famous Moroccan rabbi and this is while people never heard of this he was a famous Moroccan rabbi chief rabbi - died in 1973 he had ruled that Jews could even donate their bodies to science not even to save a life but just a science why he said that's not desecrating a dead body when they cut it up he said your intention is to improve medicine he said why is donating your body to science more of a desecration than letting put it in the ground I'm letting worms or microbes eat the body so he was all for it but people don't hear that people don't know it people think Jews could never get autopsy's not true at all if thy doing an autopsy you most likely can save a life then you can do the autopsy that's where the rabbi's rule people don't know that so I was finished studying medicine in Italy and they learned gross anatomy with plastic cadavers because Italy is a Catholic country and doesn't allow to do it on real cadavers he internal medicine internal medicine so something that just occurred to me because you mentioned the rabbi from Morocco do you see a difference in the rulings between rabbis of you know the Middle Eastern rabbis with the miss names farty rabbis Mizrahi rabbis but the rabbis who lived more and ruled more in a Muslim oriented world shall we say versus Ashkenazi rabbis the rabbis who were much more influenced living in Ashkenazi and living more in a Christian well well first you should know the chief Ravinder of Israel always has two rabbis chief rabbis party chief rabbi Aaron Ossie every single chief rabbi for the past 30 years has said brain death is death and we should donate organs unilaterally yep both in general the Sephardic leadership the Sephardic rabbinic leadership have all said that brain death is death and Jew should donate organs that's Rafa Mar rather than Joseph or mortify the owl in the Ashkenazi world is a they're a great Ganassi postin would also say brain death is death by moshe feinstein rosamma Simon Goldberg define Steen near ah from Shapiro but they're also great good olam that don't a great rabbinic leaders such as ruff Chandra Valley achieve they say no because you have a lot of Ashkenazi rabbis that will in no way shape or form break from the position of Russia flourish if they say no we can't leave rain death is not death - can't donate organs could be that a new generation of rabbis because this amazing wonderful generation of rabbis really incredibly brilliant men who kept Torah live in Europe for so many years many of them are now dying that generation their 90s and their hundreds these are the survivors of the Holocaust who really rebuilt the Torah life in Israel and in other places in the world and it could be that some of the newer generation well maybe a little you know understand medicine a little differently understand the world a little differently are living in Israel and not necessarily in Europe anymore will you know come around and and you know see what was what it is that you've been saying right and soul of God and the main thing is of course that we should all be healthy and never need an organ donation so if you're smoking put the cigarette down right now no more okay but yeah but things happen and people do get sick and people are born with your readers your listeners just the thing about one thing everyone who's listening think about it seriously if you were dying you needed an organ or your father or brother or sister or child was needing an organ and there was someone in the hospital who had a child that was brain-dead with a beating heart that would hurt but that would stop beating in a few days and they were having issues that they didn't want to donate what would you want me to say to them well what you would want me to say to them say to yourself because you know you would take an organ and you would beg to get one so think about other people I know at the moment of death it's very traumatic and very emotionally challenging and people kind of just become very defensive and think only about themselves but it is at that very moment when you shouldn't just think about yourself think about other people and when you do that it makes you feel a little bit better and I also want to take that decision out of my children's hands that if something is happening to me I don't want that someone to come up them and say well can you know you donate her organs because they're probably not concentrating on that you know things at the moment that's why I have my card signed they know that that is what I want to have to have you know happen and there's no decision for them to make I've made that decision and I just want it to be carried out and I think that just like we make wills or we wanna make sure that the kids don't fight about the inheritance and we shouldn't write and we want it lay it all out we should do this is a difference between israel in america and america organ donor cards are actually legal legally binding documents and they will fight if you if you sign a card and you are brain-dead with a beating heart and the family says we don't feel comfortable with over the nation they will go to court and try to remove the organs regardless of the family but in israel even if you have an organ donor card if someone in the immediate family says no don't do it they won't to it Wow okay I need to have the conversation with all of them sure you have to have the conversation and what a wonderful way to actually have a meaningful conversation with your family about your values by caring about other people you know remotion Feinstein's said yes donating organs is emotionally a very difficult thing to do yet cut up my father's to save the lives of strangers you said but that's the Mitzvah that's the good deed you're doing something which emotionally is difficult to do but you're doing it because it's the right thing to do that's the mr. that's the good deed that you're about to embark upon and what and as Robbie Riskin said what's a better way to go to the pearly gates when you upon your death say rabbi I just saved is rabbi God I just saved eight lives it's the same thing as planting a tree whose fruit you may never eat and there's some things that you just do in this world and you do it for the future not necessarily for people are gonna know either and that's really the legacy that we all live behind so thank you Robbie Berman for a very very interesting discussion and I hope that you get people coming and you're able to you know have people make intelligent decisions but also based on Hanukkah which is important to so many of us we don't want to do things despite what our leaders say we would like to do things because what the leaders say and feel that it fits in beautifully with the really the overriding messages of Judaism which as you said at the very beginning saving a life takes precedence over virtually everything else right thank you very much for interviewing me and making this an important issue to share the information with people thank you alright everybody I would say like I hope you enjoyed this show I don't know if enjoying this word but I hope you found it informative and and perhaps rethinking some of you know the ideas that you had because this really is a very very important issue and as Robbie said you know if you're in that situation and you need the organ you know you would like people it to be available for you as well okay so lord I doubt we should never need it from either side okay Eve Harrow rejuvenation on the Land of Israel Network take care of you Betty you can always be in touch you can always check my website for what I'm doing and about to do and next week I think I'll finally like sit down and fill you guys all in on my last very interesting month including a side trip to Sola Nikki last week but we'll have to wait until next week so take care of your would eve hara rejuvenation on the land of israel network goodbye for now [Music] hi everybody yves herro host of rejuvenation join us on a land of israel Network for the shovel what of a lifetime where I will be giving a special class that weekend and guiding Herodian on Monday as the bus goes out to the farm so join us for the shovel out of a lifetime in just a few weeks Thursday through Monday June 6 through 10 2019 at the Jerusalem