Donating a Body to Science

Rabbi Gerald Raiskin Peninsula Temple Sholom 849 San Mateo Drive San Mateo, California

DEAR COLLEAGUE:

When you asked me about a husband and wife who were considering the possibility of donating their bodies to a scientific institution upon their death, you quite properly called attention to my responsum on the cornea.

Reform Judaism, in general, decides these matters in a lenient way, but there is a definite limit to the leniency possible. For example, with regard to the cornea, it would be possible for a liberal Orthodox rabbi to answer as we did, that it is permitted, but the majority of them, because of their habit of making strict decisions, would probably say No.

With regard to autopsy, most decisions are permissive only if there is definitely a sick person in the neighborhood who would benefit by the autopsy. (This is based upon the decision of Ezekiel Landau [Yore Deah II, 210] and Moses Sofer [Yore Deah 136].) With regard to this matter, the rabbis in Israel have recently extended the permissiveness somewhat, permitting the autopsy for general information with regard to a disease.

In discussing autopsy, a modern scholar, Elijah Posek (in “Divre Hillel,” Yore Deah 216), says that it would be preferable if the sick man were persuaded to request an autopsy of his body. This, however, is not the same as donating the body entirely for scientific purposes. For Jewish law has a deep respect for the body of the dead, and a strong aversion to the living making use of the dead for their benefit. All permissiveness is therefore reluctant, and understandingly and properly so. For human bodies to be taken and cut up without limit, and perhaps never to be buried at all, their parts scattered heaven knows where, this is surely repugnant to the letter of the law and to the spirit of our tradition.

A man would be justified, at least according to our liberal interpretation, to permit an amputated leg to be used for some benefit to the sick, or the cornea of his eye after death, or to have his body studied in autopsy and then buried. But to permit his body to be turned into fragments, and treated irreverently in all likelihood, and never to find burial, there is no possible way of permitting this. Moses Sofer, in the responsum just referred to, specifically declares it forbidden for a man “to sell himself in his lifetime for doctors to dissect his body after death, for the purpose of studying medicine.”

If, however, the bodies are given to a scientific institution to study, and then are buried after the work on them is done, there can be little objection from the liberal point of view. As for the funeral services in such a case, you would conduct them as always, as we do when a body is to be cremated.

REMAINS OF BODIES DONATED TO SCIENCE

QUESTION:

In California there is a curator in charge of all bodies donated to science. If after the scientific work has been done ashes or parts remain of the body the curator has them disposed of (by burial). Does not Jewish law require that the ashes and other remains of the bodies of Jewish people (whose bodies have been donated to science) be buried in a Jewish cemetery? (Asked by Louis J. Freehof, San Francisco, California.)

ANSWER:

WITH REGARD to the ashes left after cremation, Jewish religious law has not yet come to a clearcut decision as to the requirement or even as to the permissibility of their burial in a Jewish cemetery. Of course cremation itself is against Jewish Orthodox law, but the legal debate is on the following: If after cremation has occurred, is it a religious duty to bury those ashes, or need we pay any attention to their disposal? The first mod ern spread of the custom of cremation occurred in Ger-many about a century ago. The Orthodox rabbi of Hamburg, Rabbi Meir Lerner, fighting against the growing custom of cremation, declared that the ashes may not be buried in a Jewish cemetery. He wrote to many Orthodox rabbis and elicited the same negative opinion from them. These opinions he then published in his book, Chaye Olam. However, other German rabbis permit the burial, as for example, Enoch Ehrentreu, in Cheker Halachah, and Simon Deutsch, in Or Ha’emet, who also said that ashes were buried in the Frankfurt cemetery at the express direction of Azriel Hildesheimer, the leader of German Orthodoxy. The Rabbi of Leghorn, Italy, Elijah Benamozegh, in his Yaaneh Va’esh, went further and said that while it is against Orthodox law to cremate, nevertheless it is a duty to bury the ashes. A fair balance of the state of the law is given by David Hoffmann (Melamed Leho’il, Yoreh Deah 113) who says that while it is not obligatory to bury the ashes, it is not forbidden to do so. So it is a balanced situation in the law, and you have, I think, no ground to demand the ashes, but I believe they could be buried with fair propriety in a Jewish cemetery.

Now as to parts of the body which remain after all the scientific tests are finished: The question of how much of the body there must be for the requirement of burial is complicated by a number of factors. How much of the body must there be for the identification of the corpse, so that a wife may be declared a widow and be eligible to remarry? Another complication: A priest may not come in contact with dead bodies, except for his seven close relatives. However, if a body is found by a priest at the roadside and there is no one else to take care of the body, the priest not only may but is in duty bound to take care of it. Such a neglected body is called, therefore, a met mitzvah.

Now the question with regard to a met mitzvah becomes the source of the law involved in the question you ask. How much of a body must there be found in the field or by the roadside for the priest to consider it a met mitzvah and be, therefore, in duty bound to bury it? The law is summed up in the Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 374:2, as follows: If the head and most of the body is found, the priest is in duty bound to bury it. Having found that much of the body, he then is in duty bound to look around for the remaining frag-ments of it and bury them. From this basic law develops the rule that even as much as a piece “the size of an olive” of a dead body must be buried. See all these laws summed up in Greenwald’s Kol Bo Al Avelut, page 183, paragraph 18.

In other words, while it is not sure that ashes require burial, it is sure that any part of the body requires burial in a Jewish cemetery. It is clear that Jewish tradition requires you to ask the curator that this be provided for.