THE TYGRRRR EXPRESS

Great debates in Judaism in medicine with Rabbi Edward Reichman MD

Abortion:

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein: Abortion is akin to homicide. Not equivalent, but akin. It’s the taking of a life. The only permitted abortion is if the mother’s life is at risk. Tay-Sachs is not a justification for abortion.  Even an amniocentesis is not permitted since it could lead to an abortion. Catholicism takes the opposite view, that the mother must be sacrificed to save the fetus. 

Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg believes abortion is not akin to homicide. It can be performed to save the health of the mother, including mental health issues. Aborions up to 7th month are permitted. Theoretically postpartum depression could be a mental health issue, but now there is treatment for postpartum depression. Therefore a rabbi would be less likely to permit an abortion for that.

Donor artificial insemination: How to procure reproductive seed.

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein: A married woman who goes to a sperm bank because her husband is infertile is not an adulteress. The child is not a momser. This is because there is no physical illicit relationship between the woman and the donor. The donor is the Halachic father. If the donor is a Kohan, the child is a Kohan.

Nevertheless, Jewish law prohibits being a sperm donor. New issues crop up with sperm donors. What if stem cells are taken from the sperm? This has not been adjudicated yet.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe said that a person should be willing to give up everything including his own life to have children.

There is no US legislation limiting the number of children produced by one sperm donor. The serious risk is siblings marrying each other. 

If a Jewish woman has a child with a non-Jewish man, the child is Jewish but the child has no Halachic father. The child has a genetic father, not a Halachic one. With no Halachic father, it is impossible to marry a paternal sibling. 

There are 60 cases being prosecuted for reproductive specialists providing their own sperm.

3 Day Burial Controversy: Way back when, doctors would misdiagnose your time of death, which affected the entire Western world for burial purposes. “Saved by the bell” is people who would ring a bell when they were buried underground when they were still alive. People who died had to be kept above ground for a few days until it was 100% proven that death had occurred. This conflicts with Jewish law, which demands immediate burial. In israel, burial must occur within 24 hours. There is a clear prohibition on delaying burial. 

Yet modern technology has ethicists and others arguing when death occurs. Nevertheless, technology also allows the exact time of death to be precisely pinpointed. 

Superstition is part of Christian tradition, not Jewish tradition.

A new physiological definition of death: The invention of the respirator allowed for people to artificially be give oxygen. This meant the stopping of the brain diverged from the stopping of the heart. In the 1950s, a new condition called brain death occurred but cardiac death did not. Legal brain death allowed other organs to be transplanted because those organs were properly functioning. 

If you misdiagnose someone as dead when they are not legally dead, and your misdiagnosis causes death, you have Halachically committed homicide. 

Crossfire with Rabbis Manis Friedman, Yosef Schusterman, YY Schochet

Hating Israel is the new form of hating Jews. Do not accept the narrative of the NYT and CNN.

You can never have too many Sefer Torahs since everything comes from the Torah.

Successful marriage: Never ask why. Woman must be able to trust her husband, the man is the giver who must feel he is bringing something to the marriage. You can’t fool mother nature. 

Doctors tell the rabbis what the medical situation is, then the rabbis consult the Torah to see what is medically permissible. 

God has no grandchildren. Every child is his, irrespective of the child’s relationship with the parent. 

The concept of a Minyan is biblical. 10 men is mandatory. 

Friedman: Prayer can be done by praying on the meaning of the words (Kavanah), or just by the words themselves. Those words are holy themselves.

Shochet: AI: The Jewish perspective is to buy the stocks. ChatGPT can’t give you a hug, show sensitivity, or work on Shabbos. Rabbis are can. 

Schusterman: Humility doesn’t mean going around thinking I’m a nobody. That’s idiotic. Humility is knowing myself, but recognizing everything I have is God-given. Humility is about being better.

Friedman: A man’s wife takes priority before the children and his parents. 

Schusterman: God doesn’t kill or steal. God takes people back because their mission was accomplished. He’s not killing them. Purpose of creation is to advance to the next level. Plant to become animal, animal to become human, human to reach higher. God doesn’t steal because everything is his anyway.

Shochet: You are allowed to destroy if it’s for later reconstruction. That’s how we know God will eventually build the 3rd Beis Hamikdash.

Shochet: The rest of the world will respect Jews who know how to respect themselves.

Friedman: We don’t discuss transgender with our children. We discuss gender. Transgender is for people suffering from dysphoria. It is inappropriate to discuss at the dinner table. To make it a national conversation is really bad.

Schusterman: Righteous non-Jews have a share in the world to come, whether it is a Jewish or non-Jew0sh world to come. Non-Jews should keep the 7 Noahyde laws. Those laws are to civilize the world. You can’t function in a jungle. Jews are to take the civilized world and bring Godliness into the world through Torah and Mitzvahs. We have a different mission from non-Jews, but in both cases our job is to complete our mission.

Friedman: Affection is meant to be personal and intimate and should only happen in private. 

Friedman: No middle ground on transgenderism. You can’t reason with desperation. His program used to make teenage girls to be proud Jews. Now we teach them first to be proud girls. 

Schusterman: If children say they are transgender, something is wrong. You can’t let children do whatever they want and then wonder what happened. Raise healthy children.

What were they thinking? with Rabbi Chaim Block, Chabad South Texas

Moses rarely got angry, but every time he did, there were negative consequences. Nothing good ever comes from anger. 

God gives us opportunities to fail. That doesn’t mean we have to fail. Our obligation is to do our very best to do the right thing. 

The snake is in every one of us. It’s our Yatza Hora. 

What the Torah demands of science

The Torah is not in conflict with science. 

The people who pray the best are people who have jobs. To appreciate that God created the entire world, you have to experience this outside world, from business to medicine to other forms of employment. 

Torah and science usually agree, but sometimes Torah and science disagree. 

Talmudic scholars were not scientists. 

People claim the Torah is non-literal when the literal interpretation makes people uncomfortable. If anything, that makes the Torah itself more likely to be literal. 

Some twist the Torah. Others twist the science. Others smash the whole science-Torah debate with Kabbalah. 

Torah is the blueprint of the world, which is described by science. Science is evidence. Torah is truth.

Ignore the bumper stickers that say “trust science.” No scientist trusts science. Trusting evidence is fine, but rarely is hard evidence offered. Statistics does not offer 100% proof. 

Math has proofs. Science has a preponderance of evidence and reducing the probability of error to near 0.

There is no uncertainty in the Torah. What it says, is. 100% accuracy. Science is collecting evidence. God is a definitive answer. Evidence is only useful if you don’t already know the answer. When evidence contradicts a fundamental principle, throw out the evidence. Jews have a fundamental principle called the Torah.

Science cannot contradict Torah. When it does, the science is wrong. 

Authentic Judaism never compartmentalizes. It does not separate science at work and religion at home. It does not kowtow to nature. 

God is supernatural. We are not bound by nature. God can break the rules and mess with the scientific evidence. God split the sea. 

Theory is less important than practice. Do mitzvahs.

From Sinai to Cyberspace with Rabbi Yosef Shusterman, Chabad North Beverly Hills

The Torah is absolute truth. So the Torah does apply to events today even though it was written thousands of years ago.

God gave Moses generalizations, general rules.                                                                                                                  

Rabbis don’t always answer the question. They answer the person asking the question. 

Torah says you cannot have  minyan or do a Megillah Reading through Zoom. Yet there is a law in the Talmud that says a Shofar cannot be blown in a pit because it creates an echo. You have to hear the original voice, not the echo. So even though the Talmud has no idea what Zoom is, the law still applies.

Abortion and heart transplants?

Torah talks about when life begins and ends. Life begins at conception. Abortion is allowed to save the life of the mother. 

Heart transplants? When does life end? Is it brain death or respiratory death? If respiratory death, then the transplant would be impermissible. If the brain death is the criteria, then the transplant would be allowed since the heart is being removed from a dead person. 

You cannot take a prayerbook into the bathroom, but you can take your cellphone there. 

Surrogate motherhood: If Sarah gives the egg but Rebecca carries the baby, who is the mother? 

Laws of inheritance matter. Who would you say Shiva for? Does Shomer Nagiyah apply? What if the donor mother is Jewish and the carrier of the baby is not Jewish? Or vice versa. 

In general, if either woman is not Jewish, Judaism prefers they convert to Judaism. 

Life does begin at conception, but there are various stages of Halachic life. The true viability of a baby is 30 days after birth. 

JLI Retreat 2023

Prophecy for Beginners with Rabbi Pinchas Taylor

Prophecy is a core belief in Judaism

Prophet: Someone who receives messages from God to transmit to the people. One of 13 pillars of Judaism.

Prophets make corrections in the direction in which Jewish society is moving.

A prophet cannot change any law. The Torah is the law. Only false prophets go against the Torah.

Prophets must be wise, lucid, impeccable character, in full control of one’s evil inclination, always calm and joyous, shun materiality, devoting entire life to serving God. 

God decides who gets to spread his prophecy. 

Prophecies must be specific and unpredictable.

Negative prophecies that don’t come to fruition do not invalidate the prophet. It’s possible the people heeded the prophet’s warning and altered their behavior positively to ward off the catastrophe. 

Israel is a prophecy. Smallest of nations. Hated by others. We were exiled but became an eternal nation. 

Prophecy ended 2300 years ago when the desire for idolatry decreased. This was when the Second Temple was destroyed. 

Our big prophecy is Moshiach. Miracles do not make a prophet. Miracles do not bring Moshiach. 

JC was not a prophet. He did not restore the temple, gather the exiles, or bring about world peace. 

Moshiach must be descendant from King David. JC has no genealogy. JC existed after prophecy ended. JC broke several commandments, including violating Shabbos.

Nostradamus was not a prophet. His predictions were all vaguely worded. He shoots the arrow at the tree and then draws the bullseye around it after. 

False prophecies include Y2K and the Mayan calendar End of Days prediction. 

No, the Simpsons are not prophets. Confirmation bias.    Cherry-picked data.