New York – An Israeli woman with a rare blood type, who was declared brain-dead while visiting a New Jersey friend, has beaten all odds and survived the trip back to Israel where her final wish of donating her organs has been honored.
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The TIMES OF ISRAEL (http://bit.ly/Zl5l5X) is reporting that 64 year-old Sima Avishar, a former nurse from Tel Aviv, collapsed last week in New Jersey from a brain seizure, brought on by a previously undetected blood defect.
Avishar clung to life on life-support for a week while her children wrangled with mountains of bureaucratic red tape, an Israeli airline strike, and a race against the clock in order to get their mother back home alive.
After a week-long ordeal, that included negotiations involving the Foreign Ministry, New York’s Israeli Consulate, hospital administrators and insurance company representatives, and the striking El Al workers’ committee, Sima Avishar’s children, Miya and Sharon, finally got her back to Israel alive, where her organs were scheduled to be transplanted Tuesday evening.
is this halachically permitted?
Amazing. What a zchus and true chesed she did.
Fishes Litzman, an Emesdiker Tzadik!! May the Zechus of your chessed open the door for the NYPD red tape!
An LA fa
I thought you aren’t allowed to do that. (Except for kidney donation because you can live with one kidney)
She is a nurse who chose to save lives of others even after death! There are no words to describe such acts of reaching true hessed for other people. I have to seriously think about finally changing my organ donor status on my DL when I go up for renewal.
…. but I hope to take it all with me
120.
You are certainly allowed if there are known recipients and it is life and death
The article says “finally got her back to Israel alive,” so if she’s alive how can her organs be donated?
This was arranged by a Frum org so I am assuming that there wasn’t halachik issues…
The NYPD needs people like you! Your gona win with g-d help!!
The guy in the picture got fired from the NYPD for having a beard. Can’t wait till he gets back in!
What did the TSA do? Did they frisk her? I know I am being sarcastic,but you never know what the sharp people at the TSA could come up with.
It is a very very big machlokes whether this is permitted because most major poskim say that braindeath is not death – note the article says she lived long enough, I.e. she was still alive and was killed to harvest organs. Halachically, one may donate if the person is actually dead, if the organs will be used right away to save a life. Majority of the time, donated organs are not used and are discarded. Since that is the case, it is very tough to be a donor. There is a halachic organ donor society but it is controversial. But since we have no sanhedrin, every jew should follow their own rabbi. There are poskim who even consider brain death to be death, which would permit this, but that is a minority within a minority, but the students of that rabbi should follow him, because we have no sanhedrin
I think if its to save a yid and right away I assume its alowed.
@6:
What gives you the right to even think such a thing? I am currently hospitalized with terminal kidney cancer and I find your narrow-minded and self-satisfied thoughts (even taking your assumed yiddishkei
There’s a halachic concept of heroic suicide. She said in advance, if I have irreversible and total loss of brain function, I want to be recognized as brain dead, and my organs donated. Rav Moshe Sternbuch, among others, has written on this.
It seems there many here that think this is allowed.
This is very complicated and in the majority of cases this is NOT allowed as the heart is still beating. Ask one’s local Rav.
London Beis Din has ruled it is forbidden to take organs unless respiratory death has taken place, so such a donation as mentioned here is forbidden and is a safek of murder RL.
While the medical and legal establishment accept brain-stem death as death, and while the Chief Rabbinate of Israel accept brain-stem death as death (Rav Amar, Rav Ovadaih Yosef, Rav Avraham Shapiro z”l) there are rabbis that disagree. You can watch videos of different poskim and read their articles on the website of the Halachic Organ Donor Society, at http://www.hods.org
The article is very disturbing. As #14 says, there is a big machlokes whether what doctors term “brain death” is considered death al pi halakha. If it is not death, then by taking out the organs you are committing murder, and it is absolutely forbidden, even to save another life. Killing one person to save another, even if the person being killed will likely only live a short time, is completely assur.
Those who permit this do so on the basis that brain death is death al pi halakha. So the only issue is nivul ha mes. THAT could be permitted to save another life, if the benefit is immediate (lefaneinu), which today it often is.
(The one exception to this is kidney donation, which you can do live, and still live for many years.)
The article is disturbing because it says the woman was pronounced “brain dead” in New Jersey, but then it says she “survived,” “clung to life” and “lived” long enough to make it back to Israel to donate the organs. So which is it — did she die in New Jersey, or did she live to make it back to Israel? Sounds like they want to have it both ways.
it seems unclear as to what exactly was her status upon arriving in Israel. Until that is clearly defined, all the above discussants are talking to the wind.
baruch dayan emes…too late now to argue about details. she saved numerous lives. totally unselfish decision.