Rabbis and ethicists say physician-assisted suicide
is never acceptable under Jewish law.

ADAM MARCUS Special to The Jewish News

Illustration by STEPHANE DENIS

ichigan has been getting
a lot of dubious press
these days. From convict-
ed Oklahoma City
bombing conspirator Terry Nichols to
the furor over sport-utility vehicles, the
state has had its share of infamy.
But the man who has most consis-
tently grabbed attention is Dr. Jack
Kevorkian. For good reason. "Jack" as
he is mock-affectionately known, or
"Dr. Death" as he is crudely called, has
been branded as everything from hero
to maniac during his crusade to make
the state safe for those men and, more
frequently, women who want to end
their lives with the help of a doctor.
The state Legislature is poised to
take up two bills, one from the House,
the other from the Senate, that attempt
to craft a policy for assisted suicide.
Both are, in spirit, designed to handcuff
Ke- vorkian. The Senate bill would make
it a felony for a doctor to help a patient
take his own life. The House version,
on the other hand, would place on the
ballot this fall a proposal to regulate the
practice, making physician-assisted sui-
cide permissible for the terminally ill
under some circumstances, but only by
licensed health professionals — which
Kevorkian is not.
By his own estimate earlier this win-
ter, Kevorkian claims to have participat-
ed in as many as 100 deaths.
Depending on one's position, that
either makes him one of the most pro-
lific agents of mercy in history, or one
of the most prodigious killers.
For Jews, doctor-assisted suicide can
be a particularly troublesome issue, but
not for the obvious reasons.
"In terms of Halachah (Jewish law),
there really is not a very big difference
between suicide and murder," said
Orthodox Rabbi Shmuel Irons. "In
fact, it's generally viewed that suicide is
a form of murder. We cannot take a
life."
Rabbi Irons, dean of the Kollel
Institute in Oak Park, said that much
of the reason for Judaism's strong stance
against assisted suicide — and suicide

in general — flows from the conviction
that "it's better [to have] one moment
of doing mitzvahs in this world than all
the pleasures of the next world." In
other words, he said, "We're not here to
enjoy life, we're here to do positive
things." By killing oneself, one deprives
the rest of the world of a source of
goodness, no matter how small.
Rabbi Avraham Jacobovitz, of the
Orthodox educational and outreach
organization Machon L'Torah, agrees.
"Across the board, Judaism is against
assisted suicide. That's clear. The ques-
tion is, in cases of extreme suffering,
when and how far should a person go
to extend that life? In practical halachic
terms," he said, "there's no case that I
know of that anyone would ever allow
[assisted suicide]. But if people suffer in
a way that's unbearable and that [doc-
tors] have to take heroic measures,
those are the areas of discussion" worth
having.
In February 1996, with Kevorkian
facing trial for his role in the deaths of
two "patients" (and with yet another
trial scheduled only months later),
,assisted suicide received an unequivocal
rejection from Dstroit's largest
Orthodox group. Rabbi Elimelech
Silberberg, a board member of the
Council of Orthodox Rabbis, remarked
then, "Mercy killing is a non-issue —
it's murder."
Denomination seems to have little
bearing on the Jewish view of assisted
suicide.
"From a Jewish perspective, it would
seem very clear, at least at the present
time, that assisted suicide would not fall
within the permissible limits of Jewish
practice," said Rabbi Daniel B. Syme of
Temple Beth El, the Reform congrega-
tion in Bloomfield Township. Saving a
life (pikuach nefesh) takes precedence
over virtually every other dictate,
including observing the Sabbath, he
said.
The dying need to learn that they
have options beyond suicide when it
comes to choosing how to die. On the
rare occasions that Syme counsels peo-

ple who are looking to escape a painful
illness by committing suicide, he urges
them to write a living will, clear
instructions to their family and physi-
cian about how to handle heroic mea-
sures to save their life.
Of course, as Syme points out,
Halachah is anything but concrete, and
with all the attention assisted suicide is
receiving today, scholars will have
ample fodder on which to ruminate.
"Jewish law continues to change and
grow," he said, and one day assisted sui-
cide in some form might fall under its
umbrella.
To be sure, some point to the
Talmud and other sources for evidence
that suicide and assisted suicide are, in
certain cases, acceptable. After all, Saul
threw himself on his sword rather than
succumb to the misery of a prolonged,
torturous death at the hands of the
Philistines. Avoiding degradation in this
way (oni uvizayon) is not suicide
because, simply put, desperate measures
deserve desperate action. From there,
it's not such a leap to hold that causing
the death of someone in such abysmal,
final pain (the Hebrew term for this is
terefah, versus the goses, or person who
is terminally ill but not close to death)
is not only excusable, but to be encour
aged.
In a 1997 treatise "On the
Treatment of the Terminally Ill," the
Central Conference of American
Rabbis (Reform) declared that such
interpretations, which attempt to cir-
cumvent Halachah by calling on Jewish
tradition, fall short of the mark.
"Indeed, the message which emerges
from traditional halachic thought on
this subject is quite dear - sand uniform:-
We do almost anything to relieve the
suffering of the terminally ill, but we do
not kill them and we do not help them
kill themselves," the treatise stated.
Moreover, the CCAR authors con-
tinued, "We do not believe that the
existence of pain and suffering consti-
tutes a sufficient Jewish justification for
killing a human being in the name of
compassion ... It remains a fact ... that

2/20
1998

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