Jerusalem – Knesset Member Yakov Litzman (United Torah Judaism) intends on appointing a number of rabbis and kashrut supervisors for hospitals across Israel due to problems with Jewish law and kosher impairments he asserts exist in the facilities.
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Litzman is set on choosing on his own the various functionaries, an authority usually held by the Chief Rabbinate, and has recently been engaged in a dispute with Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar on that account.
The deputy health minister informed Rabbi Nissim Karelitz, a leading figure in the ultra-Orthodox community, of the matter in a conversation documented by the ‘haredim’ website.
Ynet learned that Litzman met last week with the chief rabbis and presented them with the issue. He requested the rabbinate to approve additional posts for rabbis and kashruth supervisors and demanded he appoint the candidates himself. Amar and Metzger have yet to approve the request.
Thursday night Litzman paid a visit to several leading rabbis and informed them of his plans. During the visit to Rabbi Karelitz’s house one visitor said, “There’s a problem of non-Kosher food at hospitals as well as problems regarding Shabbat and clerics (who are exposed to impurity of the dead – K.N.)
‘I’ll appoint them’
The deputy minister replied, “I’m going to bring that up, the rabbinate called and asked me. Rabbi Amar and Rabbi Metzger wanted to appoint their own rabbis. I said – No! Rabbis I appoint – not them. I’ll provide them with rabbis and supervisors. No problem.”
On the issue of kashrut he said hospitals will have food approved by the rabbinate, but not mehadrin food.
Litzman also referred to the issue of organ donation, one of the most controversial topics in the medicine-Jewish law dynamic and said, “Kidneys are simple and do not cause problems, heart (donation) I won’t allow since there is a problem as long as the heart is beating.”
Not judging whether Rabbi Litzman, Rabbi Amar, or Rabbi Metzger is correct here, but wouldn’t this create a situation where a future chiloni health minister could overturn all this and institute non-kosher food in all hospitals, with the chief rabbis having no say in the matter? Also, the Knesset approved an organ donation law last year with the support of the Shas party and many in the Dati Leumi community; does Rabbi Litzman does not have the power to overturn the law without another Knesset vote?
This is the typical problem of a charedi in control (or out of control)! What about those poskim who consider irreversible brain stem death as death vis a vis organ harvesting? Litzman is the final posek and can impose his view on other Torah observant cholim whose poskim disagree? Hasn’t the gerrer community done enough damage to Yerushalayim in giving her a secular mayor? First it had to be a Chassidish candidate instead of Lupoliansky and then he (the Gerrer rebbe) brought down the chareidi candidate!
Litzman knows nothing about public health and medicine and even less about kashruth and hashgacha. It is a chilul hashem to allow such a political hack to be making life and death decisions for yidden living in EY. So now someone who needs a heart transplant in EY will have to fly to NYC or London or Frankfurt for the surgery. If anyone dies from this fanatic’s policies their blood will be on his hands.
So he wants to get rid of organ transplants. Everyone should and does have the right to say they don’t want to be a donor and therefore never a donee, and to be maintained on artificial life support as long as possible. However, many people want to be donors and many people take great comfort in knowing that if they become brain dead, that their organs will be used to save others and many families take comfort in having their loved one’s organ’s save others if that was the loved one’s wishes. It would be horrible if that option was taken away from people who want to save lives and if people were not given the option of life saving transplants if they believe in organ donation after brain death.