Tiberias – The family court in Tiberias has forced a 14-year-old boy suffering from lymphatic leukemia to undergo chemotherapy even though he and his parents have refused to allow him to undergo additional cancer treatment at a hospital in Haifa.
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The court stated that the boy had not been received from his parents accurate information on his chances for recovery if he underwent chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
The success rate for blood cancers in children and teenagers is very high, and the boy’s blood cancer receded. But the parents refused continuing treatment to keep the cancer in remission, saying that their family rabbi instructed them not to allow him to have the treatments because he would recover without them.
The parents told the court they were afraid their son would die from the therapy and that if the police came after them, they would take him to a hiding place. The boy said his previous treatments were very painful and that he preferred to “go home and die.”
Content is provided courtesy of the Jerusalem Post
There’s never an easy answer to this when the treatments are so horrendously painful (and sometimes, that’s sometimes, they, indeed, are).
But the claim that their rabbi “instructed them not to allow him to have the treatments because he would recover without them” destroys any credibility of the parents. Oh, and the rabbi, too.
This so called “Rabbi” needs another profession. He should imm be fired and put in jail for 30 days for terrible advice.
Leave the doctors in charge of medicine and the rabbi in charge of his family only.
Story makes no sense.
Parents say boy is not sick.
Boy says he’d rather stay home and die.
The Rebbe has das Torah. He knows what is best, why else would the parents have sought his advice.
There was a chushava rav in Flatbush, the machaber of שׁיורים מצוים בּהלכה who chose not to recieve chemo. The circumstances was very different. A) he choose it for himslef not yenim. B) he was old and not a child C) Perhaps his machla was less curable.
But my point is you can’t say that a rav is totally crazy for not opting for chemo.
Reply to #1 and #2
It is far more likely/logical that the family lied about the rabbi’s supposed psak. People lie to get what they want. I highly doubt that a Rabbi told them to withhold this treatment.
But I know
On this site its a knee jerk reaction to believe the worst of our rabbunim
The family fabricated the Rabbi…. If it would indeed be a Rabbis advice, why don’t they name the Rabbi, and why doesn’t that Rabbi come out to explain his stance…
People should have the right to choose for themselves the kind of medical treatment they want to have whether conventional or alternative. It is well known that chemo can also kill a patient. It is in Hashem’s Hands whether or not someone will live or die, we just have to make the hishtadlus and do what we feel is best for us and leave the rest up to Hashem..