In a December CJN cover story, Barbara Silverstein wrote about the intersection of Jewish law and physician-assisted death (PAD). At the time, Quebec had already adopted a law legalizing PAD, and the Supreme Court of Canada was preparing to issue its own ruling on the matter. Now that the court has struck down the ban on PAD in a unanimous decision, it seems appropriate to revisit Silverstein’s findings.
According to Jewish law, her piece explains, there appears to be no room for discussion on the legality of PAD: the answer is a resounding “no,” and two rabbis quoted by Silverstein make that abundantly clear. Rabbi Ronald Weiss, the director of chaplaincy services at Jewish Family & Child in Toronto, tells Silverstein, “It’s murder to help someone die… Judaism teaches that every moment of life is precious and of infinite value.” Rabbi Michael Dolgin, spiritual leader of Toronto’s Temple Sinai, puts it even more bluntly: “From a Jewish perspective, we can’t even talk about it.”
But even if there’s no denying that the Torah and generations of religious lawmakers have traditionally stood against physician-assisted death, Silverstein suggests there might be more to the story. Some argue that the Judaism of the 21st century should take into account the same social, cultural, and medical trends that contributed to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn its own ban on PAD. In the 21 years since the court last ruled on the subject, public opinion has changed dramatically, and the new decision clearly reflects that reality. Perhaps the Jewish approach to PAD should, too.
Indeed, while he affirmed Judaism’s traditional legal consensus against PAD, Rabbi Dolgin added “but that finality is an inadequate Jewish response,” especially given the advances of modern medicine. “There are many situations now where people’s existence is extended to a point that we must ask if we are extending life or if we are extending suffering?” he asks Silverstein. “When there is no hope of recovery and extending the pain amounts to suffering, it’s a valid Jewish legal and ethical question to ask whether trying to extend that situation as many minutes and seconds as possible is the right Jewish response.”
Still, some argue an official Jewish alternative to PAD already exists. Baycrest’s Dr. Michael Gordon, a CJN columnist, tells Silverstein “that good palliative care within the scope of medical practice can alleviate much of a patient’s suffering and is in accordance with Jewish law.” If the Jewish thing is to encourage life, not death, PAD legislation could promote the exact opposite. By that account, physician-assisted death makes “it too easy for people with severe disabilities to give up on living when they could have productive lives,” Montreal’s Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz argues in Silverstein’s piece.
PAD will soon be legal in Canada, but for many Jewish Canadians, and many of their religious fellow citizens, there’s another set of laws to consider, and the law of the land and the law of God appear out of sync in this case. As Silverstein’s piece hints, though, there may be more than one Jewish approach to PAD. Death is absolute, but religion might not have to be. — YONI
