Is Kidney donation halachally obligatory?

ggdm

Wed, Nov 22 2017, 4:13 pm

You are obligated to save a life if you can do so at no risk or a very small risk to yourself. You are not obligated at all to sacrifice yourself or put yourself into high risk situations for another person. For most situations, the risk will somewhere in between these two extremes, so it is a question of judgement and priorities.

I personally do not believe a person is obligated to donate, because I view the risks of surgery as substantial. And I wouldn't want to make people feel guilty over something that I see as exceptional and difficult. But that is only my unqualified opinion.

Have you heard of HODS, the Halachic Organ Donor Society? I have been at a talk from them, but I cannot remember that he spoke about any obligations. The talk was about arguing that it is allowed and praiseworthy to donate any organ. You may find more information specifically about kidney donation on their web page hods.org

A quick search turned up these articles, but I'm sure there is more:
https://hods.org/pdf/Living%20.....n.pdf
https://hods.org/halachic-issu.....c/#q8

dorala

Wed, Nov 22 2017, 5:36 pm

its def not a halachik obligation. ITS A HUGE MITZVAH.
there are risk involved, and no one can do it if they are not 100% ready, as the recovery can be hard
my husband recently donated a kidney thru renewal to a an unknown donor and it was truly and amazing thing/experience.
dont do it if your not 100000% ready, its hard for the donor and family during the recovery period

dorala

Wed, Nov 22 2017, 5:38 pm

one more thing..
if a a kidney donor at any time later in life needs a kidney he automatically goes to the top of the national waiting list. making his survival chances very great
it rarely happens that one kidney is affected without the other, so 2 would prob not help anyway

amother

Cyan

Wed, Nov 22 2017, 5:49 pm

amother wrote:

Great, so we all disagree with the Psak from a Satmar Rav.

That's the point of this thread. A woman reads an article online and to her it seems that something a rav said is absurd. Whether he may have a source she doesn't know about doesn't matter. Said rav can't defend his position because he isn't on here. What better way to get him bashed than to post here? Under the guise of wanting to know more, of course, not out of disrespect for rabbonim or anything.

southernbubby

Wed, Nov 22 2017, 5:54 pm

amother wrote:

Sorry but you are wrong. I am the OP and never said a word about the fact that he is Satmar and if you read what I said, I never called it absurd. Most of the posters, as well as myself were trying to understand the p'sak. I saw no one bash him but many felt that they would have agreed with earlier poskim who had said that it was not a chiyuv. If the rav had been from Yeshiva University, would it have mattered?

Again, I have the highest regard for Satmar but I also have a serious fear of surgery. When I saw this, I just wondered what the whole thing meant but if you have already decided that I was trying to deride the rav, please link that so that I can edit it. So far, you are the only one who is upset about this post and recently I was bashed for standing up for Chereidim and my thread was locked!

southernbubby

Wed, Nov 22 2017, 6:34 pm

I would add this also. The p'sak of this rav is not specific only to Satmar but to anyone who asks the question of what their obligations are regarding their response to a family member or a community member who needs a kidney transplant. It would have been truly wrong of me to bring up something that a Satmar rav poskened on specifically for the Satmar community but in this case, this is a rav determining the halacha, but for some of us, our ability to respond properly would be in question.

Thank you for putting up with my rant.

southernbubby

Wed, Nov 22 2017, 6:56 pm

PinkFridge wrote:

Can we respectfully question?
I wonder what poskim/ethicists like Rav Asher Weiss and Rav Yitzchak Weiner hold.

Thank you pink fridge. Someday lets get together for coffee. My sincerest reason for posting this had nothing to do with the group that the rav hails from and everything to do with my own personal fears. I would have no problem whatsoever asking a Satmar rav for a p'sak and when our family did have an end of life issue, we were told to call a rav from YU, who happened to be very stringent!

And you know what else, Pink Fridge, I am very upset that this amother said such a terrible thing about me. It is truly lashon hara in my opinion. I hope she deletes her post because it was so not nice!

amother

Slateblue

Wed, Nov 22 2017, 7:57 pm

southernbubby wrote:

not because the rav was Satmar but because it departs from the way the halacha was previously interpreted.

Well more importantly he disagreed with the premises by which the psak was laid.

I mentioned it was a Satmar rav because there are many things from Satmar that many of us posters don’t hold by.

southernbubby

Wed, Nov 22 2017, 8:01 pm

amother wrote:

Well more importantly he disagreed with the premises by which the psak was laid.

I mentioned it was a Satmar rav because there are many things from Satmar that many of us posters don’t hold by.

I thought that the cyan amother was taking aim at me. Was she taking aim at you? I was less interested in the fact that he is a Satmar than I was in the fact that surgery could be halachally required on the behalf of someone else.

PinkFridge

Wed, Nov 22 2017, 8:33 pm

amother wrote:

You know, I get where you're coming from. I think I've seen the kind of stuff you're referring to - note the bolded - though I can't think of anything offhand. You see it in threads where OP just disappear, leaving a train wreck. Southernbubby might seem a bit disruptive in the sense of shaking things up sometimes but by her own words on this thread what you wrote doesn't apply, and I doubt it would on any thread.

amother

Slateblue

Wed, Nov 22 2017, 8:44 pm

southernbubby wrote:

Okay I was responding to you because it seemed that you took issue that fact that in my comment I mentioned that he is a Satmar rav.

The headline of the article you linked to was "Kidney Donations: A Halachic Analysis of a Shocking New Ruling"

Oddly - this article was published in a slightly different form in May 2017.

https://www.theyeshivaworld.co......html

same author wrote about it here - http://5tjt.com/kidney-donatio.....date/ in June 2015.

So the "shocking new ruling" that the author mentions isn't that new any more.

(I was hoping to find a a longer article about the specifics of the new ruling - no luck).

southernbubby

Wed, Nov 22 2017, 9:07 pm

PinkFridge wrote:

Thanks Pink Fridge!!!

southernbubby

Wed, Nov 22 2017, 9:13 pm

amother wrote:

Okay I was responding to you because it seemed that you took issue that fact that in my comment I mentioned that he is a Satmar rav.

The headline of the article you linked to was "Kidney Donations: A Halachic Analysis of a Shocking New Ruling"

Oddly - this article was published in a slightly different from in May 2017.

https://www.theyeshivaworld.co......html

same author wrote about it here - http://5tjt.com/kidney-donatio.....date/ in June 2015.

So the "shocking new ruling" that the author mentions isn't that new any more.

(I was hoping to find a a longer article about the specifics of the new ruling - no luck).

I wasn't sure where you were coming from and thought that you saw my post as an opening to bash Satmar, just like the cyan amother posted. Thanks for pointing out that this p'sak is not new. Yair Hoffman writes about it as though it is breaking news. It may be just a matter of time before donating a kidney is considered no big deal but to me, wisdom teeth removal is a big deal. I am not even sure that the secular world is at the point of seeing kidney donation as no different than minor surgery. Sorry if I was rude to you.

moonstone

Thu, Nov 23 2017, 8:41 am

southernbubby wrote:

but according to the rav in the article it is a chiyuv

So maybe <gasp> that rav is wrong?? That was my first instinct before I read to the end of the thread and found out it was a Satmar rav (I didn't read the article), but my reaction would be the same if it were an MO rav. Are you seriously asking if this is halacha? And if evrryone here said yes, would you go under the knife? I can't imagine anyone following such a "psak", you certainly couldn't convince me that I was obligated to undergo such a difficult operation - or ANY operation! Try using your common sense. No, it is not halachically obligatory.

southernbubby

Thu, Nov 23 2017, 8:58 am

moonstone wrote:

If a person is going to follow this psak, they should ask their personal rebbe or rabbinic leader for a bracha for a good outcome. I think that most Chassidishe rebbes will give brachas even to those who are not their Chassidim but many people will feel more like Hashem is watching out for them if they have a bracha. I also think that rabbonim do take into consideration the way that others are poskening so the fact that this rav is Satmar may not make a difference to those rabbonim who are looking at the way that other rabbonim posken before making a decision. Halacha is halacha and it may only be a shaila when someone who is capable of donating a kidney is hesitant to do so but would change his or her mind if a rav said that they are obligated.

I follow Lubavitch and we never went into surgery without a bracha. I am not sure what the MO and Litvish do but I think that prayers from a tzadik do help and do make a difference.