נתיחת מתים

00:01 Speaker 1 Okay, should we start? We usually don't start-

00:04 Speaker 2 Yeah

00:04 Speaker 1 -on time, but there's people here, so let's, let's start.

00:06 Speaker 2 We could start on time if there's people. Maybe people will come on time.

00:08 Speaker 1 these people. Okay. Doing something pretty different today. We're basically using the Rebbe as pretext to talk about something else entirely, which I think is allowed. Uh, so the letter that we have today is the Rebbe not answering a question, followed by a discussion we'll have about what the answer to the question is. That's the way we're going. So if you open up your Igress or you look at the page I gave you, it's at the top of the page, Kuch Mem Beis, and the, uh, the letter there is the tiny one at the top. So it says, I can't, I can't wait to, uh, I can't, um, I can't wait to give this answer. We have to s-- we have to hurry things up. If you look down in the note, there's a background here. Take that-- take a look down in the note. I think you, you, you have-- you should have notes on your PDF, right?

00:48 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

00:48 Speaker 1 At the very bottom of the PDF, it says, there's a, um, there's-- it's written in the Rebbe's handwriting, It's a question from Rabbi Isaac Levi. I don't know how to pronounce his last name. Okay. He'd asked a quest-

01:03 Speaker 2 Audiologist.

01:04 Speaker 1 Huh? He wasn't-- He might have been a doctor. I don't know. He asked this question. These doctors, they wanted to take there was a death of a child and the doctors wanted to take a needle and stick that needle inside the corpse of this child and, uh, to pull out a little bit of the liver of the child who was sick with a certain mortal disease. They say, they wanted to figure out the root of the sickness that he has. So they wanted to do something like an autopsy, not exactly an autopsy. They had a child who had died, and they wanted to put a needle in and pull out a bit of the liver sample, it looks like. I don't know why exactly. I don't know what disease you'd wanna pull a liver sample for, but they wanted to sample-

01:46 Speaker 2 Postmortem, postmortem biopsy.

01:49 Speaker 1 Yeah, some kind of a postmortem biopsy. That's probably a nicer way to say it than an autopsy. They wanted to pull a little bit out so that they could look at it because they wanted to know the root of that disease and possibly save someone else's life by doing this because there was another child who they thought had a similar disease, and they thought that if they pulled out a sample from this kid's liver who had died, they might be able to save the other child. However, in that chi-- in that latter child's case, it's unclear whether he was, uh, whether he was in danger of dying. That child's situation was not so-- was not necessarily lethal, not necessarily mortal. So it's a, it's a complicated question. We have to, uh... Huh? Did somebody wanna say something or people just didn't turn off their microphone?

02:28 Speaker 2 Please mute yourself so you're getting feedback.

02:31 Speaker 1 Unless you wanna say something, then you don't have to mute yourself. So the question is, the background of this letter is somebody writes to the Rebbe saying that they wanna know his-- they want-- they need advice. They want to, uh, the doctors want to do something like, I think, uh, Yossi Pal's called it a postmortem biopsy. They wanna take a little bit out of a body of a child who had died in order to figure out what the disease is exactly, so they can possibly help another child who might need this to save his life but doesn't seem to be as critically ill. So you can already tell this is a complicated medical ethics Shailah. And if you know the Rebbe's character, the, the Rebbe does not usually answer these questions. The Rebbe usually says, The Rebbe does that exactly here. He says, "I don't wanna delay anything." There's a real back and forth about this s-s-topic among the Acharonim. It's well known and it's big. The Rebbe here is emphasizing this isn't something you can just brush under the rug. I think a lot of people would have responded to this, maybe not a lot of Rabbonim, but a lot of individuals, they get a question, "Can I save a per-- can I save a child's life by putting a little needle inside the corpse of some other person?" You'd say, "Obviously, it's I'm gonna save a child's life." It's, it's not even on the ta-- And this isn't even really, I'm not defiling

03:32 Speaker 1 a body. I'm just taking a little needle and putting it in. The Rebbe says, "Be cautious." It's well known and it's big. It's enormous. This is an enormous Sugia, and it's not at all simple. And certainly lately, it's a very big deal. Certainly, it's become an even bigger deal in Eretz Yisrael. I don't know what he's referring to, but I guess what he's referring to is that autopsies, once Eretz Yisrael started doing autopsies, it became a, it became a Shailah and It used to be that every time we-- every time Jews did any work on cadavers, they were basically working with Goyim. What Jew donates their body to science? Virtually none. But with the advent of the modern state, a lot of, a lot of interesting problems came up that we'd never seen in Jewish history before, and one of them was that all of the doctors in Israel, effectively, almost all of them, were in almost all cases training on Jewish cadavers. So that led to a whole bunch of Shailahs and Shulans on the question of whether you can use a Jewish cadaver for medical training. I-I-- that might be what he's talking about. Anyway, he says, when it comes to practical Psak on this issue, you're gonna have to ask Rabbonim. So Rebbe says you're gonna have to ask Rabbonim. What do we get from the letter itself? I think we get a few things from the letter itself. Thing number one, don't, uh, don't dismiss these issues. This is something very

04:37 Speaker 1 important. I think thing number two that we get out of this is that, uh, it's unique the problems going on in Eretz Yisrael, and that's changed the calculus a little bit. We have to be thinking about this differently than we did previously now that we have a modern state with people who are on a large scale using cadavers and donating cadavers. And thing number three that I think we get out of this letter specifically is the Rebbe's go-to on Shailas like this, a group of Rabbonim who really know what they're talking about need to be asked for something this complicated. Any questions on the letter or comments on the letter? I have a considerable amount of, of supplement for this, but that's the letter. Okay, so moving on from there, um, I wanted to use this as a, uh, as a-- like I said, I'd like to use this as a pretext to get into this dis-discussion of autopsies. I think we can do autopsy Halacha in ten minutes. This is my theory. So I-- and now we only have eight left, but I, I think we can. Um, why can't we just go around defiling bodies? Uh, it's not polite. But in addition to it not being polite, there are three major Halachic problems with defiling a body. Uh, first of... Really, all of them are probably derived. So the first one that comes up in Poskim is the We're obligated to bury bodies, and we're not allowed to delay. So the Gemara Masach

05:42 Speaker 1 and Hedgen Mem Bet. Peretz, did you get to Mem Bet yet in your shiur? Peretz will tell me.

05:49 Speaker 2 Last week. Last week we did this Halacha.

05:51 Speaker 1 You saw this already. So you saw this Gemara.

05:52 Speaker 2 Yeah.

05:52 Speaker 1 There's he says that somebody's who is the So a person's if they don't bury somebody immediately. So leaving over a body even overnight might be and Rambam-

06:07 Speaker 2 It's in regards to the, uh, it's in regards to, to hanging someone.

06:10 Speaker 1 Yeah, but Rambam, Rambam, virtually all Poskim understand this is for That you have to-

06:14 Speaker 2 Right

06:14 Speaker 1 ...bury somebody in that That's not just a Minag Uh, Tzes Yom Tov adds that there's not necessarily a chiyuv to bury less than a kazayis of a meat. This becomes important 'cause especially when we're talking about a biopsy here, where we're taking a small piece of liver, that would probably be less than a kazayis. There's also a Mishnah in Melachim, which is very much on the fringes, that says that the chiyuv is only rosh ve'ruba. You only really have to bury someone's head and the majority of their body, but fingers and toes and other side pieces, you don't necessarily have to bury. In any case, problem number one with every autopsy and every organ donation in this entire sugya is always gonna be chiyuv kevara. And we're gonna have to get around that, that we do need to bury these bodies. One of the ways that we get around it when we do allow organ donations and things like that is we put in some sort of a condition that the body that, uh, the body part needs to be buried eventually when people are done with it. But there's, there's ways around it, but that's the first problem. The second big problem that comes up in autopsies and organ donations and the like is hana'ah min hameit. So you're allowed to benefit from a dead body. That's the Gemara in Masechet Pesah. And most poskim also understand that as being deraysa. That, uh, that-- And it's brought in, brought in, uh, Yera Dayah in

07:12 Speaker 1 three forty-nine. I mean, Shulchan Aruch in Yera Dayah is brought as a deraysa. So it's a deraysa that we're not allowed to benefit from a dead body. There are also some ways around this. There's a Sedei Chesh, and those who listen to our shiurim know that every time anybody has the name Yechiel, he gets special coverage. So, uh, the Sedei Chesh's name was Yanky Yechiel Weinberg, so he gets a, he gets a special shout-out. He also gave the Rebbe semicha. Another story, another time. The Sedei Chesh based on a teses says that there's no issur hana'ah when it comes to skin or any external organs. That's not really gonna help us out of the liver biopsy issue, but it's something to keep in your back pocket. It's also worth knowing that most Rishonim disagree with this teses, and the Temach Tzedek B'feirush disagrees with this teses, or at least it doesn't take the psak of this teses and takes the psak of the other Rishonim. So we're not gonna side with this Sedei Chesh, but it's something to be aware of that there are possibly ways out of the hana'ah problem. Excuse me, I can't clear my throat today. Most poskim, and there's a nice long list, the Chalkaz Yaakov, Rav Moshe in an, in one of the Igros Moshe, they hold that studying a cadaver is hana'ah, so we're not gonna be able to say that looking at a liver sample doesn't count as hana'ah, um, because studying a cadaver is hana'ah. Certainly, studying

08:14 Speaker 1 the cadaver for a possible medical intervention is going to count as a benefit. There is a Mishbetot Uziel that we might be able to rely on, one of the early poskim, um, of, of this era, that says that there's no issur hana'ah for studying a body, but that's, uh, that's gonna be on the fringes. So we have two problems, right, with autopsies. Problem number one, we need to bury the body, and problem number two, we're not allowed to benefit from the body. Problem number three is going to be our biggest issue, and it's nivul meis. There's a Gemara in Baba Batra, kuf num dalet, that tells a story of somebody who wanted to figure out a transaction. Um, it's a long story short. I can just read it, actually. They asked, uh, the-- A, a family came, a family from Bnei Brak. They came and said that some kid had sold all of their father's property and died. His family members come, and they say he sold all the property before he was, uh, of age of majority. He was a child when he sold the property, so the sale should be retroactively undone. They s-- The people who bought the property go, "No, he was an adult. He was a, he was of sound mind. He sold the stuff." So they suggested exhuming his body and proving that the kid, that the child was a kid. Uh, Rabbi Akiva said you can't do that because it would be nivul. So this is also deraysa

09:11 Speaker 1 according to most poskim. People understand this to be deraysa too. And, uh, there's a Yaviah Amer that we might be able to use. There's a Yaviah Amer who says that nivul only applies when we defile a corpse for no reason. But if we have a very good reason, for example, saving somebody's life or trying to matter a nagona, maybe it's not nivul. So in summary, there are three deraysa issues with just, uh, with, with doing an autopsy. And, uh, this one the Rebbe says, "Yadua v'gadla," that this is a big sugya. He's talking about three possible deraysas, three possible series of deraysa when it comes to tampering with a corpse. Now, you may ask, and you would be correct to ask, um, what should this have to do with pikuach nefesh? Once we have a potential life-saving intervention on the table, ze, all I have to do is defile a body, violate a life, say, on the Torah in order to save someone's life. We're deraba every life, say, on the Torah to save somebody's life, except for the big three. We give them a chal Shabbos to save somebody's life. Why isn't this just a case of pikuach nefesh's deraba? Well, in the Rebbe's letter, one reason that might be is because they specify at the bottom that they're not sure this is actually a life threat. There's actually a deeper reason. The Nedivi Yehuda brings this very nicely. A-am I allowed to light a fire on Shabbos because somebody might get sick? Obviously

10:13 Speaker 1 not, right? I can't light a fire on Shabbos on the off chance that someone might get sick. So there's a rule about every pikuach nefesh deraba alai say that every time a life threat pushes off a mitzvah in the Torah, that only applies if it's lifaneinu, if it's right here in front of us. If the life threat's happening right now, I can violate Shabbos to save someone's life now, but I can't violate Shabbos on the off chance that someone's life might need to be saved at some point in the future. That's not-

10:35 Speaker 3 So wait, wait, question.

10:36 Speaker 1 Yes.

10:37 Speaker 3 If a person's in a house with, let's say, a baby or an elderly person, and the heat shuts and it's ten degrees outside, and they will get very sick if you don't figure it out, is that considered pikuach nefesh?

10:50 Speaker 1 At some point. Not, not necessarily immediately.

10:52 Speaker 3 You have to wait till they're, like, sleeping, or can you take preemptive action?

10:56 Speaker 1 No, you don't wait until they're close to dying, certainly not. You don't wait until they're even close to getting sick. But there's also a point at which it's not lifaneinu. So this is something that would have to be-- this is something that'd be analyzed on a case by case, but I would probably say that a house retains all of its heat for a certain period of time, right? So you probably are losing almost no degrees of temperature. Once it gets cold enough that it's bothering anybody, I would say you'd have to turn on the heat to help the child. But lifaneinu needs to be clear and present. It can't be totally preemptive, is the point. Um, and so based on the-

11:23 Speaker 3 But some, but somewhat preemptive, yes.

11:25 Speaker 1 Somewhat preemptive. It has to be somewhat preemptive because you don't wanna wait. It's a good, it's a good point. You can't wait till people are on the cliff, you know?

11:31 Speaker 3 Right. Right.

11:31 Speaker 1 But it has to be-- It can't be totally preemptive. And based on this, the Nedivi Yehuda was asked specifically if we can, um, if we can, uh, do an autopsy to learn why a certain procedure failed so that in the future people can do the procedure better. They did a surgery in the time of the Nedivi Yehuda. It didn't work. They wanted to check the body and see if they could, to figure out what mistake they made so that they'd be able to do the procedure better in the future. And he said, "No, no, it's not lifaneinu. If we had a sick person right now who needed the procedure, sure, open up the body, but there's no one here right now who needs it." So he didn't allow it based on that. Rav Moshe, in his teshuvah on this topic that you guys have in your background notes, takes issue with this in modern times and says, "Nowadays, we relate information very quickly. There's sick people all over the world, and if we learn something from an autopsy, we can make a phone call and right now help somebody who's sick right now." So Rav Moshe wants to say that maybe we're always in a state of lifaneinu in this modern connected world. But it's, uh, it's worth knowing that pikuach nefesh is not gonna be automatically deraba for this unless it's lifaneinu. Let's say that we have something that's not lifaneinu, can we build a hetter? Or if it's not necessarily the koach nefesh,

12:27 Speaker 1 can we build a heter from these pieces? Would we have been able-- Is, is it possible that, that this person went on to ask Rabbanim and that they told him it was okay? Um, and yeah, it's possible. I'll tell you why it's possible. Uh, we can get around the kavura issue using the tesis yamtiv. We're definitely dealing with less than a kazayis. So we probably don't have a hiyuv kavura de'oraysa on this piece of liver. Uh, it's hard to imagine they would take a whole kazayis of liver in order-- of a child in order to se-analyze it. So you're probably not gonna have the de'oraysa on the kavura. When it comes to the hanaa, you're gonna get stuck. Uh, we, we can probably use the Mishbetei Uziel in a pinch who says there's no isur hanaa, and maybe there's an opinion of hanaa shelo kedarka that shows up in some poskim, but you're gonna get stuck on the hanaa. There aren't a lot of poskim who want to allow, uh, getting hanaa from a meis unless it's lefaneinu and a p'ruach nefesh. Uh, the nivul, we could use the Evei Eimer and say that we have good reason, and so it's not nivul. But again, most poskim aren't going-- We're gonna be using minority opinions the whole way through. Um, and there's a Nishmas Avraham that says that Rav Moshe's wrong about communications being faster and that information's still delayed and that nothing's lefaneinu unless we have a sick person in the room. So we're,

13:25 Speaker 1 we're, we're more or less in a hole on this, and this is probably why the Rebbe says that it is a deep and difficult sugya. Um, you're going to have to rely on a leniency across just about every one of these major de'oraysa categories and then kind of creative interpretation of lefaneinu in order to be able to allow this. Um, there are some practical heterim we could use. One of them is entirely unideal, but I couldn't resist mentioning it 'cause it's in a Benei Yodah and it's, uh, inappropriate. Here's your inappropriate Benei Yodah of the day. Do not share with your friends. It is a Gemara in Masechet Pesachim forty-nine B says it is mutar to tear open an ama aritz like a fish. And this is actually, says the Benei Yodah, how Chazal knew so much anatomy. They would grab people who didn't know Torah and tear them apart and figure out how their bodies work. It's a Benei Yodah. I didn't write it. He did. And, uh, therefore, there is some poskim, there's Opinion C and others who wanted to say that we can do an autopsy on anybody who's not a talmid chacham. Figure out they're a talmid chacham. If not, tear them apart. There's no nivul issue. I don't think that's the heter we're going to rely on today, but I couldn't resist introducing it. Um, the Rav Moshe's teshuvah that I sent you that you can look at in the thing says that laparoscopy, la-la-laparoscopic procedures or any procedure that

14:26 Speaker 1 you do on a living person is not nivul because it's not nivul on a living person. So this is definitely going to be very helpful. This is maybe where we could have found a heter for the biopsy. Now, biopsy is something we do on living people all the time. The way that they do autopsies, they cut the person shoulders to the center. It's a Y-shaped cut. It's not the way that you operate on a living person. It's absolutely a form of nivul. Whereas a respectful form of removing a little piece of the body to check something is something that we do in a way of kovid in de'orecha etz all the time. So Rav Moshe wants to say that for small biopsies, it's not a nivul issue. The, uh, Nishmas-- I saw, I saw people leaning forward. I wondered if anybody had a question. I'll continue. The Nishmas Avraham says, uh, any biopsy and even intubation is, we can be meikel on because these are things that we do on the living. So Nishmas Avraham takes it, takes it, Rav Moshe and expands it and says, any procedure we do on living people that's considered mekabed et we can do on a, we can do on a corpse, and it's not considered nivul. It's not considered, uh, defiling that corpse. Um, Dr. Steinberg says that you can take less than a kazayis-

15:20 Speaker 2 Why would we call it mekabed et? It could be it's very not mekabed et, but the living person would rather be, have himself a little cut open be-- to save his own life, but-

15:28 Speaker 1 I think these are procedures that we don't consider humiliating to the person. I mean, no-nobody goes in for a biopsy and says they, they humiliated me. I'm not sure you-- For example, I mean, I'm, I'm not sure I'm right about this in my, my, my-

15:38 Speaker 2 Could you open heart surgery, would you, would, would that open heart surgery be considered nivul?

15:43 Speaker 1 I don't know, but there are certainly procedures that we do think of as nivul. For example, um, a rectal exam. I think that, I think that people in their lives, they do them 'cause they need to have them, but I don't think anybody considers it, considers it a, a mekabed et procedure. Whereas-

15:59 Speaker 2 Right.

15:59 Speaker 1 Uh, whereas, whereas taking a small s-- whereas taking a small blood sample is something that people do all the time, and that's very honorable. Um, that's what-- that's my impression from the lecture. Look in the Igros Moshe that I dropped in the group, and we can argue about it. That there's a distinction there about what's considered honorable. But out of-- But the, uh, Nishmas Avraham and others want to expand that to be just about any procedure we do on living people, even ones that aren't necessarily honorable. Anytime you do a procedure on a living person, they want to allow it 'cause they say that's not nivul. Nivul is, uh, nivul is throwing a body around, not doing a medical procedure on it that you would do if they were still alive. Just don't treat them like they're dead. Treat them like a living person, and you seem to avoid the problem according to a lot of the more modern poskim. Um, so Dr. Steinberg says anytime you take less than a kazayis, it's fine, and anytime you do something you do on the living, it's fine. That's combining two heterim we talked about earlier. And he does hold that all surgical openings are asur unless there's a cheilef lefaneinu, so he wouldn't allow normal autopsies. But in this case, where there's a biopsy through a needle, he probably would allow it. Um, oh, in conclusion from the Rebbe's letter, the Rebbe says we're gonna have to talk to the Rabbanim and look at Merei HaRa

16:55 Speaker 1 and look at the poskim and try to figure this out using an igrot Rabbanim. Obviously, we are not an igrot Rabbanim, and this is not something that we're doing today, solving the Rebbe's question in a letter. But in order to get an idea of what the Rebbe means when he says that this is a, this is an enormous sugya that needs to be thought about very carefully, we've discussed that there's three possible de'oraysas on the table and that there are many heterim for each of these de'oraysas, but all of them require, uh, a little bit of footwork that we don't necessarily want to do. I think we made a pretty strong case that in this particular instance, you probably could have found a heter from no less than Rav Moshe Feinstein himself, who has a letter saying that you can do laparoscopies, biopsies, and minor procedures that remove only a small amount. So if the person then went on to ask Rav Moshe, I think I know what answer they would have gotten. But other than that, it's a, it's, it's a question mark in the annals of Chabad history exactly what happened next in the story. That's all I've got for today. Questions, comments, complaints?