In honor of his yahrtzeit, 20 Adar I 5755
Recently Yated Ne'eman received a letter which Maran
HaRav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach zt"l wrote to a ranking
physician to protest his conduct. Though he had served for
many years as the rabbinical authority of Shaarei Tzedek, he
resigned from his position. The letter speaks for itself:
"Dear Dr. _______,
"In this letter I would like to express my heartfelt
sentiments.
"To begin with, I would like to stress that I have heard [you
are] an honest man, and in [your] conversations with me I
received the same impression. Therefore I hope these words,
issuing from a pained heart, will enter [your] heart as well
and will not be like a voice crying in the wilderness. I
thought of approaching [you] and I also thought there might
be no benefit at all, but [eventually I decided] to speak and
relieve [my anxiety].
"[You] know that based on [your] promises to us on several
occasions regarding the autopsy on _____ to make just a short
incision (if I'm not mistaken, he said in the back) and to
remove just a small segment of the lungs, I made an inquiry
[she'elas chochom] and made every effort to persuade
the widow to consent because of [my] concerns that otherwise
more cutting would be done, although I am almost certain that
had I allowed the woman to state her total opposition [the
autopsies] would not have been performed at all. But
concerned for her health I chose the lesser of two evils and
now, I am sorry to say, [you] have not kept [your] word.
[You] gave no such instructions to [your staff members] and
they removed all of the internal organs and the incision went
the length of the body. I also fear that had Dr. Schlesinger
not phoned in the middle of the procedure they would have
opened the skull as well, though I told [you] that if the
skull was harmed there would be a great outcry.
"Furthermore I say with great shame that I do not know
whether [you] are aware that to my great sorrow the autopsy
was performed in a lighthearted, jocular and frivolous
manner, speaking merrily throughout most of the procedure
while the blood of your brother _____ ben ____ called out not
from the ground but from the _____ to return what was stolen
and bury his organs. Perhaps according to din I should
have objected vociferously but by nature this is difficult
for me and I do not like machlokes. It is very hard
for me to fulfill my obligation in this matter, departing
from my normal conduct, but I beg and plead [with you] to
carefully consider this matter and to draw the proper
conclusions and to understand that not everything is
permitted in the name of science.
"Awaiting imminent and complete salvation,
"Shlomo Zalman Auerbach"
*
In an article published in Digleinu to mark the end of
the Shloshim for HaRav Auerbach zt"l, Rabbi Yisroel
Spiegel wrote about the background to Maran's decision to
resign from his post as posek of Shaarei Tzedek
Hospital. This transpired when a new director began to run
the longstanding hospital, which was founded by its first
director, the late Dr. Moshe Wallach, the renowned physician
who made aliyoh from Germany and dedicated his life to
founding the hospital as part of the battles fought by the
Old Yishuv in Jerusalem. He was succeeded by Dr. Falk
Schlesinger who carefully adhered to the tradition of
chareidi administration of the hospital.
Following his petiroh, a major change in direction
took place and when the board decided to appoint as director
general a doctor from the US who was a product of the Modern
Orthodox school of thought HaRav Auerbach quickly submitted
his resignation.
Throughout the city the word was, in writing and by word-of-
mouth, that Maran's resignation was because the new director
general was a pathologist by profession. At the time the
issue of autopsies was one of the "hot" issues in the
chareidi street. It was a general problem throughout Israel
that no safeguards were in place to respect the wishes and
privacy of the deceased and of the family, and many times
medical authorities were able to perform autopsies for
frivolous reasons against the expressed wishes of all the
parties involved. Chareidim had to stand guard over the
bodies of their deceased to ensure that they were not cut up
in the hospitals in the name of scientific research or other
motives.
Thus, when a pathologist was appointed as the new head of the
premier chareidi hospital, it naturally was interpreted in
the context of this ongoing struggle. Numerous emendations
and interpretations were added to the rumors, claiming that
the longstanding chareidi hospital would be transformed into
a center for autopsies and as such Maran was opting to
resign.
As a result of these rumors, Maran called the editors of
Hamodia, the only chareidi newspaper at the time,
asking to discuss the issue. This was a highly unusual step
for him to take, since he was widely known to avoid the media
and any other form of publicity. Then-Chief Editor R' Yehuda
Leib Levin and ylct"a Rabbi Yisroel Spiegel (who
served as assistant editor at the time) went to meet with
HaRav Auerbach in one of the rooms of Yeshivas Kol Torah in
Bayit Vegan.
Maran discussed the issue with them for over an hour. First
he stressed that the professional background of the new
director general was totally irrelevant. Pathology is just
like any other area of medicine he said. It is merely the
study of infirmities in the human body that stray from the
norm. Indeed there are always concerns that in studying these
manifestations one can come to perform autopsies, which are
only permissible under rare circumstances based on a
thorough, prior halachic ruling. But the danger of diverging
from halochoh exists in every other field of medicine as
well. Thus this is not the source of the problem, he
emphasized.
Second, he explained that the main issue was that the new
appointment brought a close to an era in the hospital's
history and what the future held in store was totally
different from the way the hospital had been administered
until that point. This was the real reason for his
resignation. "With 30 years of hindsight it is interesting to
see how well he grasped the process right from the start. The
hospital has remained religious, but the distinctly chareidi
character imprinted on it for years has been erased.
"That conversation made a strong impression on us. We were
impressed not just by his claims and arguments but by his
broad vision, by the horizons he knew how to depict and
describe clearly, by the great integrity he showed throughout
the conversation, by his hard-and-fast principles and most of
all by the impetus that led him to initiate the conversation:
to remove any trace of falseness or distortion regarding the
true reason for his resignation."
Rabbi Spiegel also notes in this article that unfortunately,
among those who spoke and wrote about Maran following his
histalkus were proponents of compromise who made empty
remarks attempting to compare Maran to them, rather than the
opposite. He was unmatched as a man of principles, firm in
his opinion both in halochoh and public matters of the most
sublime nature. Whoever closely followed the disgraceful
affair surrounding the "heter mamzerim" issued by
former Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren knows how he stood his ground
to battle the evil winds following this infamous "ruling." He
issued public calls and even came, for the first and only
time in his life, to a meeting of Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah to
state his staunch opposition, using the strongest terms in
his lexicon to denounce the man who had breached the walls of
halochoh.
