Rabbinical Authorities Find Heart Transplant Conforms to Religious Law

Rabbinical authorities here and in Britain have hailed the first successful transplant of a human heart, the operation performed on Louis Washkansky, of Cape Town ten days ago, as an act that conforms to the over-riding consideration in Jewish law, the saving of a human life.

Rabbinical opinion of the medical feat in the light of Jewish law was sought by the South African Jewish Times, whose editor cabled Dr. Immanuel Jakobovits, Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth in London and spoke to Chief Rabbi Bernard Casper of Johannesburg, Chief Rabbi Israel Abrahams of Cape Town and Rabbi Arthur Super, Chief Minister of the Reform congregation in Johannesburg.

Dr. Jakobovits, regarded as a world authority on Jewish medical ethics, declared in a cable to the paper that “Judaism cannot but enthusiastically applaud the medical triumph in service of human life.” Rabbi Casper said that while the Halachic position remains to be studied and defined in light of the new operation, the over-riding consideration of Jewish law is the saving of life and “it would be hard to find a clearer and more direct application of this principle than in the case of the heart transplant such as we have witnessed.”

Rabbi Abrahams said that the operation falls within the category of “acts that might normally be regarded as transgressions of Jewish law, in order to save life.” Rabbi Super said that “as far as Reform Judaism is concerned, we are very much in favor of human transplant and autopsies and in fact anything which is likely to result in human life being saved however remote the chances.”

The 53-year-old Washkansky was born in Lithuania, came to South Africa at the age of 10 and served in the South Africa army during World War II. He and his wife are members of the Sea Point Hebrew Congregation in Cape Town where their son was bar mitzvahed last year. Mrs. Washkansky is active in the Zionist movement.