The ridiculousness of the organ donation controversy

Why halacha should be ignored

A DALLE-2-generated image of “Rabbis arguing over a matter of halacha”.

Is it ethical to remove the organs from a brain-dead person so that they can be transferred to a living person who requires an organ donation? Empathy, compassion, and common sense would say yes. The dead man does not need his organs anymore, because he’s dead. The living man very much does need those organs, because he’s still alive. It would be such a shame if those organs went to waste. Why should those organs be buried in the ground, to be eaten by the worms, when a living person desperately needs them? The dead man loses nothing, the living man gains everything. It seems like a fair deal to me. Who could possibly object?

This is all so painfully obvious to me that it actually caused me a little bit of pain inside to write that paragraph. It is so painfully obvious that no one would ever think to question it, but for religion. Apparently, the concept of organ donation is “problematic” from a halachic perspective. Admittedly, I am not very familiar with the halachic minutiae of this question. But that doesn’t matter, because the halacha itself does not matter.

Why do Torah scholars, who are presumably all studying the same Torah, come to such drastically different conclusions on so many important issues? In a machlokes (a halachic dispute), how do we know which side is right and which side is wrong? I remember sitting in my Mishnah class when I was around 10 or 11 years old when this question first occurred to me. I asked my rebbi this question, and he said (his exact words): “They’re both right”. Eilu v’eilu divrei Elohim chaim hein, v’halacha k’beis Hillel. (“These and those are the words of the living God, but the halacha is in accordance with the school of Hillel”). My very rigid, black-and-white autistic mind did not like this answer at all. How can they both be right?! If they are both right, why does it matter whose opinion we follow? Why is the halacha like Beis Hillel’s opinion? Why can’t it be like Beis Shammai’s opinion? Why can’t we pick whichever opinion we like best?

As far as I can tell, there are two main rules for playing the halachic game. The first rule is that you must defer to earlier authorities.

But how can the truth depend only on the person who said it? In science, we discover the truth not by authority but rather by formulating hypotheses and performing experiments. After the atomic bombs were deployed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it became utterly impossible for any sensible person, anywhere in the world, to disagree with the physical theories that underlay the development of the Bomb. But there is no way for us to test a Psak scientifically. Two Poskim can look at an issue, study the same sources, and come to opposite conclusions, and there is no way for them to settle the matter definitively (unlike the physics of the atom bomb, which was settled extremely definitively).

And why should the opinions of previous generations of halachists be given more weight than the opinions of newer generations? Newer generations have access to much more information than the previous generations did. In science, old opinions are constantly being updated in light of new evidence. The opinions of previous generations of scientists actually have less weight than the opinions of newer generations of scientists. Imagine how absurd it would be to dismiss Einstein’s theory of relativity because it contradicts Newton’s theory of gravitation. If Newton and Einstein were rabbis instead of scientists, we would continue to uphold Newton’s opinion, and we would consider Einstein arrogant for challenging the views of his master. But since Newton and Einstein are scientists, we can celebrate both of their achievements while recognizing that Einstein’s view is more correct.

The second rule is that you must defer to the majority opinion. But how can the truth depend on what the majority thinks?! The majority of humanity does not believe in Orthodox Judaism!

There is thus no basis for saying that any halachic opinion is more “correct” than any other, because all halachic opinions are fundamentally unfalsifiable. The opinions of modern Poskim depend on the authority of earlier authorities, which in turn depend on the authority of earlier authorities, and so on. It’s all turtles all the way down. The whole structure is an arbitrary game of words, a massive edifice of nonsense.

As a teenager, I sometimes wondered if it was possible to develop a rigorous systematic method for extracting the correct halacha. Such that if all rabbis agreed to follow the rules of this method, then they would always arrive at the same Psak every time. We could perform an experiment where we assign a menu of difficult halachic problems to seventy-two rabbis and give them a description of the method, put them in separate rooms, and if the method really works, then they should all reach the same conclusions. Suffice it to say that no such method has ever been developed. There were the thirteen rules of Rabbi Ishmael, but Rabbi Ishmael’s system is very difficult to apply in practice, and evidently it did not bring an end to halachic controversies.

There will never be such a method. Not now, not when Moshiach comes, and not ever. Why? Because the halachic system is essentially a chaotic, anarchic system. It is stupid and arbitrary. Even the two basic rules I mentioned above are ill-defined (Rabbi Yosef Karo defines “the majority” as “the majority of Alfasi, Maimonides, and the Rosh”) and have exceptions (Rav is allowed to challenge a Tanna, the Vilna Gaon has the same authority as a Rishon, and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein permits himself to dispute the Chofetz Chaim).

In areas where the scientific method or formal logic are difficult or impossible to apply, such as moral philosophy, our decisions should be guided by empathy, compassion, and common sense. The halacha is not like Beis Hillel or anyone else. It is man-made nonsense and should never be a factor when making important decisions.