Dear Rabbi,
Q. At a recent community event the issue of organ donation came up in discussion. A person who claimed to be knowledgeable in Halacha stated that Jews should not donate their organs since they would most likely end up going to a goy. What is the Halachic answer to organ donation? Are Gentiles somehow less than human? If so, why are we allowed to take their organs? Would we, as a community, not be outraged if a Gentile would be discouraged from being an organ donor because his/her organs could go to a Jew, and rightfully call it anti-Semitism?
A. Horav Shlomo Miller Shlit’a stressed that one of the main issues involved on organ donation is the prohibition of benefiting from a cadaver. (See Talmud Avoda-Zarah 29b). This proscription applies equally to Jewish or Gentile human remains. Most decrees of the Torah are overridden when a life can be saved. However, the recipient has to be already available and the life saving has to be a real and a factual possibility. Additionally, donating organs involves often the determination and ruling that the donor has already died and you are not actually killing him to harvest his organs. In determining the time of death, Halacha and civil law most often disagree. Again, it does not make any difference who the donor is. You cannot commit murder to save someones life. That is why a Torah observant individual cannot sign an organ donation document as it would likely place her/him in a situation where Halachically his/hers life can be terminated in order to obtain the needed organs. If you were to wait to what the Halacha accepts as the time of death, likely the organs would not be usable anymore. Body parts are also likely to be harvested for uses that not necessary save anyone's life immediately, such as skin grafts or medical school necessities for teaching and research. As mentioned above, you cannot desecrate a human body and benefit from it regardless of its race or religion.
If the recipient is Torah observant, the fact that the organs were already harvested by someone who follows civil law, regardless of whether the donor was Gentile or Jewish, since it is already after the fact and it is now actually saving his life, he/she is permitted to benefit from that organ.
As you see, it has little to do with the religion or race of the donor or recipient, other issues are at play.
Rabbi A. Bartfeld as revised by Horav Shlomo Miller Shlit’a
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