Eliezer Waldenberg
| Eliezer Waldenberg | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
December 10, 1915 Jerusalem, Ottoman Empire |
| Died | November 21, 2006 (aged 90) Jerusalem, Israel |
Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg (December 10, 1915 – November 21, 2006) was known as the Tzitz Eliezer after his monumental halachic treatise Tzitz Eliezer that covers a wide breadth of halacha, including Jewish medical ethics, as well as ritual halachic issues from Shabbat to kashrut. He was born in Jerusalem in 1915 and died there on November 21, 2006.
He was a leading rabbi and a dayan on the Supreme Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem and was considered an eminent authority on medical halacha. He was the rabbi of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.
Though he wrote numerous books and articles in all fields of halacha, he was best known for his decisions on medical dilemmas such as fertility, abortion, organ transplantation, euthanasia, autopsies, smoking, cosmetic surgery, and medical experimentation. Some of his decisions on medical topics have proven controversial in the Haredi community.
His halachic opinions are valued by many rabbis across the religious spectrum. His major work Tzitz Eliezer, is an encyclopedic treatise on halachic questions, viewed as one of the great achievements of halachic scholarship of the 20th century.
Rabbi Waldenberg forbade performing elective surgery on someone who is neither sick nor in pain, such as cosmetic surgery. He argues that such activities are outside the boundaries of the physician's mandate to heal. (Responsa Tzitz Eliezer, 11:41; 12:43.) Notably, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein disagreed with this opinion. (Responsa Igrot Moshe, Choshen Mishpat 2:66.)
He allowed first trimester abortion of a fetus which would be born with a deformity that would cause it to suffer, and termination of a fetus with a lethal fetal defect such as Tay-Sachs disease up to the end of the second trimester of gestation. (Tzitz Eliezer, 9:51:3.)
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