Medical ethics expert Rabbi Moshe Tendler dies at 95

• Author: SHIRA HANAU/JTA
• Published date: 01 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

A dean of the rabbinical school and a professor of Jewish medical ethics and biology at Yeshiva University, Tendler was considered an expert in issues of Jewish law and medical ethics.

But he was most famous for the fierceness with which he advocated for the Jewish legal position that brain death constituted death, thus allowing Orthodox Jews to donate and receive organ transplants for organ donation in the case of brain death.

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He was also known for the sometimes dismissive attitude with which he regarded those who disagreed with him on that question and others. When a group of rabbis issued an opinion concluding that the cessation of heartbeat, rather than brain death, constitutes death, he denounced them publicly, in an act unusual in the typically sober world of Orthodox Jewish law decisors.

"You say a thing, I believe you're ignorant on this topic," Tendler told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2011. "That's not an insult. It's a fact."

Born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Tendler was immersed in the dual pursuit of rigorous secular and religious studies from a young age under the tutelage of his mother, a law school graduate, and his father, head of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph yeshiva.

Tendler grew up just a few blocks away from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the most important Orthodox rabbinic authorities in the United States in the 20th century. Tendler eventually became Feinstein's son-in-law. He met Feinstein's daughter, Shifra, when she approached him at a public library in the neighborhood to ask him a question about chemistry.

"After that, somehow I managed to come more often to the library to study," Tendler recalled. He studied at New York University, was ordained at Yeshiva University in 1949 and earned a doctorate in microbiology from Columbia University in 1957. In his tenure teaching biology and Talmud at Yeshiva University, he taught...