Jewish thought on Suicide

[Kitsune]

Been a while since I have been on this board

I wanted to ask if anybody knows what Jewish thought is on suicide for patients who are extreme pain and/or are dying?

[Broomstick]

In Judaism suicide is forbidden. Always.

[Keevan_Colton]

If you're sick and in pain, it's because your invisible friend wants you to be...suicide would go against the wishes of your invisible friend and so, isn't allowed.

[Broomstick]

I don't think that's a typically Jewish thought (if such a thing exists). Judaism doesn't see God as that sort of puppetmaster - bad things and illness happen due to things like evil and the action of men, not necessarially as a direct affliction from God. The attitude you describe - "your invisible friend is a sick motherfucker" - is more typical of Christianity.

[Gil Hamilton]

Well, the one rabbi I knew well growing up attributed sickness and injury to disease and misfortune, rather than a divine cause because he didn't feel it was necessary to say that a broken leg was caused by God when slipping on ice was a perfectly adequate explanation. I think though, if you ask five rabbis what they think on the subject you'll get at least 10 opinions on the matter. I'm pretty sure some schools of Jewish thought hold that everything is divine causes (even bad stuff).

However, in Judaism, suicide is considered a criminal act equivalent to murder, because that's what they consider it. Further, most schools of Jewish thought, I understand, believe that if a person is having such difficulties, then God must have given them the ability to deal with and suicide is a failure to do so. I think, traditionally, the only time Jews traditionally have seen suicide as somewhat acceptable is during the act of martyrdom (see, for instance, the Masada where the Jews committed suicide when it became obvious they couldn't beat the Roman Army). I understand "martyrdom" is one of things said of German Jews who committed suicide previously or during the Shoah rather than letting the SS work them to death or convert them.

[Rye]

I don't think that's a typically Jewish thought (if such a thing exists). Judaism doesn't see God as that sort of puppetmaster - bad things and illness happen due to things like evil and the action of men, not necessarially as a direct affliction from God. The attitude you describe - "your invisible friend is a sick motherfucker" - is more typical of Christianity.

Actually, God being seperate to evil and affliction is more christian, with parts like isaiah 45:7 being the justification in the jews I've talked to for the opinion that God is the source of everything, good and evil, a more monist view. I presume there's conflict over such things, though, there always is.

As for suicide, I would've thought it'd be the same as the other abrahamic religions, with the liberalised branches being progressive and the rest being "no, you really shouldn't. God gives, God takes away."

[Saurencaerthai]

If you're sick and in pain, it's because your invisible friend wants you to be...suicide would go against the wishes of your invisible friend and so, isn't allowed.

As Broomstick mentioned, sounds like you're describing Christianity. In nearly all sects of Judaism that I know of, God isn't seen as this puppetmaster you describe. Generally speaking, Judaism places a high value on human life, and for that reason, suicide is seen as a bad thing. It is not seen as bad for whatever perverse masochistic picture you've been painting. Unlike Christianity, however, suicide isn't an act that earns any sort of damnation. (For that matter, there is only one concept really mentioned that comes close to hell, and even that is highly debated amongst Jewish scholars.) Instead, suicide is seen as a rather tragic event in the community.

[Kitsune]

I do remember listening to the News several years ago and a Jewish hospital decided to pull life support from a brain dead infant against teh parent's desires.

If I recall it correctly, how does this fit in?

[Broomstick]

As for suicide, I would've thought it'd be the same as the other abrahamic religions, with the liberalised branches being progressive and the rest being "no, you really shouldn't. God gives, God takes away."

You have to remember that Judaism, in addition to coming in many flavors just as other large monotheisms, tends to be less dogmatic than the other two of the Big Three Abrahamics.

For example, although there are myriad rules and taboos about food, most rabbis and Jewish scholars I've read or spoken to maintain that, when survival is at stake, not only are you permitted to break those taboos but it is your duty to do so. Thus, if a Jew is literally starving to death and the only food available is pork and shrimp, not only are they permitted eat it, not only is it not a sin if they do so, but because human life is at stake it would be a sin NOT to eat it! The requirement to circumcise a male (a MAJOR tenet of this faith) is universally waived for men with blood clotting disorders such as hemophillia and has been for centuries. The justification for these exceptions to the rules is LIFE. That to preserve life it is not only justified to break these rules, given by God, but REQUIRED.

If God says you can break all My other rules in order to preserve your life when survival is at stake...how do you think that God is going to regard suicide, that is, the delibrate taking of one's own life?

Now, there are a few circumstances where suicide might be pardonable, just as there are actually a few cirucmstances were eating pork is OK. But they're rare. VERY rare. And I suspect most of them are on the order of flinging oneself on top of a grenade in order to save other people from harm.

Many branches of Judaism also recognize that there are times when the moral and ethical situation becomes quite murky. There was an instance that C. Everett Koop, a former US Surgeon General was involved in during his career as a pediatric surgeon. In this instance, there were conjoined twins. If nothing would be done both would die. If they were separated one would surely die and the other might live. Dr. Koop consulted with the religious leaders in the boys' rather conservative community and the rabbis judged that preserving one life justified taking the other, since it was impossible to save both. Thus, they condoned the delibrate destruction of one human life in order to save another. Another situation is with Tay-Sachs. Many Jews are opposed to abortion, but due to the nature of this disease (invariably fatal early in life and a source of much suffering), many of those same people would condone aborting a fetus carrying this disease, judging the suffering too great and to no purpose. In contract, the Catholic church in the case of the conjoined twins would forbid surgery, leaving them "in God's hands" (meaning: don't hold us responsible for not letting you save at least one life in this mess), and in the second would insist on the mother giving birth to the doomed child. In fact, the Catholic church forbids even the most rudimentary technologies than would minimize the chance of even such a conception taking place.

Now, I won't say there are NO circumstances where a rabbi or other Jewish authority would condone suicide based solely on human suffering. But the wouldn't issue a blanket statement, it would very much be on a case-by-case basis. I don't think they'd ever condone it for mental illness, and only rarely for a physical illness or disability which would have to be VERY extreme in nature.

[Broomstick]

I do remember listening to the News several years ago and a Jewish hospital decided to pull life support from a brain dead infant against teh parent's desires.

If I recall it correctly, how does this fit in?

If you define brain death as being truly dead, then the child was already dead and there was no ethical issue involved.

Even if there is some question, if the situation is such that recovery is not possible and there is no meaningful life, only a future of deterioation, suffering, and death, then withdrawing artificial support and, in that trite phrase, "letting nature take its course" can be seen not so much as ending life but no longer standing in the way of death. Jews do value life highly, but not with the sort of extremism you see in some branches of Christianity.

[TithonusSyndrome]

In nearly all sects of Judaism that I know of, God isn't seen as this puppetmaster you describe.

I remember watching a movie with Ryan Gosling about a young Jewish man who grew up to become a neo-Nazi, and this line stuck out at me and baffled me to no end:

DANIEL: ''Make no graven image of the Lord or the form of any figure...
..of man or woman, or anything that looks like anything.''
Because He's not like anything.

CARLA: Not only can you not see Him or hear Him,...
..but you can't even think about Him?
l mean, what's the difference between that and Him not existing at all?

DANIEL: There's no difference.

CARLA: l mean, Christianity's silly, but at least there's something to believe in.

DANIEL: Or not believe.

CARLA: ln Judaism, there's nothing. - Nothing but nothingness.

DANIEL: Judaism's not really about belief.
lt's about doing things.
Keeping the Sabbath, lighting candles, visiting the sick.

CARLA: And belief follows?

DANIEL: Nothing follows.
Cos you don't do it because it's smart,...
..or stupid, or because you get saved, because nobody gets saved.
You just do it because the Torah tells you to and you submit to the Torah.

So, uh... what IS God in Judaism, assuming this scene was at all accurate?

[Broomstick]

I would think that a scene based on the life of a fucked-up Jewish-kid-turned-Neo-Nazi is probably a very poor match with actual Jewish belief and practices. In other words, no, it's not accurate.

[lance]

What about throwing ones self on a grenade? That is suicide is it not? But you'll likely save more people.

[Patrick Degan]

What about throwing ones self on a grenade? That is suicide is it not? But you'll likely save more people.

That's self-sacrifice to save others. In this case, the person in question is clearly acting to preserve other lives knowing his own is forfeit, and that is universally recognised as a noble, moral act.

[Gil Hamilton]

What about throwing ones self on a grenade? That is suicide is it not? But you'll likely save more people.

That's Martyrdom. That's not considered Suicide in the Jewish faith.

[Pelranius]

Would the actions of the Zealots at Masada fall under martyrdom or suicide, since if I remember my history correctly, they killed themselves not to save others, but to keep themselves out of Roman hands.

[Kitsune]

Kind of funny that I bought this up and just watched the movie "Million Dollar Baby"

It does address suicide if you are completely paralyzed and when is life worth living.

[Coyote]

On an interesting note, I hear that the practice of swearing-in ceremonies for Israeli army units on Masada, with the tagline "Masada will not fall again", has been discontinued out of concern that it would foster a martyr-warrior social complex like the Muslim suicide fighters.

Ace, Faqa... confirmation?

Suicide is forwned upon, because life is precious and generally suicide as we know it is a permanant attempt to avoid temporary trouble; it shuts down a life that could have been preserved had the person just asked for intervention.

[Saurencaerthai]

-Snipped-

So, uh... what IS God in Judaism, assuming this scene was at all accurate?

I'd echo Broomstick again, in that that may not be your best source to try to learn about the religion. In other words, no, that isn't an accurate passage. Reading that dialog, it sounds like the rantings of someone who's gone off the deep end.

[TithonusSyndrome]

OK, fair enough, good to know. But if he isn't some kind of diabolical Stromboli-esque puppetmaster a la Christianity, then assuming he's still some kind of Freudian sky-father figure, how exactly does God's depiction differ in Judaism?

[Broomstick]

I think a significant difference in Judaism is the idea that how God interacts with his people can and does change. There is some fragment of this in Christianity (and perhaps Islam) but not to the extent of Judaism.

Modern Jews do not have the same relationship between themselves and God that Adam and Eve did, that Moses did, that the post-Moses prophets did. There were two temples and now there are none - and it does not seem to be a problem that the lack of a temple also meant the end of blood sacrifice. There are practices that are acknowledged to have started not in prehistory but in the Middle Ages. Partly, this is a result of having several thousand years of written history as well as commentary on religious matters. Partly, it's a tolerance for disagreement within and among scholars (since there's no Pope there's no Ultimate Authority - rabbis and sects do disagree on doctrine, but you don't see the bloody infighting of Muslim or Christian groups.)

I think part of the problem here is the idea that God must be wholly involved or wholly distant from His creation. Jews claim to have a history of times when God was very involved and other times He was not, and I'd say that would be a significant difference from the other two big Abrahamic religions.

Another important point is that while Christianity and Islam maintain that their God is the God of everyone, Jews only claim their God is God of the Jews - their theology allows for no other Gods or many other Gods equally, and in any case their religion is for Jews, not Gentiles. That's a HUGE difference right there.

[Singular Quartet]

I recall some lines of thought that you don't own your body in Judaism, you're only "loaning" it from God - hence why you can't get a tattoo (it's desecration or something similar). Likewise, Suicide is bad because it's not destroying your body, it's destroying God's body... or am I thinking of something else entirely?

[eyl]

On an interesting note, I hear that the practice of swearing-in ceremonies for Israeli army units on Masada, with the tagline "Masada will not fall again", has been discontinued out of concern that it would foster a martyr-warrior social complex like the Muslim suicide fighters.

Ace, Faqa... confirmation?

You're correct, AFAIK - Masada hasn't been used for IDF swearing-in ceremonies for at least a decade - though I don't know if that's the reason (I always assumed it was for more prosaic reasons)

Another important point is that while Christianity and Islam maintain that their God is the God of everyone, Jews only claim their God is God of the Jews - their theology allows for no other Gods or many other Gods equally, and in any case their religion is for Jews, not Gentiles. That's a HUGE difference right there.

I'd phrase that a bit differently - in Judaism, God is the god of the entire world and all its people, but only Jews are required to follow the Covenent (i.e. the rules of Judaism). Gentiles are only required to follow the seven Noahide Laws (which among other things forbid idolatry, though as I understand them they don't necessarily rule out, say, polytheism so long as idols aren't established).

[Coyote]

Thanks, eyl.

Yeah, God in Judaism is the God of All, and it is also stated that the righteous of all nations shall find a place in the kingdom of heaven-- the idea is, in the Kingdom of God, Jews are the priestly caste, but everyone else has a place there too, you don't need to be a club-card member to get in.

As mentioned, God in Judaism changes and is not frozen in quite the lockstep that he seems to be portrayed in Christian philosophy. It seems to me, and bear in mind this is my quick-n-dirty interpretation, that in Judaism, God had his smiting days and has long since calmed considerably to reflect how overall civilisation has changed since Bronze Age norms; whereas in Christianity he is still the stern, willing-to-smite Bad Cop while Jesus was sent to offer the way out with his Good Cop side.

But, like I said, I'm just putting my coat of paint on it, not trying to be some sort of Biblical Scholar or Rabbi.

[Saurencaerthai]

As mentioned, God in Judaism changes and is not frozen in quite the lockstep that he seems to be portrayed in Christian philosophy. It seems to me, and bear in mind this is my quick-n-dirty interpretation, that in Judaism, God had his smiting days and has long since calmed considerably to reflect how overall civilization has changed since Bronze Age norms; whereas in Christianity he is still the stern, willing-to-smite Bad Cop while Jesus was sent to offer the way out with his Good Cop side.

It's also worth noting that this caries over to many other aspects and customs of the religion, regardless of sect. I have yet to find one Rabbi, even of the ultra-right haredi who doesn't hold the understanding that some practices must change with times and culture, hence some practices including slavery and polygamy are pretty much universally outlawed by all sects.