Q. Most Honorable Rabbi and Posek. I truly like and enjoy your most unusual, new and very interesting Halacha questions, that are also supported by other most meaningful Poskim.
I’m a frum still yeshiva talmid and now also a student of medicine, soon to be graduated and I would like to contribute to this great endeavor of dealing with the Halacha of new and unusual medical situations.
Firstly, I would like to know the following. True, it is still a matter of many years until a whole brain or head transplants will be feasible, (some opine that it may be by 2035-40. However some possibly relevant medical and recent advances suggest that small partial human brain transplants might be sooner possible.
When they do happen will that create any change in the Halacha of duties, obligations and performance of that person?
A. On question 4346 we wrote: “Q. We just heard (July 7, 2023), that in an extremely rare and complex operation, Hadassah Medical Center surgeons have reattached a 12-year-old boy’s separated head to his neck after a serious accident in which he was hit by a car while riding his bicycle, the Jerusalem hospital announced .
If correct, his case opens the door to a great number of totally new Shailos. Would a person that indeed lost his head and was then reattached to his body be considered as being born again?”
To what we answered: “See questions 1086, 1089, and 1322 regarding heart transplants.”
“Horav Shlomo Miller’s Shlit’a opinion is that it is still too early to express any Halacha rulings, until these unusual cases actually continue and do become a recurrent reality, and then they can be judged properly”
Rabbi A. Bartfeld as revised by, Horav Yaakov Hirschman, Horav Dovid Pam, Horav Aharon Miller, Horav Chanoch Ehrentreu and Horav Kalman Ochs Shlit'a
Important Numbers
