21 Facts About Eliezer Waldenberg

Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg was a rabbi, posek, and dayan in Jerusalem.

Eliezer Waldenberg is known as a leading authority on medicine and Jewish law and referred to as the Tzitz Eliezer after his 21-volume halachic treatise covering a wide breadth of halacha, including Jewish medical ethics, and daily ritual issues from Shabbat to kashrut.

Eliezer Waldenberg studied in the Etz Chaim Yeshiva and was a student of the rosh yeshiva, Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer.

For many years, Eliezer Waldenberg served as a community rabbi at a small synagogue on Jaffa Road adjacent to the Shaare Tzedek Hospital.

Eliezer Waldenberg began to answer their questions about Jewish law and its application to medical ethics, and would come to teach a weekly medical ethics class to the hospital's doctors and nurses.

Eliezer Waldenberg was close to Rabbi Ben Zion Meir Hai Uziel, and was the head of the Shaarei Zion Yeshiva, founded by him.

In 1957, Eliezer Waldenberg became president of the District Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem.

Eliezer Waldenberg was later appointed to the Beit Din Hagadol in Jerusalem where he sat with Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv.

In 1976, Eliezer Waldenberg was awarded the Israel Prize for Rabbinical studies.

Eliezer Waldenberg died on November 21,2006, at Shaarei Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem and was buried later the same day at Jerusalem's Har HaMenuchot cemetery.

Eliezer Waldenberg's 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.

Eliezer Waldenberg forbade performing elective surgery on someone who is neither sick nor in pain, such as cosmetic surgery.

Eliezer Waldenberg argues that such activities are outside the boundaries of the physician's mandate to heal.

Eliezer Waldenberg ruled that a child conceived outside the womb, through in vitro fertilization, has no parents and bears no halachic relationship either to the biological parents or the "surrogate mother", the woman who carries the child to term.

Eliezer Waldenberg was one of a small but growing number of rabbis to forbid smoking.

Eliezer Waldenberg wrote, "The external anatomy which is visible is what determines the halakha" in the present tense.

Eliezer Waldenberg permitted hearing Torah reading, Shofar blowing and Megillah reading by means of a loudspeaker, telephone, or radio, if no other options were available.

Eliezer Waldenberg held that voices replicated by electronic devices generally have the status of noise from musical instruments, rather than that of actual voices.

Eliezer Waldenberg emphasized the Jewish concept of Kevod HaBriyot in his rulings.

Eliezer Waldenberg wrote a multivolume set on the practical issues of government called Hilkhot Medinah.

Eliezer Waldenberg writes in support of yeshiva students' exemption from compulsory military service in the Israel Defense Forces, considering that through the merit of their Torah learning they help protect the country.