Halakhic Triage

Can it be true that halakhic triage obligates one to save a man before a woman? That seems to be the simple explanation of the Mishna in today’s Daf Yomi – Horayot 13a. The issue has significant ethical implications for contemporary medicine, for example, who takes precedence for ICU admission in modern hospitals, or who should emergency responders treat first at the scene of an accident or after a terrorist attack?

Not surprisingly the great modern poskim on medical ethics questions, Rabbis Moshe Feinstein, Eliezer Waldenberg, and Shlomo Zalman Auerbach all weighed in on the issue, and Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein was disturbed by the ethical implications of setting life-saving priorities based on gender or other personal status. In a Spring 2014 essay, Dr. Alan Jotkowitz reviewed the principles guiding triage decisions, the halakhic arguments surrounding the cases, and the approach of poskim throughout the generations to help answer the question of whether we really do treat a man before a woman as today’s Daf Yomi might suggest?

Read “A Man Takes Precedence Over a Woman when it Comes to Saving a Life,” TRADITION 47:1 (Spring 2014).

Alan Jotkowitz is Professor of Medicine, Director of the Medical School for International Health, and the Director of the Jakobovits Center for Jewish Medical Ethics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.