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Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg (December 10, 1915–November 21, 2006) was known as the Tzitz Eliezer after his monumental halachic treatise ''Tzitz Eliezer'' that covers a wide breadth of halacha, including Jewish medical ethics, as well as ritual halachic issues from Shabbat to kashrut. He was born in Jerusalem in 1915 and died there on November 21, 2006. He was a leading rabbi and a dayan on the Supreme Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem and was considered an eminent authority on medical halacha. He was the rabbi of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. Though he wrote numerous books and articles in all fields of ''halacha'', he was best known for his decisions on medical dilemmas such as fertility, abortion, organ transplantation, euthanasia, autopsies, smoking, cosmetic surgery, and medical experimentation. Some of his decisions on medical topics have proven controversial in the Haredi community. His halachic opinions are valued by many rabbis across the religious spectrum. His 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. ==Prominent medical opinions== Rabbi Waldenberg forbade performing elective surgery on someone who is neither sick nor in pain, such as cosmetic surgery. He argues that such activities are outside the boundaries of the physician's mandate to heal. (Responsa ''Tzitz Eliezer'', 11:41; 12:43.) Notably, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein disagreed with this opinion. (Responsa ''Igrot Moshe'', Choshen Mishpat 2:66.) He allowed first trimester abortion of a fetus which would be born with a deformity that would cause it to suffer, and termination of a fetus with a lethal fetal defect such as Tay-Sachs disease up to the end of the second trimester of gestation. (''Tzitz Eliezer'', 9:51:3.) He ruled that a child conceived outside the womb, through in vitro fertilisation, 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. (Id., 15:45.) He was one of a small but growing number of rabbis to forbid smoking. (Schussheim, Eli and Eliezer Waldenberg. “Should Jewish law forbid smoking?” B’Or ha’Torah 8 (1993)) Many of his medical opinions were recorded by his student Avraham Steinberg, M.D, and then translated into summary volumes. In the chapter entitled "On the treatment which exposes the physician to danger," Rabbi Waldenberg wrote: (Quoted by ''Jewish Medical Law: A Concise Response''; Compiled and Edited by Avraham Steinberg, M.D. Translated by David Simons M.D.; Beit Shammai Publications, 1989, Part 10, Chapter 11.) In a particularly controversial ruling, Waldenberg ruled that sex reassignment surgery for transsexuals effects a change in a person's halachic gender, and that, in his words, "The external anatomy which is visible is what determines the halakha". (Id., 25:26:6; )(). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eliezer Waldenberg」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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