Multifaith Round-up: Views of the Soul

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Given that the Hebrew word for soul is breath (

), if a brain-dead person is still breathing, we would argue that her soul is fully present with her body. That transcends all differences in Judaism. The idea that she is a soulless entity would violate any denominational understanding of the sanctity of who she is. That does not mean that there will be uniformity about what the next steps in her life or her death should be. That's one of the critical things to be aware of. Right now in the religious world, so much energy is going into proving either, her soul has departed, so the hell with her body, or she still has a soul, so keep shoving that paste into her body. Both of these extremes are a terrible mistake, and they are not reflective of Jewish tradition's commitment that we are all human beings body/soul unities and that you don't try to get rid of one to feel good about doing something to the other.

Religious history is littered with examples of religious traditions being willing to separate body from soul, to justify doing terrible things to other people's bodies in order to save their souls. So I think everyone would agree that her soul was with Terri Schiavo while she was alive. There is a Jewish view that upon death, the soul departs the body. Where it goes is a matter of widely divergent views. But neither side should premise its decision about what to do with people on life-support on the basis of whether or not her soul is with her. From a Jewish perspective, it most certainly is and the question is how best to honor the departure of both her body and her soul.

The presence of the soul is dependent upon the presence of bodily life. In some traditions, if the soul is there, you take care of the body, which is basically just a shell. In Jewish tradition, they are equal partners. So as long as the body is there, the soul is there. It's not that you're waiting for one to depart so that you can feel good about killing off the other. Literally, the word for soul is breath (

). And going back to Genesis, the body is created first, by God, and into that divinely made body is infused divine breath, which is the soul. What is powerful about that cosmology is that it establishes for all eternity the equal sacredness of our physical and spiritual selves.

As to those Jews who argue that a brain-dead person has only the

or soul common to all creatures, animal or human, it's a disturbing argument, because it's taken from Yehuda Halevis's argument that only Jews have a

, that even when they're perfectly healthy, gentiles only get a form of soul known as the

, just like cows. It's one of the most racist understandings of ensoulment that we have in Jewish tradition.

The reason why the fight over end-of-life decisions is so nasty is because all spiritual traditions right now are sorely challenged by living in a moment where our technological and medical capacity far outstrip our ethical and spiritual awareness. That's the real challenge here rather than defining souls--to support each other through a moment of learning, when our spiritual and ethical sensitivity needs to catch up to our medical and technological capacity. One of the gifts of polytheistic traditions is their ability to handle ambiguity. We monotheists tend to dig in hardest when we need to open up most. Each of the world's great traditions has within it the ability to argue for letting go and sustaining a brain-dead person. And the real test for people who are advocates for each view within their tradition will be whether they can manage to maintain their advocacy without demeaning people with whom they disagree. The truth is, our traditions are going to be judged much more by that, than by when and how Terri Schiavo and others like her die.

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