Eliezer Waldenberg

Who was Eliezer Waldenberg?

Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg 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.