Torah Academy of Bergen repeats as halachic competition winner
The Torah Academy of Bergen County in Teaneck won the third annual Touro College Beis Medrash L’Talmud-Lander College for Men competition. Students from eight U.S. high schools went to the Lander College for Men in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, to debate the ramifications of this controversial halachic quandary: In Israel, a father, who was his mentally impaired son’s caregiver, was diagnosed with kidney failure. All attempts to find a suitable organ donor failed. His son was a near-perfect match, but incapable of providing any reasonable form of consent. Under Israeli law, can the son be allowed to donate a kidney to save his father’s life?
Ultimately the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that he could not, but was this ruling consistent with Jewish law?
For the third consecutive year, TABC’s team won.
The high schools received the details of the scenario in September, along with a packet of relevant halachic sources to consider for their arguments. A rabbinic faculty member for each school served as an adviser for their teams.
Because the matter is subject to debate, the winners were chosen based on the quality of the presentations and their mastery of the different opinions and talmudic sources, as well as on how well they supported their findings, according to Rabbi Aryeh Manheim, LCM’s coordinator of admissions, who organized the competition.
comments