Organ Donation and the Divine Lien in Talmudic Law

Offers a new theory of property and distributive justice derived from Talmudic law, illustrated by a case study involving the sale of organs for transplant.

Madeline Kochen (Author)

9781316507568, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 January 2016

276 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.37 kg

'Madeline Kochen is both an excellent jurist and an excellent Talmudist. In her book, Organ Donation and the Divine Lien in Talmudic Law, she takes on a major topic of great contemporary significance in a fashion that will enable the Talmudic tradition on these matters to take its place within contemporary moral and legal discourse.' Daniel Boyarin, Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture, University of California, Berkeley

This book offers a new theory of property and distributive justice derived from Talmudic law, illustrated by a case study involving the sale of organs for transplant. Although organ donation did not exist in late antiquity, this book posits a new way, drawn from the Talmud, to conceive of this modern means of giving to others. Our common understanding of organ transfers as either a gift or sale is trapped in a dichotomy that is conceptually and philosophically limiting. Drawing on Maussian gift theory, this book suggests a different legal and cultural meaning for this property transfer. It introduces the concept of the 'divine lien', an obligation to others in need built into the definition of all property ownership. Rather than a gift or sale, organ transfer is shown to exemplify an owner's voluntary recognition and fulfilment of this latent property obligation.

1. Beyond gift and commodity: rethinking the compartmentalization approach to the problem of commodification
2. Alternate property conceptions: the donor's lien
3. 'From the table of the most high': divine ownership and private property in Talmudic law
4. 'And your brother shall live with you': the divine lien and the obligation to save human life
5. Returning a 'lost body' with one's body: human organ transplantation and the (re)consecration of the body.

Subject Areas: Bio-ethics [PSAD], Law & society [LAQ], Law [L], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Jewish studies [JFSR1], Judaism [HRJ], Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ]