The Tzitz Eliezer—Rav Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg ציץ אליעזר — הרב אליעזר יהודה וולדנברג
the posek of medicine; rabbi of the Shaare Zedek hospital; judge of Jerusalem
He was born in Jerusalem in 1915 and studied at the Etz Chaim and Hebron yeshivot. He published the first volume of the Tzitz Eliezer in 1945, at thirty, and from then on brought out volume after volume to the end of his life—twenty-two in all.
He was a judge of the Jerusalem rabbinical court and of the Supreme Rabbinical Court, but he is known first of all as rabbi of the Shaare Zedek hospital: physicians came to him with questions that had not existed before—kidney and heart transplants, artificial respiration, treatment that prolongs suffering. His answers are whole treatises examining the sources from the Talmud to the poskim of the last century, and medical halakhah is taught from them. In 1976 he received the Israel Prize for rabbinical literature.
He died in Jerusalem on 30 Cheshvan 5767 (2006).
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The Tzitz Eliezer—responsa — the twenty-two volumes, medicine
Scholarship
- The register of the Jerusalem rabbinical court — the judgeship and Shaare Zedek
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — 1915, the first volume in 1945, the prize in 1976, 30 Cheshvan 5767
Basis: documents and evidence.