Eliezer Waldenberg

Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg (Hebrew: הרב אליעזר יהודה וולדנברג; December 10, 1915 – November 21, 2006) was a rabbi, posek, and dayan in Jerusalem. He is known as a leading authority on medicine and Jewish law and referred to as the Tzitz Eliezer after his 21-volume halachic treatise covering a wide breadth of halacha, including Jewish medical ethics, and daily ritual issues from Shabbat to kashrut.

Waldenberg was born in Jerusalem in 1915 to Rabbi Yaakov Gedalya who immigrated from Kovno, Lithuania to Jerusalem, then in the Ottoman Empire, in the early 1900s. He studied in the Etz Chaim Yeshiva and was a student of the rosh yeshiva, Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer. Waldenberg wrote his first book, Dvar Eliezer, at age 19 in 1934.

For many years, Waldenberg served as a community rabbi at a small synagogue on Jaffa Road adjacent to the Shaare Tzedek Hospital. Many doctors prayed at the synagogue and brought their questions to the rabbi. Waldenberg began to answer their questions about Jewish law and its application to medical ethics, and would come to teach a weekly medical ethics class to the hospital's doctors and nurses. He was close to Rabbi Ben Zion Meir Hai Uziel, and was the head of the Shaarei Zion Yeshiva, founded by him.^{[citation needed]}

In 1957, Waldenberg became president of the District Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem. He was later appointed to the Beit Din Hagadol in Jerusalem where he sat with Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv.

In 1976, Waldenberg was awarded the Israel Prize for Rabbinical studies.

Waldenberg died on November 21, 2006, at Shaarei Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem and was buried later the same day at Jerusalem's Har HaMenuchot cemetery.

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. Though he wrote numerous books and articles in all fields of halacha, he was best known for his decisions on medical dilemmas. He addresses in his volumes complex medical questions including fertility, abortion, organ transplantation, euthanasia, sex reassignment surgery, autopsies, smoking, cosmetic surgery, and medical experimentation. His halachic opinions are valued by rabbis across the religious spectrum.

Waldenberg forbade performing elective surgery on someone who is neither sick nor in pain, such as cosmetic surgery. He argues that such activities are outside the boundaries of the physician's mandate to heal. Notably, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein disagreed with this opinion.