[Avodah] assisted suicide

[Yitzhak Grossman]

On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:07:00 -0800 (PST)
Gershon Seif <gershonseif at yahoo.com> wrote:

> My wife (who is a lobbyist for Agudah) was in Madison, WI yesterday to join a long list of people/organizations who came to voice their objection to a proposed bill to allow physician assisted suicide.
> 
> Some of the people who spoke in favor of the bill tried to show how Shimshon would have been in favor of assisted suicide. 
> 
> Can you all help me out here with some mareh m'komos about Shimshon and suicide? I know it's discussed (maybe even a mefurishe Gemara) but I don't recall where.
> 
> What are the basic chilukim between Shimshon's situation and a person suffering from a teminal illness, that would allow him to do what he did, and yet forbid assisted suicide? 
> 
> My first hunch is that by Shimshon it was only a grama. And it might even be a safek, whereas what the assisted suicide wants to allow would be a vadai and quite direct.

I don't recall anything about Shimshon at the moment, but an excellent
collection of references to suicide in Talmudic / Medrashic as well as
Halachic sources is Haham Ovadya's responsum on the subject.  It
contains much discussion of Shaul, but I didn't notice, in my quick
scan, any references to Shimshon.

[0] Yabiya Omer V2, YD 24

Yitzhak
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