Abortion, Judaism, and Jews.

AN ARTICLE in the New York Times a while back described what was billed as a Catholic-Jewish forum on abortion. The participants in this interfaith dialogue were Bishop Thomas V. Daily of Brooklyn, a champion of the unborn, and Rabbi Shira Stern of the Monroe Township Jewish Center, who provided the standard distortions of halakah (Jewish law).

As a religious Jew, I have become reconciled to modernists of my faith shamelessly misrepresenting Jewish teaching in this crucial area. What's puzzling here is Bishop Daily's acquiescence in the travesty. By his participation, he seems implicitly to recognize Rabbi Stern's views as the position of Judaism.

Not only is this a disservice to my faith, but it undercuts his own. Jesus said nothing about abortion, and Paul very little. Judaism is the foundation for Christian opposition to feticide. If Rabbi Stern's views are halakahically valid, where does that leave right-to-life Catholics?

Shira Stem, a reform rabbi and daughter of violinist Isaac Stern, adroitly presented her abortion-on-demand advocacy as "a Jewish view of abortion," which is true in the sense that it reflects the opinions of some Jews. In the same sense, one might say that the gay group Dignity represents "a Catholic view" of homosexuality. In fact, her dogma is a clever corruption of Torah (in its broadest sense, the vast body of Jewish legislation). This may be "a Jewish view," but it is not the view of Judaism. Rabbi Stem cites Exodus 21:22-23, to validate her stand. Here, Mosaic law holds that if two men are quarreling and accidentally injure a pregnant woman so that she miscarries, her husband shall receive only monetary damages. Since the death penalty isn't invoked in such a case, Rabbi Stem and her colleagues reason, clearly Jewish tradition holds the fetus isn't human.

True, Judaism does not assign the same status to the unborn child as to life after birth. Thus abortion is always permissible, indeed mandatory, when the mother's life is threatened.

But this is far from taking the feminist perspective, that the fetus is an appendage of the mother, merely a bit of tissue. Various Jewish authorities refer to the fetus as "germinating life" or "nascent life." Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, the outgoing chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, who has written widely on medical ethics, observes: "The destruction of an unborn child is a grave offense, though not murder."

The late Rabbi Seymour Siegel, a professor at Conservative Judaism's Jewish Theological Seminary, notes that the Talmud speaks of the fetus in its mother's womb joining in praise of the Almighty. The Zohar, the classic work of Jewish mysticism, calls the child in utero "the handiwork of the living God." Speaking in support of the right-to-life amendment, Siegel declared: "Traditional Judaism takes the view that the fetus possesses a human dimension: it is human life on the way."

This reverence for fetal life pervades Jewish law. The rabbis ruled that the Sabbath, which can be broken only to preserve human life, could be violated to save a fetus. The kohanes, or priestly class, were forbidden to touch a corpse. Contact with a miscarried fetus was considered within this category of ritual defilement. In Temple times, the capital trial of a pregnant woman was delayed until after she delivered.

Radical libertarianism, the notion that we may each do whatever we wish with our own person, is alien to normative Judaism. There is no right to suicide or self-mutilation, a prohibition encompassing so minor an act as tattooing. Even if the fetus were regarded as an appendage of the mother's body, which clearly it is not, a woman would not be allowed absolute freedom in this regard, any more than she has the right to amputate a healthy limb.

Jewish law isn't explicit on the subject of elective abortion for a simple reason: this practice was unknown in Jewish communities from Biblical times until the secular split in the nineteenth century. Jews, who were alone in the ancient world in rejecting human sacrifice and infanticide (a judgment the ancient Greeks considered barbaric), opposed the casual destruction of life at any stage.

Rabbinical rulings mainly concerned therapeutic abortion, the conditions under which a pregnancy could be terminated because of a risk to the mother's health. But the debate itself, the search for exceptions to the rule, proves that the practice in general was forbidden.

In the modem era, Orthodox Judaism alone has maintained scrupulous adherence to Jewish law, according to the sacred texts and classical commentaries. If one wants the definitive Jewish ruling on any religious question, one should inquire of those who keep the law in its entirety, the inheritors and guardians of a 3,500-year-old tradition, not of those who read the Torah the way Thurgood Marshall reads the Constitution.

Orthodoxy is unanimous and unambiguous in this regard. Rabbi Hirsch Ginsberg, Executive Director of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, informs us: "Traditional Judaism considers abortion tantamount to murder." Agudath Israel of America, the social-service/lobbying arm of Orthodoxy, filed an amicus brief in the Webster case in favor of overruling Roe v. Wade.

In response to the secular Jewish groups that lined up on the other side, Rabbi Hillel Klavan of Washington, D.C., charged: "For Jewish organizations to take a public stand that distorts authentic Jewish values and to misrepresent them as reflecting Jewish law is in the category of Chilul Hashem (the desecration of God's name)."

Judaism's concern for the unborn is a reflection of its historic commitment to life. The Holy One of Israel is often referred to as the God of Life, and his law the Torah Chayim (Torah of Life). Ours was the first faith to prohibit cruelty to animal life. Even the wanton destruction of trees transgresses Jewish law. How much greater must be our obligation toward an entity which, in the natural course, will become fully human in a matter of months?

Jewish abortion advocates cringe at the equation of slaughter of the unborn and the Holocaust. Yet Rabbi Jakobovits, himself a refugee from Nazi Germany, declares: "Jews may be particularly sensitive to any such discrimination [determining which life is worthy of preservation], having witnessed the horror of six million being shoved into the gas chambers because they were deemed inferior."

Memo to Bishop Daily: If you want a Jewish view" on abortion, ask a secular Jew. If his mind isn't already made up, he'll probably consult with the rabbinical authorities of Temple Beth Quiche. But if you want the Jewish view, look to Judaism in its entirety, not selected Bible passages taken out of context.