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Thursday, February 16, 2012

Donate a Year of Your Life for R' Elyashiv...

In a fascinating article, published on the Kikar Shabbat website, a man, "Aharon" announces that he has decided to donate a year of his life, to the great Torah scholar, R' Elyashiv, who is currently very ill.


"I discussed this with the Torah Giants of our generation, and they told me to ask my wife and children." This is a very unusual gesture and Aharon explained what brought him about to make this decision. "We are in an era when the great Torah leaders of Israel are the backbone of our existance, and without them, we would not be able to watch over our lives."

The serious medical condition of the "posek hador", R' Yosef-Shalom Elyashiv, is causing many to lose sleep. In addition to the prayer vigils held almost every night, there are those who took upon themselves, as a personal project, additional Torah study, so that in the merit of their study, R' Elyashiv will have a full recovery.

Aharon B from Jerusalem said that when he asked him wife and children, his
children agreed immediately. Rabbis encouraged me to accept this upon myself through prayer, without a special ceremony.

And this is how it happened: "Last Shabbat, I accepted upon myself to donate a year of my life to R' Elyashiv -- for his health and a long life. I immediately felt a great joy...

During the Torah reading, a chassid in a shtreimel asked me whey I was smiling, and when I explained to him why, he asked it was his Rebbe, the Satmar Rebbe, would I also be willing to donate a year of my life?" I replied, "Obviously! I would give a year for every one of the Torah giants...Rav Kanievsky and Rav Ovadia [Yosef] who are the guardians of our generation. " (source)
Questions:

Is there a refund, if R' Elyashiv doesn't have a complete recovery?
Is there are Jewish source for such a deal?
Does G-d approve of such deals?

In the future, I can imagine a PONZIE scheme -- people donating a year of their lives to the person a level above them, so that the person at the top of the pyramid attains the life span of thousands of years, while those on the bottom are left having given away years of their lives?

May R' Elyashiv have a complete recovery, even without this "donation..."

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6 comments:

  1. The source is Adam Harishon giving 70 years to David Hamelech. A reply to Comment #6 on Kikar explains this. Another reply to that comment says that Rav Salman Mutzafi gave 5 years of his life to his Havruta - Rav Yehuda Fataya.

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  2. Hey Jameel, you should at least have given a hat tip to Rafi's posting on this story... looks like most of what you've written here was condensed from the comments there.

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  3. Hi Shaul - Actually, everything came from the Kikar Shabbat story (link included in the post), and I didn't read Rafi's blog post...

    I always hat-tip my sources. Always.

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  4. OK, sorry for judging you unfavorably! Looks like all our minds were working on the same lines!
    :)

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  5. This declaration is quite beyond my understanding. As a Jew it makes me feel like having here a kind of fetichism towards the Rabbi and as far as I know it is forbidden.

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