More on “Did the autopsy find no soul?”

I have a hard time separating soul from mind.–Lisa
Terri Schiavo’s body once had belonged to a person, but it hadn’t for a long time before she stopped breathing –Murky
If I had the choice as I lay in a hospital bed, and knew that either people could keep on pouring money into me when I would never get better, or that money could go to someone else who could then live/ recover- would I not chooose to allow the money to go to someone else? –Chana

In Judaism, the soul is not the same thing as the mind. As long as a person is alive, he has a neshama. His neshama existed before he was born and will continue to exist after it leaves his body. His essential self is his neshama, not his body. Even a newborn baby who cannot think or speak, or an elderly person in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease, still has a neshama. It is true that the neshama makes thought and speech possible, but without thought and speech, the neshama is still present as long as the person is alive.

The neshama has a mission to fulfill, and as long as G-d has not taken that soul, it still has a mission in this world. The person may be basically a tzaddik who may have had only a few sins, and his neshama may need further refinement through suffering in this world, so that all his sins will be atoned here and he will not have to go to Gehenom. Or he may not be suffering here at all — he may be completely unconscious — but his neshama enjoys tikun by virtue of the fact that it elicits chessed and prayers from others.

As long as G-d thinks that soul still has a mission here on earth, we dare not say differently. As for the money spent to keep a person alive, woe betide a society where purely material considerations determine who will live and who will die.

If there were but one slice of bread and you had to choose whether to keep Reuven or Shimon alive, perhaps you could say, give it to the person most likely to survive. But Baruch Hashem we live in an affluent society where such triage is not necessary. Keeping elderly, comatose and handicapped people alive does not cause the death of younger, healthier patients. Our resources may not be infinite, but we are certainly the wealthiest nation that ever existed.

When my father zt”l was in his last days he needed to be cared for by others. Every minute that he was still alive was precious. G-d forbid that we would ever have said, “Don’t bother feeding Daddy anymore, he can’t teach Torah anymore anyway. Let’s give the money to a more worthwhile cause instead.” Chas vesholom that a Jew would ever think like that.