The spiritual leader of the Lithuanian hareidi-religious (Litvish-Litvak) stream, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, has announced his complete opposition to the law that would make it possible to remove a person's organs for transplants if he were pronounced "brain dead." Rabbi Elyashiv and Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach were quoted as saying that even if the donor's organs are intended for a seriously ill person, "Our opinion is that while the donor's heart is beating and his brain is not functioning at all, there is no permission to take out any of his organs and this would constitute 'spilling of blood' (shefichut damim)."

The rabbis were quoted in an article in Wednesday's hareidi-religious Litvak paper Yated Ne'eman, which also described the removal of organs from a person whose heart is still beating as "murder."   

The article also contained veiled attacks on Rabbi Ovadia Yosef for his support of the bill, based on understandings reached between representatives of the Chief Rabbinate and the health establishment.