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Category: Other Content: Written Testimony of Rabbi Benjamin J. Samuels on behalf of The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston Before the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies S. 25, An Act Promoting Stem Cell Research February 16, 2005 Chairman Hart, Chairman Bosley, and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on S. 25, An Act Promoting Stem Cell Research. I would also like to thank Senate President Travaglini and my senator, Senator Creem, for introducing this legislation. My name is Rabbi Benjamin J. Samuels and I am the rabbi of Congregation Shaarei Tefillah, an Orthodox synagogue in Newton. I am also a member of the Board and the Public Policy Committee of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, the representative voice of the organized Jewish community of Greater Boston, with 42 member organizations. I proudly represent the Jewish Community Relations Council at today’s hearing. I also speak today as a concerned citizen of our great Commonwealth. In all these three capacities, as a community rabbi, as the Jewish communal representative, and as a private citizen, I testify before this committee in support of human embryonic stem cell research and in support of the proposed legislation. As a scholar of Jewish tradition, I wish to inform the Committee that I believe the dominant voice of our Jewish ethical and legal tradition is in consonance with the proposed legislation and supports human embryonic stem cell research. The Jewish tradition does not recognize or assign moral status to an embryo before forty days of gestation. Furthermore, uterine implantation of an embryo, in addition to a minimum of forty days of gestation, is required to create moral status. [For more detailed information regarding Jewish views on Stem Cell Research and the legal and moral status of Pre-Embryos, I refer the Committee to the articles posted at www.JLAW.com, an educational website on matters of Jewish law.] Absent said moral status, and in light of Judaism’s moral and religious mandate to save human life and alleviate human suffering, supporting the proposed legislation can be considered not only praiseworthy, but even a Jewish moral and religious duty. I share this knowledge with the Committee not to argue the adoption of the Jewish view, but simply as a point of information so that the Committee is aware that I do not believe there to be a faith barrier to the proposed legislation for the Jewish citizens of our Commonwealth. As the representative of the Jewish Community Relations Council and its Public Policy Committee, I must share that I do not believe it is in the interest of this Committee or in the interest of our Commonwealth to privilege any one religion’s moral view of the proposed legislation over others. It is precisely the separation of Church and State that allows for religious liberty and the vibrant religious pluralism we celebrate in our country and in our Commonwealth. Just as I would not want more restrictive religious views to direct the judgment of this Committee, so too I do not offer the Jewish view in substitution. I believe that the Committee should be guided by the rule of law, by the persuasiveness of the ethical arguments, and by the consideration of the common good. As a community rabbi, I minister to congregants both young and old afflicted with disease and human misery. In our small congregation, we have children with degenerative genetic diseases, people who suffer from Diabetes, and seniors plagued by Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. We have lost a wonderful woman in the summer of her life to liver disease and transplant failure and an active middle-age man who turned parapalygic in a car accident due to spinal cord injury. As a private citizen, I testify before you as the son of a once vibrant woman who dedicated her professional life to the education of inner-city children having taught for over 20 years in the Chicago Public School system, and who, now, at the age of 66, has been residing in a nursing home immobilized by the ravaging effects of progressive degenerative Multiple Sclerosis. Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell research hold the promise to therapies for these and other human afflictions. They hold the promise to improving and perhaps radically restoring full life to those who are suffering, real people who are our mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers, sisters and friends. I believe that our great Commonwealth with its abundant wealth of biomedical talent should be at the forefront of championing this cause for the common good. In sum, the organized Jewish Community supports S. 25, an Act Promoting Stem Cell Research. In the words of the preamble of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: “The end of the institution, maintenance, and administration of government, is to secure the existence of the body politic, to protect it, and to furnish the individuals who compose it with the power of enjoying in safety and tranquility their natural rights, and the blessings of life…” May this Committee decide with wisdom and knowledge how best to support Stem Cell Research and scientific advancement that holds for the afflicted citizens of our Commonwealth and for the people of the world the promise of the full blessings of life.