8 - Does a person's body belong to God?

Summary

Some Halakhists have put forward the view that, while it is axiomatic in Jewish law that a man owns his property, whether real estate or movables, he has no ownership rights on his own body, which, it is argued, belongs not to him but to God. A man can do whatever he wishes with his property provided no harm is caused thereby to others. But he has as few property rights over his own body as he has over the bodies of others. This chapter seeks to demonstrate that the individual does, on the contrary, enjoy considerable autonomy so far as his body is concerned.

We begin with the statement in the Mishnah (Bava Kama 8:9), elaborated on in the Gemara (Bava Kama 91b), that Rabbi Akiba ruled, ‘If a man wounds himself, even though he has no right so to do, he is not culpable; but if others have wounded him they are culpable.’ To this the Mishnah adds, ‘If a man cut down his own plants, though he has no right so to do, he is not culpable; but if others cut them down they are culpable.’ The Mishnah uses exactly the same expression – ‘though he has no right so to do’ – for both a man wounding himself and a man who cuts down shoots, seeming to imply that the same reasoning is behind the two cases and that no distinction is made in this matter between a man's body and his property.