In America, questions of what is or is not a living human being have been at the center of the country’s kulturkampf ever since Roe v. Wade. But Israel has been notably without an abortion debate, in large part because of the relatively lenient position that Judaism takes towards abortion. Yet a new debate has suddenly burst onto the public sphere, concerning not the beginning of life but its end. It is likely to drive a still deeper wedge between traditionalist and secular Jews–and among Orthodox groups themselves.

This week, the Knesset passed a bill defining death as the irrevocable ceasing of brain function, or what we call “brain death.” Such a definition enables a far more efficient process of organ donation, with a direct result of lives saved. For this reason, the bill was passed with the support of Shas, an Orthodox party under the leadership of the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Ovadiah Yosef; the bill also has the support of the current sephardic Chief Rabbi, Shlomo Amar.

Yet it enraged other Orthodox Jews, particularly the major leadership of the Ashkenazic ultra-Orthodox community. In the view of their leading rabbis, death is when the heart stops beating, and any tampering with the body prior to that point is tantamount to chopping up a living human being. Posters hanging in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods urged people to prepare for a battle that “will shake the very foundations of this country,” fighting against the harvesting of organs from the brain-dead which, in their view, is “murder in every sense of the word.”

I do not claim to know when precisely someone is dead, nor do I think an inquiry into Jewish tradition will yield any clear answer. What I do know is that Israel ranks pretty low as far as organ donation goes, in large part because of traditional Jewish attitudes towards the treatment of the dead. If updating a technical definition of death can save many lives, while maintaining consonance with the sanctity and value of life, it seems like the right move.