The Valleys Jewish community is giving the cold shoulder to the controversial Body Worlds 3: Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies currently at the Phoenix Science Center in downtown Phoenix. Cadavers and body parts preserved through plastic technology run counter to Jewish teachings about the body after death. The latest issue of the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix devotes its front-page lead story and two commentaries inside to the issue surrounding German anatomist Gunther van Hagens exhibit through May 28. The many interviewed were generally repelled by the concept of the exhibit. Rabbis were invited at the outset of planning to offer comment, through panels, to help engender respect and sensitivity in the presentation, but prominent East Valley leaders like Rabbi Andrew Straus of Tempe Emanuel of Tempe declined to have anything to do with it. I chose not to be part of the panel because I knew they were going to go forward, and I knew there was no way to do this in a way that represented Jewish value, morals and ideals, he told the Jewish News. Jews explain that the human body, a creation in Gods image, is always to be treated with respect, and that upon death, it is not to be left unattended, and that funerals are to take place quickly. Embalming is rare, and Jews take a dim view of cremation. Very specific rules govern the preparation of the body for rapid burial.Writer Deborah Sussman Susser found out that American Indians were also invited to comment on the exhibit as it was being proposed for Phoenix. Arizona Native Scene editor Loren Tapahe told readers that it was a done deal, that the exhibit was coming when he was invited to comment. We were told the Science Center has already decided to have this exhibit and (they) were asking those Native Americans in attendance for their advice on how to present this to the Native American public. He said it was like someone asking him how to tell my children to go see something I dont want them to see.This exhibition teeters on the edge of dishonoring the dead, wrote Rabbi Rafael Goldstein, vice president for Jewish affairs of the Jewish Family and Childrens Service. He calls on visitors of the exhibit to ask themselves three questions in advance of possibly going: 1) Would viewing it teach you something that might save your life or the lives of other human beings?; 2) Would viewing it in some way enhance your understanding of the way the body works?; and 3) Would viewing it inspire you? He said it would be OK to go if a person can say a yes to one or more of them, but do so in a way that honors the dead, including following a Jewish custom that goes with leaving a cemetery: washing ones hands.Goldstein did his own investigation and found that one rabbi who sat on the ethics committee for the exhibit in Denver let his teens see it. They benefited from viewing lungs of smokers. As a result, he said, there is merit in it helping to save lives. Some people see the exhibit as amazing art: To them seeing the insides of our bodies is almost holy to recognize how fragile, amazing and beautiful our inner parts are. They leave the exhibition in awe. A German studies professor at a Minnesota school, Lind Schulte-Sasse gives the other commentary in the Jewish News (it first appeared in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.). She calls the exhibit horror. She labels Body Worlds voyeurism and an example of how one person can be capitalized on by another. The exhibit, she asserts, literally solidifies the bodys place in consumer culture, assuring us that nothing is left that can escape becoming a commodity. Gunther von Hagens has insisted that all bodies used came from people who consented to what he had planned. Critics say he comes out of a German society that once so devalued humans that the Holocaust resulted, but von Hagens says he has taken special pains because of this historic burden.All that said, I find the Jewish objections truly underscores the reality that religious teachings powerfully govern fundamental issues of life and death. I havent decided whether to take in Body Worlds. Given how common it has become to transplant a range of body organs and trade blood, how common it is for cadavers to be donated to science for laboratory training, how common autopsies are, I think the body once life is gone has become more demystified. It will always be of infinite interest and fascination.At 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 17, the Arizona Chapter of the American Jewish Committee, with the Science Center, is hosing a panel, Cultural Perspectives on the Human Body at the IMAX Theater of the Science Center, 600 E. Washington St., Phoenix.

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