Actress Michelle Trachtenberg attends the 28th Annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party on Feb. 9, 2020 in West Hollywood, California. (Michael Tran / AFP via Getty Images)

(JTA) — When people die in unclear circumstances, particularly when they are young, the standard practice is for authorities to perform an autopsy on their body to determine a cause of death.

But in the case of the actress Michelle Trachtenberg, whose death at 39 was announced on Wednesday, no autopsy is being performed, according to news reports that say Trachtenberg’s family declined the investigation for religious reasons.

Trachtenberg was Jewish, and autopsies are widely seen as prohibited under traditional Jewish law forbidding the desecration of the dead. Jewish practices require that bodies be buried quickly and as close to intact as possible — hence exhaustive efforts to retrieve biological material in cases where bodies have been damaged. Autopsies, which involve cutting, manipulating and removing tissue for analysis, work against that requirement.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Some Jewish legal authorities have ruled that autopsies can be permissible under limited circumstances, such as cases when dissecting a body might offer information needed to allow for a murderer to be punished, or because of clear potential to generate medical insights that would help others. But others have ruled that the traditional prohibition must not be skirted in any situation.

In New York, where Trachtenberg died, the medical examiner typically requires an autopsy in cases where criminality is suspected. In this instance, authorities said there was no evidence of foul play.

In other cases, an autopsy might be requested, but the next of kin — in the actor’s case, her parents — have the right to say no.

Media reports about Trachtenberg say she was a recent recipient of a liver transplant. Without an autopsy, her cause of death will be officially recorded as undetermined.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount