A Doll in the Form of a Person

Hello and blessings. I would like to order a gift for a friend: a doll in his likeness (a human figure), manufactured in China as a full three-dimensional figure, from head to toe. Is this forbidden as a matter of basic halachah, forbidden only as a stringency, or permitted? Is there a difference between a full three-dimensional figure and a three-dimensional image in which the back side is flat and only the front side protrudes?

Hello and blessings 

It is forbidden to make the form of a person, and even if it was already made by a non-Jew, it is forbidden to keep it in one’s possession. 

The prohibition applies also when one makes the figure of only the front half and did not make both sides of the body. 

This prohibition is according to the letter of the law and not merely a stringency. 

One should be stringent not to make even the form of a face alone. And there are those who forbid making it according to the letter of the law. 

Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’ah, siman 141, se’if 4
It is forbidden to draw, etc., and likewise the form of a person alone; all of these are forbidden to make even for decoration. And if a non-Jew made them for him, it is forbidden to keep them in his possession. 

Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’ah, siman 141, se’if 7
There is one who says that they prohibited the form of a person and a dragon only specifically when it is a complete form with all its limbs; but the form of a head, or a body without a head, has no prohibition at all, neither in finding it nor in making it, and so is the custom. 

And in the Shach and Taz there, they wrote to be stringent regarding the form of a face without the body. 

And in Chochmat Adam (klal 85, se’if 4) he wrote: It appears to me that even though it is only half of the body from the front side, even though he does not make the entire body front and back, nevertheless it is forbidden.

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