This week’s piece will perhaps seem more theoretical than most, since le-halakhah we allow all saving of lives on Shabbat, without regard to nationality (Jewish or not) or prognosis (the person can live a long time, or not). However, considering some of the issues along the way to getting there does have important ideological ramifications, in terms of understanding the value of human life in halakhah.

First, let us note that the right to save non-Jews’ lives is generally based on rules that allow us to avoid angering the non-Jews among whom we live, called either evah or darkei shalom. I recently heard a funny story from Prof. David Berger about the late Rabbi Shaul Lieberman, ztllh"h, a giant in both Torah knowledge (his Tosefta ki-Peshutah reveals an astonishing mastery of many genres of Jewish literature) and Morton Smith, a non-Jewish scholar of the classical period in Israel, who was well-versed in Talmudic literature. In the story, Smith asked Rabbi Lieberman whether Lieberman would save him, Smith, were he dying on Shabbat. Lieberman answered affirmatively. Smith then asked whether he would do so because he valued his life, or because of issues of evah. Lieberman answered that he would do it for the value of life reason. However, he later told people who had witnessed the conversation that he had answered that way because of evah issues.

That there is a distinction between Jews and non-Jews in our justification of violating Shabbat to save lives alerts us to the need to understand the reason for saving Jews more fully, since there will always be test cases worth considering. Several weeks ago, we had the pleasure of studying Shabbat 30a-b between Mincha and Maariv on Shabbat afternoon in the RJC, where R. Tanhum from Noi, a rabbi cited only that one time in Talmudic literature, suggests that the reason we are allowed to put out a candle for someone who is ill is that "better to put out a candle made by flesh and blood than the candle [verses in Tanakh refer to the human soul as a candle] made by God." In this reasoning, we might be allowed to violate Shabbat even for non-Jews, since they, too, (at least presumably) possess a soul created by God.

However, R. Tanhum’s reasoning is cited only once in the rest of Jewish literature collected by Bar-Ilan in its CD-Rom, and, as Rashi notes on the page, is not the reasoning accepted by the Talmud. Rather, there is a discussion in Yoma (ending on 85b), which concludes with the reasoning of Shemu’el, that the Torah says "va-hai bahem, and you shall live by them," and not that you should die in trying to keep them. That reasoning, of course, suggests that Jews are not required to keep the Torah at the sacrifice of their own lives, regardless of the circumstances involved. Although there are several other lines of reasoning suggested, the Talmud concludes that only Shemu’el’s reasoning cannot be questioned.

That would seem to clinch the matter, setting the rule that Jews do not need to keep Shabbat in cases where that observance leads to a threat to life. However, as Tsits Eliezer (8;15, in the 3^rd chapter of his Kuntres Meshivat Nefesh; all the sources to which I refer here are cited there by name) notes, one practical debate and numerous other sources blur the issue. The Talmud records a debate as to whether we can violate Shabbat to save the life of a baby whose parents we do not know, found in a place where the majority of the people are non-Jewish (again, the Talmud is assuming that there is a feasible way to distinguish between Jews and non-Jews in saving lives, an assumption we generally reject today). When it comes to ruling halakhically, Tsits Eliezer notes, there is again a debate—Shulhan Arukh rules that we cannot save this baby, while Rema rules that we can.

The interesting element in this baby’s situation is that the child will not be raised Jewish—since the majority of people from there are not Jewish, we will assume, in terms of obligating this baby in mitsvot, that it is not Jewish. Nevertheless, Rema allows us to save the baby’s life, since even the doubtful possibility of saving a Jewish life is permissible on the basis of va-hai bahem.

The other view, that we may not save this baby’s life because there is not enough evidence that it is Jewish, opens the door to various considerations in rulings on such issues. Tsits Eliezer notes that Meiri in Yoma says that we can save even people who do not currently observe mitsvot because of the possibility that they will repent and return to a life of observance. That might mean, though, that if we could not save the person in a way that would allow them to repent—we could not, for example, return this person to consciousness, as far as we know—that perhaps we would not be allowed to violate Shabbat to save them.

Other issues that arise depend on the extent to which we factor in another line of reasoning suggested in the gemara in Yoma, which says that it is better to violate one Shabbat in order to be able to observe many others. If we take that view strictly, and Tsits Eliezer notes (with surprise) some who do, then we would only be allowed to save people on Shabbat whom we can feasibly expect to live another week (or two, to be able to keep "many Shabbatot").

Others suggest that the calculus of violating one commandment to allow for the observance of others is correct, but that any other mitsvot qualify. If so, we could save a person on Shabbat even if that person could only live for a brief time, because in that time, they could observe many mitsvot. However, saving a baby (Jewish) who we knew was going to be raised in a non-Jewish environment would be prohibited in that line of reasoning, again because we cannot expect this child to perform any mitsvot.

Of course, one could answer all these objections technically, saying that we never really know how long a patient is going to live, so even if doctors are sure that we can only save this person’s life for a couple of hours, we can suspect that the person might live another two weeks. Similarly, we can claim that we never know who will or won’t live a life of observance of mitsvot, since circumstances always change (this child raised as a non-Jew might eventually meet up with Jews who attract him/her to observance—as happens in various mystery novels being sold today).

Those types of answers might produce the same result as the belief that va-hai bahem just values a Jewish soul more than Shabbat, but the theoretical views espoused differ considerably. In one, the life itself outweighs Shabbat, whereas in the other, it is the possible positive uses made by that person that count, regardless of how theoretical those positive actions might be. Keeping that in mind may help us think differently about our uses of our own lives, in times when we are not at risk of death. Shabbat Shalom.