Roi Klein – Is It Permissible to Sacrifice One’s Life to Save Another?

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Roi Klein – Is It Permissible to Sacrifice One’s Life to Save Another?

Sent on 16/8/2008

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Roi Klein – Is It Permissible to Sacrifice One’s Life to Save Another?

About two weeks ago (the second of Av) was the memorial day for Roi Klein, of blessed memory, who threw himself on a grenade in order to save his comrades/subordinates. His heroic act (like that of Nathan Elbaz in the 1950s) aroused admiration, and quite rightly so, and even great reverence. From what I saw in the film and heard by word of mouth, this was indeed an extraordinary man and Jew.

By way of background, I would note that, in my impression, the act did not generate the public resonance I would have expected. There is appreciation and so forth, but I did not see the enthusiasm, the films, and the cult of remembrance that I would have expected, except within insular religious circles. In my opinion, even the films made about him are viewed mainly by people from those circles, and they too convey an atmosphere and values that speak mainly to them.

There is room to discuss whether this relative mutedness is because of the ideological-religious identity of the man who did it (as I tend to think), or because the IDF and the public do not want to educate people toward such behavior (certainly one cannot demand from a person the certain sacrifice of his life, as distinct from taking a risk, even for the sake of the mission’s success. But there is a question whether one should educate toward this at all, and, as is well known, this was debated in the IDF’s ridiculous ethical code, and it was decided not to).

After two years, I feel one can already ask, more coolly, whether the act Klein performed was permitted, forbidden, or a religious obligation.

It is accepted in Jewish law that a person may not give up his own life in order to save another. Hagahot Maimoniyot, in the section ‘Laws of Murder and Preservation of Life,’ cites the Jerusalem Talmud as permitting or even requiring one to enter a situation of possible mortal danger in order to save another, but even regarding that all the authorities of Jewish law agreed that we do not adopt that ruling in practice. All the more so, actually giving up one’s life is forbidden.

To be sure, one might distinguish a case in which a single individual gives up his life to save an entire group, and some authorities do distinguish in this way (as in the case of the martyrs of Lod), but even here there is no consensus among the authorities. Moreover, I do not know how many people there were in that battle who were in danger (from what I understood, this was not really an entire group, for a grenade in the open air does not usually endanger an entire group), and whether the permission of those authorities extends even to saving two people, or only to saving an entire community (as the wording of several authorities implies).

Some will distinguish here that war is different, for there, in any case, every soldier is permitted, and even obligated, to endanger himself for the sake of saving the public. But this distinction too is problematic, and that for several reasons:

1. On its face, the permission to risk life in war is nothing more than the result of applying the rules of life-preservation, not a special and different permission. The consideration is that if we do not obligate the soldier to endanger his life, then all of us will die. If so, there is no special permission here, and one cannot derive from it a sweeping permission. But here the self-sacrifice was not for the sake of victory in the war, but to save comrades.

2. The success of the mission in which Klein and his unit were engaged required the commander more than his soldiers. It is not reasonable to endanger the success of the mission in order to save the soldiers engaged in it. Otherwise they should not go on the mission in the first place (this is also connected to the rescue of rabbis and spiritual leaders during the Holocaust, but this is not the place to elaborate). Therefore, the consideration of the mission’s success precisely required him to remain alive and continue directing the battle. As a matter of fact, I do not know what happened there in the end, whether the mission was indeed carried out (which, of course, later turned out to be entirely pointless, but this is not the place to elaborate).

3. I am not speaking about special permissions in obligatory wars, since, in my opinion, that is not what we have here, and I am not at all sure that even the permissions in an obligatory war do not derive from the ordinary rules of life-preservation.

Now, the law itself regarding giving up one’s life to save another requires discussion, in light of the dispute among the medieval authorities as to whether a person may give up his life for commandments other than the three cardinal prohibitions. The view of Tosafot is that he may, and the view of Maimonides is that he may not. Seemingly, saving lives is a great commandment, and its status should not be inferior to that of other commandments. If so, according to Tosafot there is room to permit giving up one’s life in order to save another’s life.

This, however, is contradicted by the Jerusalem Talmud and the Tosefta in Terumot, regarding gentiles who besieged a city and said, ‘Give us one of you.’ It is also contradicted by the discussion of two people who were walking in the desert and one of them had a flask of water, where according to most opinions he may not give the flask to his fellow (although Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook is uncertain about this).

The proof from the flask can be set aside. Tosafot’s permission does not speak of someone who wants to give up his life in order to use his last ration of water for ritual hand-washing (as in the story of Rabbi Akiva in prison). Clearly, Tosafot are speaking of a case where gentiles want to force us to violate some commandment (except that it is not in public, and under the ordinary rules one is not obligated to give up one’s life), and there there is permission to give up one’s life for other commandments as well. But simply to be killed in order to fulfill a commandment (for example, someone who wants to fast on Yom Kippur even though it is dangerous for him), it is hard to believe anyone would permit that. In the case of the flask, however, we are simply dealing with saving a life, without any threatening gentile or similar situation, and therefore perhaps even according to Tosafot there is no permission to give up one’s life there. But the Jerusalem Talmud in Terumot does require discussion, for there there is a threat. However, there the threat demands that we hand over one of our number, and therefore resistance to the threat consists in not handing him over. Can someone volunteer to die? We discussed this in my thread on the separation of conjoined twins and the ramifications. I am inclined to think that he may, but only because he himself is also going to die if he is not handed over, and therefore what we hand over is a doomed man. In a situation where the person is not otherwise going to die, he may not volunteer to give up his life, except where desecration of God’s name is at stake, as above.

The question with which I will conclude is this: even assuming that we conclude that the act was forbidden according to Jewish law, what should our practical attitude be toward the act and toward the person who performed it? It is difficult to relate to such a person as a transgressor. Not only because he was acting under compulsion (since he thought it was permitted, and he had no time to deliberate, and certainly not to consult a rabbi), but because of the act itself. A person who sinned by sacrificing himself for the sake of some value is hard to see as a transgressor.

Source (the ‘Stop Here, Think’ forum): http://www.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=2465991