Q&A: Saving Lives on the One Hand, and a Pilot’s Ticket to Hell on the Other
Saving Lives on the One Hand, and a Pilot’s Ticket to Hell on the Other
Question
If I’m in a war that was launched against me, say in some country in Europe, and I have a strong army that can defeat them, but I know for certain that I have absolutely no ability to control this or forbid it to my subordinates, and all the soldiers who enter the country that attacked me will take all the women there and rape them, like what happened in Germany after the Holocaust when the Russians entered Berlin—what am I supposed to do? Go to war and pump myself full of the lie that I’m fighting and overcoming the impulse and not raping any woman, or sit back passively and not save them? The same question could apply in an individual case of saving a woman who is drowning in a river: if I know for certain that I’m not going to overcome the impulse and just save her, but rather save her in order to sin with her, what does the Torah say to me in such a situation? Save her and overcome it—which from my perspective is nonsense—or don’t save her and don’t sin? And can this somehow be connected to the passage of the beautiful captive woman?
Answer
At first I assumed this was your indirect way of raising an argument in favor of not drafting Haredim (out of concern that they will be morally or religiously corrupted). I’ll try to answer without reference to that interpretation.
If your life is in danger, you must defend yourself, and if the price is that the women will be raped, then that is the price. And indeed, that is exactly the case of the beautiful captive woman passage (though, as I’ve explained more than once, what troubles the Torah and the Sages there is the prohibition against relations with a non-Jewish woman, not the rape).
When you see a woman drowning, you must save her, and not be troubled by the impulse that may be aroused in you. This is explicit in the Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 20a. See the Wikipedia entry here on a “pious fool”: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%97%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%93_%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%98%D7%94
And it is not true that the call to overcome the impulse is nonsense. Absolutely not. You are called upon to overcome it, and you must try to do so. True, even if you fail, that should not prevent you from carrying out the rescue. Exactly like Rabbi Ilai’s well-known saying about a person who sees that his impulse is overcoming him. The permission does not exempt him from the obligation to try and overcome it.
Discussion on Answer
There’s nothing wrong with that argument, as you would have seen if you had read what I wrote.
I’m trying to understand the criteria for weighing learned arguments on this issue. After all, nobody thinks that without the Haredim and the students of Mercaz HaRav yeshiva—those among them who don’t enlist—there is no army, and it’s clear that if they were in the army there would be lives saved among the soldiers. But by the same token, it’s also clear that if our forefather Jacob had not studied for fourteen years with Shem and Ever and had instead gone into medicine, people would have been saved, and every person throughout history who studied should supposedly not have studied, because saving lives takes precedence. I’ll explain with another example: it should be forbidden to buy synagogues or Torah scrolls, because that money could be donated to save lives. (And the issue is not only connected to Judaism; after all, it’s obvious that if the choice is between eating ice cream or saving a person, you have to save the person. So let people enjoy themselves less and live with somewhat worse conditions and use that money to save people.) As long as there is no clear answer and/or definition on this issue, the discussion lacks relevance.
Forgive me, but the question is so foolish that I’m not willing to address it. I’m tired of the Haredi cleverness that raises such foolish questions and arguments on these topics. Think for yourself.
There’s no need to be clever in order to explain the Haredi view on this issue. Broadly speaking, their classic position is the ruling of the Chazon Ish, that there is a different attitude toward a person who completely leaves the path of Torah (that too needs defining—what counts as completely leaving), to the point that even death is preferable to that. But I’m speaking neutrally about both sides: as long as they don’t define what counts as completely leaving the path (which, in my opinion, pretty much doesn’t happen), and the other side doesn’t explain what counts as saving life, this will continue to be an argument full of slogans, where one side brings ten examples from here and the other side brings the opposite.
What you wrote at the beginning of the response—that this is an indirect way of arguing against drafting Haredim (out of concern that they’ll be corrupted)—on the contrary, it’s actually an argument in favor of drafting everyone, including the yeshiva head. Since I assumed they wouldn’t give that “pious fool” an exemption from saving a girl on the claim that he’s sure he’ll fall into the net of temptation, then what kind of argument is it to say maybe they’ll be corrupted—even if we all know that will happen, and more than that, even if we all know that this is the hidden goal of the people at the top? What difference does it make? Right now there are lives to be saved. You have to save them and not be corrupted, and if you saved them and were corrupted, the merit for the rescue will be credited to your side on the one hand, while the liability for your corruption, because you didn’t want to overcome your impulse, will be charged against you on the other hand. So why are we always arguing about this point—whether they’ll be corrupted or not? Even if it’s certain they’ll be corrupted, that’s the Torah’s command right now: save and fight so as not to be corrupted, and if in the end you were corrupted, then you’re the one who got burned. What’s wrong with that argument?